{"id":899,"date":"2017-06-13T10:12:41","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T10:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/judaikostyrimucentras.com\/?p=899"},"modified":"2023-11-09T17:54:40","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T15:54:40","slug":"s-kassowo-paskaita-zydiskojo-vilniaus-unikalumas-vertimas-i-lietuviu-kalba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/2017\/06\/13\/s-kassowo-paskaita-zydiskojo-vilniaus-unikalumas-vertimas-i-lietuviu-kalba\/","title":{"rendered":"S. Kassowo paskaita „\u017dydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus unikalumas” (vertimas \u012f lietuvi\u0173 kalb\u0105)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gegu<\/em>\u017e\u0117s 23 d. Judaikos tyrim\u0173 centre vyko vieno \u017eymiausi\u0173 \u017eyd\u0173 istorijos tyr\u0117j\u0173, \u201eTrinity\u201c\u00a0koled\u017eo (JAV) istorijos profesoriaus Samuelio Kassowo paskaita<\/em>\u00a0\u201e\u017dydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus unikalumas\u201c<\/em>. Paskaita vyko angl\u0173 kalba, o \u017ead\u0117t\u0105 lietuvi\u0161k\u0105 paskaitos teksto vertim\u0105 pateikiame \u010dia. <\/em><\/p>\n

Tekstas angl\u0173 k. pateikiamas po lietuvi\u0161kojo.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"kassow1\"<\/p>\n

Straipsnyje, kur\u012f 1935 m. para\u0161\u0117 did\u017eiuliam Niujorke leistam Vilniui skirtam almanachui jidi\u0161 kalba, ilgametis YIVO (\u017dyd\u0173 mokslo instituto) direktorius Maksas Vainraichas m\u0117gino paai\u0161kinti, kod\u0117l YIVO savo namais vietoj turtingesni\u0173 miest\u0173, toki\u0173 kaip Berlynas arba Niujorkas, pasirinko skurdok\u0105 Vilni\u0173. Taip nutiko tod\u0117l, paai\u0161kino Maksas Vainraichas, kad Vilniuje buvo kai kas, ko nebuvo kituose miestuose: \u201evietos dvasia\u201c. Tai sankirtos tarp miesto erdvi\u0173 ir atminties, vietin\u0117s tapatyb\u0117s ir nuostabios gamtos apsupties, Lietuvos Jeruzal\u0117s, kuria did\u017eiavosi \u017eydai, ir ai\u0161kaus supratimo, kad Vilniuje, Wilno arba Vilnioje gyveno ir kitos tautos.<\/p>\n

Vainraichas pabr\u0117\u017e\u0117, kad vietos dvasia apjung\u0117 praeit\u012f ir dabart\u012f. Geresn\u0119 ateit\u012f \u017eydai gal\u0117jo statytis tik su s\u0105lyga, kad nepamir\u0161 praeities. Praeities besikratanti \u017eyd\u0173 kult\u016bra, \u012fsp\u0117jo Vainraichas, tegal\u0117jo b\u016bti nevaisinga ir nes\u0117kminga. Akivaizdu, kad omenyje jis tur\u0117jo kaimynin\u0117s Soviet\u0173 S\u0105jungos pavyzd\u012f.<\/p>\n

Vainraicho terminas \u201evietos dvasia\u201c numat\u0117 tai, k\u0105 Barbara Mann dabar vadina \u201eerdviniu pos\u016bkiu\u201c \u0161iuolaikin\u0117se \u017eyd\u0173 studijose, ir i\u0161skiria aspektus rei\u0161kinio, vokie\u010di\u0173 mokslinink\u0173 vadinamo heimatsgeschichte<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u017dydai buvo susij\u0119 ne tik su tekstais, bet ir su vietomis, o \u017eydi\u0161kosios erdv\u0117s ir geografija da\u017enai stulbinamai skyr\u0117si nuo \u0161alimais gyvenusi\u0173 kit\u0173 tautybi\u0173 \u017emoni\u0173: \u017eydi\u0161kieji Ger ir Kotsk buvo kitokie negu lenki\u0161kieji G\u00f3ra Kalwaria ir Kockas, Lodz skyr\u0117si nuo Lodz\u0117s, o Kuzmir buvo ne visai pana\u0161us \u012f Kazimierz\u0105 Dolny. Ir v\u0117l pacituosiu Vainraich\u0105, jo v\u0117lesn\u012f, po karo ra\u0161yt\u0105 tekst\u0105: \u201eNetgi geografinis \u017eydi\u0161kumo \u017eem\u0117lapis yra unikalus. \u017dydi\u0161koji Ryt\u0173 Europa atrodo tapati Ryt\u0173 Europai, bet Gaono, XIX am\u017eiaus maskili\u0173 ir XX am\u017eiaus jidi\u0161 propaguotoj\u0173 d\u0117ka \u017eod\u012f Vilna<\/em> \u017eem\u0117lapyje reikia \u012fra\u0161yti didesn\u0117mis raid\u0117mis negu \u201eVilnius\u201c, \u201eVilnia\u201c arba \u201eWilno\u201c \u012fra\u0161ytas ne\u017eydi\u0161kuose \u017eem\u0117lapiuose.<\/p>\n

Savo knygos \u201eJewish Topographies\u201c \u012fvade Alexandra Nocke pa\u017eymi, kad tarp tekstais interpretuojamos erdv\u0117s ir erdv\u0117s, kurioje gyvenama, kuri nuolatos vystosi, esama sud\u0117ting\u0173 ry\u0161i\u0173. Tok\u012f tradicijos ir modernumo lydin\u012f \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus plane \u012fk\u016bnijo \u012ftampa tarp trij\u0173 \u017eyd\u0173 gyvenvie\u010di\u0173 juost\u0173: senosios \u017eydi\u0161kosios miesto dalies, modernesni\u0173 XIX am\u017eiaus rajon\u0173, kuriuose gyveno inteligentija ir viduriniosios klas\u0117s \u017eydai, ir miest\u0105 juosian\u010di\u0173 \u012f \u0161tetlus pana\u0161i\u0173 gyvenvie\u010di\u0173. Socialiniai ir erdviniai nuotoliai buvo ma\u017eesni negu Var\u0161uvoje\u00a0 ar Lodz\u0117je.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

