Lithuanian Jews
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Lithuanian Jews
{{Jews and Judaism sidebar , Population Litvaks ({{Langx, yi, ליטװאַקעס) or Lita'im ({{Langx, he, לִיטָאִים) are Jews who historically resided in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki Region, Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent areas of modern-day Russia and Ukraine). Over 90% of the population was killed during the Holocaust. The term is sometimes used to cover all Haredi Jews who follow an Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi, non-Hasidic Judaism, Hasidic style of life and learning, whatever their ethnic background. The area where Litvaks lived is referred to in Yiddish as {{lang, yi, {{Script/Hebrew, ליטע {{lang, yi-Latn, Lite, hence the Hebrew term {{lang, he-Latn, Lita'im ({{lang, he, {{Script/Hebrew, לִיטָאִים ). No other Jew is more closely linked to a specifically Lithuanian city than the Vilna Gaon (in Yiddish, "the genius of Vilna"), ...
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Yiddish
Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew language, Hebrew (notably Mishnaic Hebrew, Mishnaic) and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages.Aram Yardumian"A Tale of Two Hypotheses: Genetics and the Ethnogenesis of Ashkenazi Jewry".University of Pennsylvania. 2013. Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet. Prior to World War II, there were 11–13 million speakers. 85% of the approximately 6 million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers,Solomon Birnbaum, ''Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache'' (4., erg. Aufl., Hamburg: Buske, 1984), p. 3. leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Jewish ass ...
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Belarus
Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an area of with a population of . The country has a hemiboreal climate and is administratively divided into Regions of Belarus, six regions. Minsk is the capital and List of cities and largest towns in Belarus, largest city; it is administered separately as a city with special status. For most of the medieval period, the lands of modern-day Belarus was ruled by independent city-states such as the Principality of Polotsk. Around 1300 these lands came fully under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and subsequently by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; this period lasted for 500 years until the Partitions of Poland, 1792-1795 partitions of Poland-Lithuania placed Belarus within the Belarusian history in the Russian Empire, Russian Empire for the fi ...
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The Holocaust In Lithuania
The Holocaust resulted in the near total eradication of Lithuanian Jews, Lithuanian (Litvaks) and History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in ''Generalbezirk Litauen'' of the ''Reichskommissariat Ostland'' in the Occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany, Nazi-controlled Lithuania. Of approximately 208,000–210,000 Jews at the time of the Nazi invasion, an estimated 190,000 to 195,000 were killed before the end of World War II, most of them between June and December 1941. More than 95% of Lithuania's Jewish population was murdered over the three-year German occupation, a more complete destruction than befell any other country in the Holocaust. Historians attribute this to the massive collaboration in the genocide by the non-Jewish local paramilitaries, though the reasons for this collaboration are still debated. The Holocaust resulted in the largest loss of life in so short a period of time in the history of Lithuania. The events in the western regions of the USSR occupied by ...
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Chaim Grade
Chaim Grade (, GRAHD-uh) (April 4, 1910 – June 26, 1982) was one of the leading Yiddish writers of the twentieth century. Grade was born in Vilnius, Vilna, then within the Russian Empire, and died in The Bronx, New York (state), New York. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery, Saddle Brook, New Jersey. Grade was raised Orthodox, and studied in yeshiva as a teenager, but ended up with a secular outlook, in part due to his poetic ambitions. Losing his family in the Holocaust, he resettled in New York, and increasingly took to fiction, writing in Yiddish. Prewar: early life and education File : Vilnia, Jatkovaja. Вільня, Ятковая (06.1935) (2).jpg, Vilna, Jatkever gas, 1935. Chaim lived with his mother in a room at Jatkever gas, 15 (now Mesinių str. 11). Chaim Grade was born in 1910, the son of Shloyme-Mordkhe Grade, a teacher of Hebrew language, and his second wife, a rabbi's daughter Vela Blumenthal. He had five brothers from his father's first marriage, and two sist ...
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Vilna
Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population was 607,667, and the Vilnius urban area (which extends beyond the city limits) has an estimated population of 747,864. Vilnius is notable for the architecture of its Vilnius Old Town, Old Town, considered one of Europe's largest and best-preserved old towns. The city was declared a World Heritage Site, UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The architectural style known as Vilnian Baroque is named after the city, which is farthest to the east among Baroque architecture, Baroque cities and the largest such city north of the Alps. The city was noted for its #Demographics, multicultural population during the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with contemporary sources comparing it to Babylon. Before World War II and The Holocaust in Lithuania, th ...