O tarpukario \u017eydi\u0161kajame Vilniuje buvo galima steb\u0117ti nepakartojam\u0105 perskaitytos ir gyvenamosios erdvi\u0173 s\u0105veik\u0105: nuolatin\u012f kolektyvin\u0117s atminties \u012fveiklinim\u0105.<\/p>\n

Pa\u017evelkime \u012f garsiausi\u0105 eil\u0117ra\u0161t\u012f apie tarpukario Vilni\u0173 \u2013 1926 m. para\u0161yt\u0105 Mo\u0161\u0117s Kulbako poem\u0105 \u201eVilnius\u201c. Kulbakas Vilni\u0173 mat\u0117 kaip katil\u0105, kuriame atmintis ir tradicija virto nauju sekuliariu \u017eydi\u0161kumu. Vilnius buvo Lietuvon \u012fstatytas talismanas, kiekvienas jo sen\u0173 gatvi\u0173 akmuo buvo \u0161ventas ra\u0161tas: Du bist a tunkele kmie ayngefast in Lite farshribn gro un alt arum mit mokh un mit leshayes… a sefer iz ayeder shteyn, a parmet yede vant tsebeltern soydesdik un oyfgeefnt in der nakht<\/em> (Tu esi Lietuvon \u012fstatytas tamsus talismanas, apipintas kerp\u0117m ir samanom pilkom; kiekviena siena \u2013 pergamentas, kiekvienas akmuo \u2013 \u0161ventas ra\u0161tas, i\u0161d\u0117lioti m\u012fslingai ir praskleisti nak\u010dia; vert\u0117 Alfonsas Bukontas). Bet toliau poemoje Kulbakas ir patvirtino, ir u\u017egin\u010dijo praeit\u012f, siekdamas \u012fteisinti nauj\u0105 \u017eydi\u0161k\u0105j\u012f Vilni\u0173 kaip \u017emoni\u0173, kalb\u0173 ir miesto erdvi\u0173 lydin\u012f: Un Yidish iz der proster krantz fun dembenbleter, oyf di arayngangen di heylig-vokhige fun shtot <\/em>(Ir jidi\u0161 kalba \u2013 \u0105\u017euolo lap\u0173 vainikas ant \u0161venti\u0161kai kasdieni\u0173 vart\u0173 miestan; vert\u0117 Alfonsas Bukontas). Vilni\u0173 dabar apibr\u0117\u017e\u0117 jidi\u0161 kalba; kasdienyb\u0119 ir rutin\u0105 pats miestas perkeit\u0117 \u012f ka\u017ek\u0105 auk\u0161tesnio ir geresnio.<\/p>\n

Esminis klausimas yra, kod\u0117l \u0161iuolaikin\u0117s \u017eyd\u0173 kult\u016bros istorijoje Vilnius buvo toks svarbus neproporcingai savo \u201esvorio kategorijai\u201c, arba, pasinaudojant Vainraicho fraze, tur\u0117jo vietos dvasi\u0105. \u017dinoma, galima b\u016bt\u0173 manyti, kad Weinreichas apgaudin\u0117jo save (juk tas pats \u017emogus 1939 m. skatino Lucy Dawidowicz pasilikti dar vieniems metams studijuoti YIVO ir d\u017eiugiai planavo 1940-\u0173j\u0173 pasaulin\u0119 YIVO konferencij\u0105). O gal \u017einodamas, kad ra\u0161o \u012f JAV emigravusi\u0173 Vilniaus t\u0117vynaini\u0173 (landslayt<\/em>) auditorijai, jis ty\u010dia truput\u012f pagra\u017eino situacij\u0105, tik\u0117damasis surinkti paramos, kurios bendruomenei mirtinai reik\u0117jo. Vainraichui bera\u0161ant \u0161iuos \u017eod\u017eius Vilnius buvo gana vargingas miestas, o jame gyveno tik 55\u00a0000 \u017eyd\u0173 \u2013 viso labo \u0161e\u0161tadalis Var\u0161uvoje gyvenusi\u0173 \u017eyd\u0173 kiekio. Vilniaus jidi\u0161 spauda ir teatras negal\u0117jo var\u017eytis su Var\u0161uva ar Niujorku \u2013 tai tebuvo i\u0161didi litvak\u0173 sostin\u0117, ma\u010diusi geresni\u0173 laik\u0173. O tarpukariu \u012fsisteigusios naujos politin\u0117s sienos skald\u0117 tai, k\u0105 vienas pranc\u016bz\u0173 mokslininkas pavadino la Litvaquie<\/em> \u2013 did\u017ei\u0105j\u0105 litvak\u0173 teritorijos \u0161erd\u012f.<\/p>\n

Bet prie\u0161 kaltindami Vainraich\u0105 litvaki\u0161ka didyb\u0117s manija arba pernelyg intensyviu propagavimu, prisiminkime, kad apie Vilniaus i\u0161kilum\u0105 kalb\u0117jo ne jis vienas. Garsiausio Vilniaus dienra\u0161\u010dio jidi\u0161 kalba Der Tog<\/em> (Diena) redaktorius Zalmenas Reizenas pavadino Vilni\u0173 \u017eydi\u0161kojo vie\u0161ojo gyvenimo (gezelshaftlikhkayt<\/em>) t\u0117vyne. 1937-aisiais vienas Vilniaus \u017eyd\u0173 bendruomen\u0117s lyderi\u0173, garsus advokatas Josefas \u010cernichovas parei\u0161k\u0117, kad Vilnius yra \u0161i\u0173 laik\u0173 Javn\u0117, kur Jochananas ben Zakajus po Antrosios \u0161ventyklos sugriovimo \u012fsteig\u0117 je\u0161iv\u0105 ir u\u017etikrino \u017eyd\u0173 tautos t\u0119stinum\u0105. Vilniaus privalumai neretai buvo i\u0161ry\u0161kinami per kontrast\u0105 su Var\u0161uva. Vilniuje buv\u0119 daugiau tautinio pasidid\u017eiavimo ir savigarbos. Socialinius ir kult\u016brinius skirtumus, d\u0117l kuri\u0173 Var\u0161uva tapo \u012fvairi\u0173 \u017eydi\u0161k\u0173 pasauli\u0173 (lenki\u0161kai kalban\u010di\u0173j\u0173, chasid\u0173, migrant\u0173 litvak\u0173) mozaika, Vilniuje \u0161velnino didesnis solidarumas ir kult\u016brinis homogeni\u0161kumas. Var\u0161uvos laikra\u0161tyje Literarishe Bleter<\/em> 1926 m. publikuotame straipsnyje ra\u0161ytojas Israelis Jo\u0161ua Zingeris ar\u0161iai gyn\u0117 Vilniaus privalumus, lygindamas j\u012f su Var\u0161uva. Zingeris ra\u0161\u0117, kad tiek Vilni\u0173, tiek Var\u0161uv\u0105 \u0161imtmet\u012f vald\u0117 rusai. Bet \u017eydi\u0161kasis Vilnius sugeb\u0117jo pasiimti geriausius rus\u0173 kult\u016bros bruo\u017eus: idealizm\u0105 ir pasiry\u017eim\u0105 dirbti d\u0117l bendruomen\u0117s. O \u017eydi\u0161koji Var\u0161uva pasi\u0117m\u0117 kas blogiausia rusi\u0161koje kult\u016broje: mies\u010dioni\u0161k\u0105 ga\u0161lum\u0105, savanaudi\u0161kum\u0105, materializm\u0105 ir korupcij\u0105. Vilnius, o ne Var\u0161uva \u2013 padar\u0117 i\u0161vad\u0105 Zingeris \u2013 buvo pasaulio jidi\u0161 kult\u016bros centras.<\/p>\n

\u017dinoma, tie, kurie laik\u0117 Vilni\u0173 kelrod\u017eiu ir moraliniu kompasu, palaik\u0117 ir \u012fvair\u0173 diaspor\u0173 nacionalizm\u0105, kair\u012fj\u012f jidi\u0161izm\u0105 ar tiesiog doikayt <\/em>(\u201ebuvim\u0105 \u010dia\u201c). Doikayt<\/em> reik\u0117jo kompaso \u017eymen\u0173, ta\u0161k\u0173, kur i\u0161tikt\u0173 \u012fkv\u0117pimas. O \u201eJidi\u0161landui\u201c, b\u016btinai reik\u0117jo sostin\u0117s, kurios vaidmens atlikti Var\u0161uva negal\u0117jo. Bet tarpukariu Vilniui ditirambus giedojo ne tik sekuliar\u016bs jidi\u0161istai. Sionist\u0173 lyderis dr. Yankevas Vygodskis \u017ei\u016br\u0117jo \u012f Vilni\u0173 \u2013 \u012f jo i\u0161did\u0173 \u017eydi\u0161kum\u0105 ir pasiry\u017eim\u0105 kovoti u\u017e \u017eyd\u0173 teises \u2013 kaip \u012f moralin\u012f model\u012f visiems Lenkijos \u017eydams.<\/p>\n

Netgi tie, kurie atsi\u017ead\u0117jo savo ankstesnio susi\u017eav\u0117jimo sekuliariuoju doikayt<\/em>, kritikavo tuo pat metu girdami. Vienas pavyzd\u017ei\u0173 \u2013 Zeligas Kalmanovi\u010dius, YIVO lyderis, kuris 4-ojo de\u0161imtme\u010dio pabaigoje \u0117m\u0117 kvestionuoti savo ilgamet\u012f pasi\u0161ventim\u0105 sekuliariam jidi\u0161izmui ir gr\u0119\u017etis atgal prie Tora ir sionizmu paremto \u017eydi\u0161kumo. Vilniaus gete ra\u0161ytame dienora\u0161tyje 1942-\u0173j\u0173 liepos 19-\u0105j\u0105 Kalmanovi\u010dius svarst\u0117: \u201eGalb\u016bt Dievas, nusprend\u0119s sunaikinti \u017eydi\u0161k\u0105j\u012f Vilni\u0173, tur\u0117jo tiksl\u0105 pagreitinti atpirkim\u0105, persp\u0117ti tuos, kuriuos dar galima persp\u0117ti, pasakyti jiems, kad diasporoje n\u0117ra jokios vilties. \u017dydi\u0161kasis Vilnius buvo pavyzdinis \u017eyd\u0173 bendruomenei su savo unikalia kult\u016bra. O dabar goles yidishkayt<\/em> (\u017eydi\u0161kosios diasporos) \u0161ventykla yra sugriauta, am\u017eiams sunaikinta… Nereik\u0117jo n\u0117 dabartinio khurbn<\/em> (sunaikinimo), kad b\u016bt\u0173 galima nusp\u0117ti \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus pra\u017e\u016bt\u012f.\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201eGoles yidishkayt<\/em> \u0161ventykla\u201c. Nereikia n\u0117 sakyti, kad Kalmanovi\u010diui goles yidishkayt<\/em> rei\u0161kia ne tik YIVO propaguorjam\u0105 sekuliar\u0173 doikayt<\/em>. \u010cia telpa ir Chaimo Oizerio Grodzenskio ortodoksinis Vilnius, ir sionistinis Vilnius, kuriam priklaus\u0117 Yankevas Vygodskis ir tokie hebraji\u0161kojo mokykl\u0173 tinklo absolventai, kaip Aba Kovneris ir Izaokas Cuckermanas, v\u0117liau \u2013 gars\u016bs \u017eyd\u0173 rezistencijos lyderiai. Bet Kalmanovi\u010diaus mintis ai\u0161ki. Jei kuri nors \u017eyd\u0173 bendruomen\u0117 gal\u0117jo \u012frodyti, jog diasporoje \u017eydai gali gyventi i\u0161did\u017eiai, tur\u0117ti savipakankam\u0105 kult\u016brin\u012f gyvenim\u0105, tai ta bendruomen\u0117 buvo Vilniaus. Ir \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus sunaikinimas, ra\u0161\u0117 Kalmanovi\u010dius, atskleid\u0117 \u0161ios iliuzijos pabaig\u0105.<\/p>\n