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Vilna Gaon
Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, ( ''Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman''), also known as the Vilna Gaon ( ''Der Vilner Goen''; ; or Elijah of Vilna, or by his Hebrew acronym Gr"a ("Gaon Rabbenu Eliyahu": "Our great teacher Elijah"; Sialiec, April 23, 1720Vilnius October 9, 1797), was a Lithuanian Jewish Talmudist, halakhist, kabbalist, and the foremost leader of misnagdic (non- hasidic) Jewry of the past few centuries. He is commonly referred to in Hebrew as ''ha-Gaon mi-Vilna'', "the genius from Vilnius". Through his annotations and emendations of Talmudic and other texts, he became one of the most familiar and influential figures in rabbinic study since the Middle Ages. Although he is chronologically one of the ''Acharonim'', some have considered him one of the ''Rishonim''. Large groups of people, including many ''yeshivas'', uphold the set of Jewish customs and rites ('' minhag''), the "''minhag ha-Gra''", named after him, and which is also considered by many to be the prevailin ...
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Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language until after 200 CE and as the Sacred language, liturgical language of Judaism (since the Second Temple period) and Samaritanism. The language was Revival of the Hebrew language, revived as a spoken language in the 19th century, and is the only successful large-scale example of Language revitalization, linguistic revival. It is the only Canaanite language, as well as one of only two Northwest Semitic languages, with the other being Aramaic, still spoken today. The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE. Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourish ...
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European Jewish Congress
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) was founded in 1986. It is based in Brussels, with offices in Paris, Strasbourg, Berlin and Budapest. It is a representative body of democratically elected European Jewish communities throughout Europe. Overview Affiliated to the World Jewish Congress, the EJC works with national governments, European Union institutions and the Council of Europe. The European Jewish Congress is one of the most influential international public associations and a large secular organisation representing more than 2.5 million of Jews in Europe. It is an umbrella organisation for 42 national Jewish communities on this continent. The primary mission of the EJC is to promote European democracy based on good relations between neighbours, mutual understanding and tolerance. The EJC maintains co-operation with European governments, leading international institutions and European integration associations, including the United Nations, European Union, the Organization ...
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Hasidic Judaism
Hasidism () or Hasidic Judaism is a religious movement within Judaism that arose in the 18th century as a Spirituality, spiritual revival movement in contemporary Western Ukraine before spreading rapidly throughout Eastern Europe. Today, most of those affiliated with the movement, known as ''hassidim'', reside in Israel and in the United States (mostly Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley). Israel Ben Eliezer, the "Baal Shem Tov", is regarded as its founding father, and his disciples developed and disseminated it. Present-day Hasidism is a sub-group within Haredi Judaism and is noted for its religious conservatism and social seclusion. Its members aim to adhere closely both to Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Jewish practice – with the movement's own unique emphases – and the prewar lifestyle of Eastern European Jews. Many elements of the latter, including various special styles of dress and the use of the Yiddish language, are nowadays associated almost exclusively with Hasidism. Has ...
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Haredi Jews
Haredi Judaism (, ) is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that is characterized by its strict interpretation of religious sources and its accepted (Jewish law) and traditions, in opposition to more accommodating values and practices. Its members are often referred to as "ultra-Orthodox" in English, a term considered pejorative by many of its adherents, who prefer the terms strictly Orthodox or Haredi (plural: Haredim). Haredim regard themselves as the most authentic custodians of Jewish religious law and tradition which, in their opinion, is binding and unchangeable. They consider all other expressions of Judaism, including Modern Orthodoxy, as "deviations from God's laws", although other movements of Judaism would disagree. Some scholars have suggested that Haredi Judaism is a reaction to societal changes, including political emancipation, the movement derived from the Enlightenment, acculturation, secularization, religious reform in all its forms from mild to extreme, and the ...
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Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the north; Poland and Slovakia to the west; Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation's capital and List of cities in Ukraine, largest city, followed by Kharkiv, Odesa, and Dnipro. Ukraine's official language is Ukrainian language, Ukrainian. Humans have inhabited Ukraine since 32,000 BC. During the Middle Ages, it was the site of early Slavs, early Slavic expansion and later became a key centre of East Slavs, East Slavic culture under the state of Kievan Rus', which emerged in the 9th century. Kievan Rus' became the largest and most powerful realm in Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries, but gradually disintegrated into rival regional powers before being d ...
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Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west. The territory has a varied landscape, diverse ecosystems, and a temperate climate. Poland is composed of Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 million people, and the List of European countries by area, fifth largest EU country by area, covering . The capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city is Warsaw; other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, and Gdańsk. Prehistory and protohistory of Poland, Prehistoric human activity on Polish soil dates to the Lower Paleolithic, with continuous settlement since the end of the Last Gla ...
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