Kaip jau min\u0117ta, itin svarbus \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus bruo\u017eas tarpukariu buvo k\u016brybingas kolektyvin\u0117s atminties \u012fveiklinimas. Auk\u0161\u010diau pacituota Kulbako poema yra tik vienas i\u0161 pavyzd\u017ei\u0173. Tame pa\u010diame 1935 m. rinkinyje, kuriame publikuotas Vainraicho straipsnis, jidi\u0161 literat\u016bros kritikas \u0160muelis Nigeris persak\u0117 Vilniuje gerai \u017einom\u0105 istorij\u0105, kur vaikai b\u0117gdami paskui gaon\u0105 \u0161auk\u0117: \u201eVilniaus Gaonas! Vilniaus Gaonas!\u201d. Gaonas neva atsigr\u0119\u017e\u0119s \u012f juos ir tar\u0119s: \u201eVil nor vest oykh zayn a goen<\/em>\u201c (\u201eJei tik panor\u0117si, tu irgi gali b\u016bti gaonas\u201c \u2013 \u017eod\u017ei\u0173 \u017eaismas, nes Vil nor<\/em> buvo vartojamas ir kaip neformalus Vilniaus pavadinimas). Straipsnyje buvo pasinaudota \u0161iais Gaono \u017eod\u017eiais, norint \u012fteisinti sekuliaraus Vilniaus vaizd\u0105, susijus\u012f su valia, ry\u017etu ir nuolatin\u0117mis pastangomis (Gaonas d\u0117l to tikriausiai vart\u0117si kape). Vil nor<\/em> apjung\u0117 dialektin\u0119 \u012ftamp\u0105 tarp Vilniaus kaip \u017eydi\u0161kosios kult\u016brin\u0117s Mekos vaizdinio ir jo pasibais\u0117tino skurdo \u2013 \u0161i\u0105 \u012ftamp\u0105, beje, pasteb\u0117jo ir \u0160muelis Verses savo v\u0117lyvajame straipsnyje apie Vilniaus paveiksl\u0105 XIX am\u017eiaus \u017eyd\u0173 \u0161viet\u0117ji\u0161koje literat\u016broje. Ir, kaip pasteb\u0117jo daktaras Cemachas \u0160abadas, b\u016btent d\u0117l Vilniaus skurdumo jo kult\u016briniai pasiekimai ir buvo tokie heroji\u0161ki.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Ne vienas komentatorius atkreip\u0117 d\u0117mes\u012f \u012f erdvi\u0105 kolektyvin\u0119 atmint\u012f, kurioje pakako vietos tiek Vilniaus Gaonui, tiek Hir\u0161ui Lekertui, pirmajam Bundo kankiniui \u2013 herojui. Kitas kolektyvin\u0117s Vilniaus atminties ramstis buvo Ger-Cedeko<\/em> (kitatikis, nuo\u0161ird\u017eiai patik\u0117j\u0119s judaizmo tiesomis ir atsivert\u0119s) legenda. Valentinas Potockis buvo lenk\u0173 bajoras, kuris 1740-aisiais atsivert\u0117 \u012f judaizm\u0105 ir u\u017e tai buvo sudegintas ant stulpo (nors kai kurie tyr\u0117jai, pavyzd\u017eiui, Magda Teter, abejoja, ar taip i\u0161ties \u012fvyko). Dr\u0105sus \u017eydas v\u0117liau neva slapta surink\u0119s sudeginto Ger-Cedeko pelenus ir palaidoj\u0119s juos \u017eyd\u0173 kapin\u0117se. Po keli\u0173 de\u0161imtme\u010di\u0173 greta buvo palaidotas Vilniaus Gaonas. \u0160alia abiej\u0173 kap\u0173 i\u0161aug\u0119s did\u017eiulis medis, kurio \u0161akos primin\u0117 i\u0161tiestas \u017emogaus rankas. \u017dydai prie to med\u017eio ateidav\u0119 pasimelsti. Legenda bylojo, kad kol tas medis augs, tol Vilniaus \u017eydai i\u0161liks. Vilniaus gete Hermano Kruko ra\u0161ytame dienora\u0161tyje apra\u0161ytas pirmasis Vilniaus Judenrato susirinkimas. Vilniaus \u017eydai \u0161imtme\u010diais tik\u0117jo, jog d\u0117l Vilniaus Gaono ir Ger Tzedeko zchus<\/em> (nuopeln\u0173) Vilniaus bus pasigail\u0117ta \u2013 tokiais \u017eod\u017eiais 1941-\u0173j\u0173 liepos 4-\u0105j\u0105 daktaras Ger\u0161uni atidar\u0117 susirinkim\u0105. Ta\u010diau v\u0117liau paai\u0161k\u0117jo, kad m\u016bs\u0173 s\u0117km\u0117 pasiek\u0117 pabaig\u0105 (tarp kitko, 1935-aisiais med\u012f nukirto lenk\u0173 chuliganai).<\/p>\n

Ne tik \u017emon\u0117s, bet ir konkre\u010dios vietos k\u016br\u0117 kolektyvin\u0119 \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus atmint\u012f. Didingiausia vieta buvo sinagog\u0173 kiemas, shulhoyf<\/em>, kur Did\u017ei\u0105j\u0105 sinagog\u0105 supo de\u0161imtys senesni\u0173j\u0173.<\/p>\n

Apie \u0161i\u0105 sen\u0105j\u0105 sinagog\u0105 \u017eydai tur\u0117jo daugyb\u0119 legend\u0173. Kai \u017eydai pabaig\u0117 j\u0105 statyti, at\u0117jo karaimai ir pasak\u0117: \u201eEi, tai mes esame tikrieji \u017eydai, ne j\u016bs. Taigi sinagoga priklauso mums!\u201c \u017dydai juos pavar\u0117, ir galiausiai abi konfliktuojan\u010dios pus\u0117s tur\u0117jo eiti \u012f lenk\u0173 vaivadij\u0105 ai\u0161kintis, kam priklausys sinagoga. At\u0117j\u0119 pas lenkus karaimai nusiav\u0117 batus ir paliko juos prieangyje. O su karaimais gin\u010dytis buvo at\u0117j\u0119s protingas \u017eydas: jis irgi nusiav\u0117 batus, bet u\u017euot palik\u0119s juos prieangyje, jis \u0117jo vidun pasikabin\u0119s batus ant kaklo. Karaimai paklaus\u0117: \u201eKod\u0117l tu vidun ne\u0161iosi batus?\u201c \u017dydas atsak\u0117: \u201e\u017dinote, kai Moz\u0117 lipo \u012f Sinajaus kaln\u0105 atsine\u0161ti Toros, batus jis buvo palik\u0119s kalno pap\u0117d\u0117je. Ir ka\u017ekoks karaimas at\u0117j\u0119s pavog\u0117 jo batus. U\u017etat ir bijau: jei paliksiu batus prieangyje, juos pavogs karaimai!\u201c Karaimai \u0117m\u0117 juoktis: \u201eK\u0105 \u010dia \u0161neki, kvaily, kai Moz\u0117 lipo \u012f Sinajaus kaln\u0105, dar nebuvo karaim\u0173!\u201c. Tada protingasis Vilniaus \u017eydas tar\u0117 lenk\u0173 valdininkui: \u201eMatot? Jei tai tiesa, tai kaip karaimai gali sakytis esantys tikrieji \u017eydai?\u201c. Ir taip shtot shul<\/em> \u2013 Did\u017eioji sinagoga \u2013 liko \u017eydams.<\/p>\n

Sionist\u0173 lyderis \u0160marja Levinas savo memuaruose ra\u0161\u0117: \u201eTame senoviniame kieme gal\u0117jau klaid\u017eioti valand\u0173 valandas… \u012esivaizduoju, kad pana\u0161us jausmas u\u017epl\u016bsta jautresn\u012f brit\u0105 beklaid\u017eiojant tarp Oksfordo koled\u017e\u0173 ir arkad\u0173. Vilniaus sinagogos kiemas tremtyje esantiems buvo tarsi Oksfordas, o jo studijos \u2013 tarsi koled\u017eai.\u201c<\/p>\n

Prie shulhoyf<\/em> glaud\u0117si Stra\u0161uno biblioteka \u2013 priminimas, kad Vilnius, skirtingai negu Var\u0161uva, buvo svarbus Haskalos centras. Vilniaus maskilis Matas Stra\u0161unas \u012fsteig\u0117 bibliotek\u0105 su 7000 knyg\u0173, o tarpukariu bibliotekoje buvo saugomos net 40\u00a0000 knyg\u0173. O YIVO ir Mefitsei Haskala<\/em> bibliotekose buvo viena did\u017eiausi\u0173 pasaulyje judaikos kolekcij\u0173 (kuri\u0105 spar\u010diai i\u0161pl\u0117\u0161\u0117 naci\u0173 mokslininkai).<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\u012edomioje es\u0117 apie tarpukario Vilni\u0173 Michaelis Asturas \u012f\u017evalgiai pasteb\u0117jo, kad vienas svarbiausi\u0173 dalyk\u0173 norint suprasti Vilniaus viet\u0105 \u0161iuolaikiniame \u017eyd\u0173 gyvenime \u2013 prisiminti, kad jis paneig\u0117 pla\u010diai \u012fsitvirtinusi\u0105 nuomon\u0119, kad Haskala nusilpo ir baig\u0117si XX am\u017eiaus prad\u017eioje. Tarpukario Vilniuje Haskalos principai buvo pritaikomi prakti\u0161kai, suteikiant \u017eydams galimybes patiems nuspr\u0119sti, kaip savo \u017eydi\u0161kum\u0105 suderinti su modernia Europos kult\u016bra.<\/p>\n

Jei senasis shul hoyf<\/em> bylojo \u017eydams apie Vilniaus praeit\u012f, tai naujas ir erdvus YIVO pastatas pirmin\u0117 apie nauj\u0105 Vilniaus vaidmen\u012f \u2013 \u012fsivaizduojamo pasaulio, \u201eJidi\u0161lando\u201c, sostin\u0117s.<\/p>\n

Skirtingos Vilniaus \u017eyd\u0173 politin\u0117s frakcijos ar\u0161iai kov\u0117si tarpusavyje, bet visos buvo \u012fsipareigojusios pilietinei kult\u016brai, paremtai visiems bendra kalba \u2013 jidi\u0161. Vilnius buvo vienas i\u0161 nedaugelio \u017eydi\u0161k\u0173j\u0173 Europos miest\u0173, kur vie\u0161oji sfera k\u016br\u0117si ant jidi\u0161 pagrindo.<\/p>\n

Jidi\u0161 buvo ne tik \u017eydi\u0161kojo vie\u0161ojo gyvenimo kalba. Ji buvo ir pasidid\u017eiavimo \u0161altinis. Vienas sve\u010dias i\u0161 Krokuvos buvo nustebintas pasivaik\u0161\u010diojimo po Vilniaus pilies kaln\u0105 su did\u017eiuoju poetu Mo\u0161e Kulbaku ir keletu jo mokini\u0173 i\u0161 \u017dyd\u0173 realin\u0117s gimnazijos. Sve\u010dias prastai kalb\u0117jo jidi\u0161, tod\u0117l visa grup\u0117 \u0161nek\u0117josi lenk\u0173 kalba. Ta\u010diau kai prie j\u0173 pri\u0117jo keletas lenk\u0173, Kulbakas ir jo studentai parei\u0161k\u0117, kad jiems nesmagu girdint lenkams \u0161nek\u0117ti lenki\u0161kai, ir i\u0161syk \u0117m\u0117 kalb\u0117ti jidi\u0161. Nustebintas sve\u010dias paman\u0117, kad Krokuvos \u017eydai b\u016bt\u0173 pasielg\u0119 prie\u0161ingai \u2013 \u0161alia lenk\u0173 \u0117m\u0119 \u0161nek\u0117ti lenki\u0161kai. 4-ojo de\u0161imtme\u010dio pabaigoje YIVO absolventas i\u0161 Var\u0161uvos pasteb\u0117jo, kad atvyk\u0119s \u012f Vilni\u0173 pirm\u0105kart pamat\u0117 vidurin\u0117s klas\u0117s \u017eydus ir inteligentus vartojant jidi\u0161 kalb\u0105.<\/p>\n

Tuo metu Nachumas \u0160tifas laikra\u0161tyje Vilner Tog<\/em> teig\u0117, kad jidi\u0161 kalb\u0105 k\u016briniuose naudoj\u0119s garsusis ra\u0161ytojas Perecas ra\u0161\u0117 Var\u0161uvoje, bet skait\u0117 j\u012f Vilniuje. Zalmenas Reizenas skatino Vilni\u0173 imtis iniciatyvos \u012fgyvendinant Pereco sukurt\u0105 naujojo yidishkayt<\/em> vizij\u0105, kuri apjungt\u0173 \u017eyd\u0173 tradicijas su europieti\u0161ku humanizmu. Boriso Kleckino leidykla tapo did\u017eiausia jidi\u0161 knyg\u0173 leidykla, o didel\u0119 jos leid\u017eiam\u0173 knyg\u0173 dal\u012f sudar\u0117 u\u017esienio literat\u016bros vertimai \u012f jidi\u0161. Jidi\u0161 buvo susijusi ne vien su \u017eydi\u0161kumu \u2013 ypa\u010d Vilniuje \u2013 ji ved\u0117 ir pasaulio literat\u016bros, teatro ir muzikos link.<\/p>\n

Tarpukariu Vilnius tapo centru \u012fsp\u016bdingo \u017eyd\u0173 istoriografjos projekto, kuris prasid\u0117jo 1915 m. ir kur\u012f v\u0117liau nutrauk\u0117 karas. Nors \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus istorija jau buvo tyrin\u0117ta \u2013 \u0160muelio Fino knygoje Kirya Neemana<\/em> ir Hilelio Noacho arba Nojaus Magido–<\/em>\u0160tein\u0161neiderio knygoje Ir Vilna<\/em> \u2013 po 1915 m. jau buvo leid\u017eiami visai kitokie darbai. Daugiausia tai buvo kolektyvin\u0117s studijos. Vien keleto j\u0173 pamin\u0117jimas primena, kad Vilniuje vyko tai, ko net neband\u0117 n\u0117 viena kita pasaulio \u017eyd\u0173 bendruomen\u0117: buvo perm\u0105stoma pati bendros istorijos id\u0117ja, ra\u0161oma apie save realiuoju laiku, tradicin\u0117s \u012fvyki\u0173 kronikos akiratis praple\u010diamas tiek, kad apimt\u0173 ir nauj\u0105j\u0105 \u017eyd\u0173 tikrov\u0119. 1916 ir 1918 m. i\u0161leisti du Vilna Zamlbikher<\/em> (Vilniaus rinktin\u0117) tomai, sudaryti dr. Cemacho \u0160abado. 1922 m. \u2013 daugiau nei 1000 puslapi\u0173 I Pasaulinio karo kronikos, sudarytos Zalmeno Reizeno ir to paties \u0160abado. 1924 m. \u2013 \u017eyd\u0173 mokykl\u0173 kronika. 1931 m. \u2013 Mo\u0161e \u0160alito sudaryta daugiau nei 1000 puslapi\u0173 kronika apie svarbi\u0105 pagalbos organizacij\u0105 EKOPO. 1935 \u2013 daugiau nei 1000 puslapi\u0173 knyga Vilna<\/em>, sudaryta Jefimo Jeshurino, kur yra ir min\u0117tas Vainraicho straipsnis. 1939 m. i\u0161leid\u017eiamos dvi reik\u0161mingos knygos: A. I. Grodzenskio sudarytas Vilner Almanach<\/em> ir turisitinis gidas po Vilni\u0173 ir jo apylinkes, kur\u012f para\u0161\u0117 Zalmenas \u0160ykas, o knygos i\u0161leidim\u0105 par\u0117m\u0117 kra\u0161totyros draugija. Nors antras \u0161ios esmin\u0117s knygos tomas taip ir nepasirod\u0117, jau vien pirmasis buvo pakankamai reik\u0161mingas. \u0160is turistinis gidas skiria daug d\u0117mesio Vilniaus vietai lenki\u0161koje, lietuvi\u0161koje ir baltarusi\u0161koje kult\u016broje, skirtingai negu lenki\u0161ki gidai, menkinantys \u017eydi\u0161k\u0105j\u012f ind\u0117l\u012f.<\/p>\n

\u0160i naujoji Vilniaus \u017eyd\u0173 istoriografija buvo kolektyvini\u0173 pastang\u0173 rezultatas, kurios suvienijo politinius prie\u0161ininkus. Sekant Simono Dubnovo, \u0160. Anskio ir I. L. Pereco p\u0117domis, \u0161iuose tekstuose \u012fk\u016bnytas politinis ir kult\u016brinis zamling<\/em> (surinkimo) poreikis, poreikis dokumentuoti vis\u0105 \u017eydi\u0161kojo gyvenimo \u012fvairov\u0119. \u0160ie daugyb\u0119 tem\u0173 apimantys t\u016bkstan\u010diai puslapi\u0173 buvo tam tikras did\u017eiulis kol bo,<\/em> talpus almanachas, kuriuo buvo perduodama \u017einia, kad Vilniuje beu\u017egimstantis naujas \u017eydi\u0161kas pasaulis \u2013 mokyklos, sporto klubai, bibliotekos \u2013 buvo pernelyg \u012fvairus, pernelyg tebesikuriantis, kad tilpt\u0173 \u012f siauros ideologijos Prokrusto lov\u0105. \u017dinoma, veik\u0117 ideologijos ir \u012fvairiausios partijos. Jos suteik\u0117 vilties ir pasiry\u017eimo nugal\u0117ti visas kli\u016btis. Ta\u010diau jos tebuvo viena monetos pus\u0117. Kita \u2013 pilietin\u0117 organizacij\u0173 visuomen\u0117, kur prie\u0161ininkai gal\u0117jo dirbti i\u0161vien. Tai ir tur\u0117jo omenyje Zalmenas Reizenas, kai Vilni\u0173 pavadino \u017eyd\u0173 gezelshaftlekhayt<\/em> centru. Gal tiesiog Vilniaus dydis buvo tinkamas susikurti tokiai pilietinei bendruomenei \u2013 pakankamai didelis, kad i\u0161laikyt\u0173 de\u0161imtis svarbi\u0173 institucij\u0173 ir inteligentij\u0105, bet pakankamai ma\u017eas, kad jame i\u0161likt\u0173 tam tikras socialinis s\u0105ry\u0161is, kurio nebuvo tokiame dideliame metropolyje, kaip Var\u0161uva.<\/p>\n

\u0160i pilietin\u0117 \u017eyd\u0173 bendruomen\u0117, vie\u0161ai naudojanti jidi\u0161 kalb\u0105, \u012fleido \u0161aknis neramiais I pasaulinio karo laikais ir tebesit\u0119siant jo pasekm\u0117ms. Tuo laikotarpiu estafet\u0119 per\u0117m\u0117 nauji lyderiai \u2013 tokie \u017emon\u0117s kaip dr. Cemachas \u0160abadas, dr. Yankevas Vygodskis, rabinas Izaokas Rubin\u0161teinas ir amatinink\u0173 atstovas Lazaras Krukas. Visi \u0161ie naujieji lyderiai patyr\u0117 karo i\u0161bandymus ir \u012fvairius \u017eiaurumus, kai apie 1922 metus Vilnius priklausydavo vis kitai valstybei \u2013 net septynis kartus. \u0160ie lyderiai Vilniuje prakent\u0117jo 1919 m. baland\u017eio 19-\u0105j\u0105, kuri\u0105 lenkai \u0161vent\u0117 kaip miesto i\u0161laisvinimo dien\u0105, o \u017eydai prisimin\u0117 kaip kruvin\u0105 pogrom\u0105, nusine\u0161us\u012f 55 aukas. Dauguma sen\u0173j\u0173 lyderi\u0173 1915 m. pab\u0117go i\u0161 miesto traukdamiesi su rus\u0173 armija, tarp j\u0173 \u2013 ir Tzedokah Gedolah,<\/em> religin\u0117s bendruomen\u0117s vadovyb\u0117s, vadovai ir pats Grodzenskis. Naujasis elitas pasiliko \u010dia, kad statyt\u0173 naujas mokyklas, gint\u0173 Vilniaus \u017eydus nuo okupacin\u0117s vokie\u010di\u0173 vald\u017eios ir \u012fsteigt\u0173 nauj\u0105 demokratin\u0119 bendruomen\u0119. B\u016btent \u0161is naujasis elitas bandys sukurti nauj\u0105 miesto \u012fvaizd\u012f, perra\u0161yti jo istorij\u0105, \u017eymias jo vietas \u012ftraukti \u012f landkentenish<\/em> (kra\u0161tovaizd\u017eio \u017eem\u0117lap\u012f) ir pilietiniu s\u0105moningumu paremt\u0105 kolektyvin\u0117s atminties projekt\u0105. Inteligentija \u2013 gydytojai, teisininkai, in\u017einieriai ir mokytojai \u2013 \u0161iame naujajame elite vaidino ypating\u0105 vaidmen\u012f. Jie jaut\u0117si apjungiantys paveld\u0117tas geriausias Lietuvos \u017eyd\u0173 tradicijas ir senosios rus\u0173 inteligentijos etos\u0105. Nors prie\u0161 I pasaulin\u012f kar\u0105 jie patyr\u0117 stipri\u0105 rusifikacij\u0105, \u0161ie \u017emon\u0117s suprato, kad i\u0161\u0117jus rus\u0173 vald\u017eiai litvak\u0173 visuomen\u0119 prival\u0117jo apvienyti jidi\u0161 kaip bendra \u017eydi\u0161kojo vie\u0161ojo gyvenimo kalba ir kaip \u017eydi\u0161kosios garb\u0117s \u017eenklas. Jidi\u0161 kalbantys sionistai ir folkistai \u0161iuo klausimu sutar\u0117. Per vis\u0105 tarpukar\u012f Vilni\u0173 lankantys atvyk\u0117liai i\u0161 Krokuvos ar Lvovo steb\u0117josi, kad \u010dia gydytojai ir teisininkai n\u0117 kiek nesig\u0117dindami kalb\u0117jo jidi\u0161.<\/p>\n

Tarp \u0161io naujojo elito nari\u0173 buvo ir moter\u0173. Didel\u012f vaidmen\u012f suvaidino \u017eymios labdar\u0117s Dvoir\u0117s Ester atminimo \u012fveiklinimas. Jokiame kitame Ryt\u0173 Europos \u017eyd\u0173 mieste moterys taip nesirei\u0161k\u0117 vie\u0161ajame gyvenime: Vita Levin vadovavo pavyzdinei sutrikusio vystymosi vaik\u0173 mokyklai, Anna Rosental buvo Bundo lyder\u0117, buvo i\u0161kili\u0173 mokytoj\u0173, toki\u0173 kaip Mira Ber\u0161tein, kuriai Avromas Suckeveris b\u016bdamas Viliaus gete dedikavo eil\u0117ra\u0161t\u012f.<\/p>\n

Visi \u0161ie \u017eydai inteligentai, vyrai ir moterys, k\u0117l\u0117 pagarb\u0105 kaip veikiantys, o ne tik m\u0105stantys. Jie patraukdavo vien savo asmenyb\u0117s j\u0117ga. Jie k\u016br\u0117 elgesio bei \u012fsitraukimo \u012f vie\u0161\u0105j\u012f gyvenim\u0105 modelius, kurie puikiai tiko Vilniaus \u017eydams. J\u0173 asmenyb\u0117s palaik\u0117 Vilniaus \u017eyd\u0173 kaip unikalios bendruomen\u0117s savivok\u0105.<\/p>\n

Vilnius suvoktas kaip miestas, turintis bendras taisykles ir elgesio normas, miestas, puosel\u0117j\u0119s \u017eyd\u0173 dorovin\u012f solidarum\u0105. Jau pra\u0117jus daug laiko po Holokausto \u017eyd\u0173 ra\u0161ytojas Avromas Karpinovi\u010dius i\u0161leido dvi trump\u0173 apsakym\u0173 knygas apie vilnie\u010di\u0173 gyvenim\u0105 tarpukariu. Viena \u0161i\u0173 istorij\u0173 \u2013 Nit far Vilne<\/em> (\u201eVilniuje taip nedaroma\u201c) pasakojo apie \u017eemiausiojo sluoksnio \u017eyd\u0173 gyvenim\u0105. Smole Dudke de\u0161imt met\u0173 ats\u0117d\u0117j\u0119s Sing Singo kal\u0117jime buvo deportuotas atgal \u012f Vilni\u0173. Gr\u012f\u017e\u0119s Smole sukvie\u010dia senuosius savo Vilniaus s\u0117brus: Elimelech der Chochem, Shmule der Izvozchik ir Esterke mit di briln. Jis si\u016blo jiems d\u0117l i\u0161pirkos pagrobti septynmet\u012f turtingo Vilniaus \u017eydo s\u016bn\u0173. Jie pagrobia vaik\u0105 ir prisako t\u0117vui palikti i\u0161pirk\u0105 gerai \u017einomoje \u017eydi\u0161ko Vilniaus vietoje \u2013 \u0161alia Ger-Cedeko<\/em> kapo senosiose \u017eyd\u0173 kapin\u0117se. Bet vilni\u0161kiai nusikalt\u0117liai i\u0161syk \u0117m\u0117 jausti mil\u017eini\u0161k\u0105 kalt\u0119. Vaik\u0105 pri\u017ei\u016br\u0117jusi Esterk\u0117 j\u012f gausiai primaitino ir prigird\u0117 kar\u0161to \u0161okolado, tada prisak\u0117 nevaik\u0161\u010dioti basomis, kad neper\u0161alt\u0173. Berniuko t\u0117vui nepavyko palikti i\u0161pirkos prie Ger-Cedeko<\/em> kapo, bet Esterk\u0117 vaik\u0105 vis tiek paleido. Smole Dudke \u012fsiuto, bet Vilniaus nusikalt\u0117liai palaik\u0117 Ester\u0105: \u201eGal taip priimta daryti Amerikoje,\u201c \u2013 pasak\u0117 jie Smolei, – \u201eAber dos iz nisht far Vilne!<\/em> Bet Vilniuje mes taip nedarome!\u201c<\/p>\n

\u0160i aktyvi erdv\u0117s ir atminties s\u0105veika t\u0119s\u0117si ir Vilniaus gete. Gete i\u0161populiar\u0117jusi daina Vilne shtot fun gayst un tmimes<\/em> (\u201eVilna \u2013 dvasingumo ir tyrumo miestas\u201c) i\u0161 tikr\u0173j\u0173 buvo sukurta prie\u0161 kar\u0105. Dar vienas Vilniaus praeities \u012fveiklinimo pavyzdys, \u0161\u012fsyk radikaliai kitokiame kontekste, buvo 1943 m. para\u0161ytas Avromo Suckeverio simbolinis eil\u0117ra\u0161tis \u201eRom\u0173 spaustuv\u0117s \u0161vino plok\u0161t\u0117s\u201c, kur pasakojama, kaip kovotojai panaudojo Rom\u0173 spaustuv\u0117s, leidusios Vilniaus Talmud\u0105, \u0161vino plok\u0161tes ir i\u0161lyd\u0119 pagamino i\u0161 j\u0173 kulkas. \u010cia paskutin\u0117s \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus akimirkos susijungia su atminties grandine, kurioje yra ir Jeruzal\u0117s \u0161ventykla, ir Babilono Talmudas. \u0160\u012f eil\u0117ra\u0161t\u012f galima perskaityti ir kitu reik\u0161mingu b\u016bdu: Vilniaus geto FPO (Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye<\/em>, Vilniaus geto \u017eyd\u0173 ginkluoto pasiprie\u0161inimo organizacija, kovojusi su naciais) negavo pakankamos geto gyventoj\u0173 paramos, kovotojai i\u0161 geto kraust\u0117si \u012f mi\u0161kus, \u017eydi\u0161kasis Vilnius buvo pasmerktas \u2013 jis liks gyvuoti tik poezijoje, ne tik kaip prisiminimas, bet kaip grandis gyvoje \u017eyd\u0173 istorijos grandin\u0117je.<\/p>\n

Kai \u017eydi\u0161kasis Vilnius buvo beveik visi\u0161kai sunaikintas, jo istorij\u0105 imta u\u017era\u0161in\u0117ti naujais b\u016bdais. Viena \u0161i\u0173 kryp\u010di\u0173 pasitelk\u0117 zamlbikher<\/em> sudarytoj\u0173 bei kit\u0173 sekuliari\u0173 istoriograf\u0173 tradicij\u0105. Garbingiausi\u0105 viet\u0105 \u010dia u\u017eima Leizerio Rano \u012fsp\u016bdinga trij\u0173 tom\u0173 iliustruota Vilniaus istorija, sudaryta i\u0161 dalies kaip atsakas tam, k\u0105 Ranas vadino \u201e\u017dydi\u0161kosios atminties Paneriais\u201c, t.y. soviet\u0173 bandym\u0105 pa\u0161alinti bet kok\u012f \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus prisiminim\u0105.<\/p>\n

Dar vienos krypties \u0117m\u0117si akademikai ir profesional\u016bs istorikai mokslininkai. N\u0117ra ko steb\u0117tis, kad pastarojo meto Vilniaus istoriografija ypa\u010d pasi\u017eymi fiksuojant minties istorij\u0105 pla\u010diausia prasme: ne tik knygas ir id\u0117jas, bet ir j\u0173 socialin\u012f kontekst\u0105. \u010cia galima pamin\u0117ti Imanuelio Etkeso ir Eliyahu Sterno darb\u0105 apie Vilniaus Gaon\u0105, Mordecajaus Zalkino Vilniaus Haskalos ypatingo socialinio konteksto rekonstrukcij\u0105, Cecile Kuznitz ir Kamilio Kajeko studijas apie YIVO, Andrew Kosso disertacij\u0105 apie Vilniaus poky\u010dius I Pasaulinio karo metu, Joannos Lisek tyrim\u0105 apie grup\u0119 Jung Vilne<\/em>, Dovido Katzo \u2013 apie litvak\u0173 jidi\u0161 kalb\u0105 ir kult\u016br\u0105.<\/p>\n

Dar vienas svarbus pokytis buvo paremtas \u010ceslovo Milo\u0161o ir Tomo Venclovos tekstais \u2013 tai gil\u016bs apm\u0105stymai apie daugiataut\u012f Vilni\u0173. \u0160ios tendencijos pavyzdys \u2013 neseniai i\u0161leistas Theodoro Weekso tyrimas \u201eVilnius: Between the Nations<\/em>\u201c. Nor\u0117\u010diau pridurti, kad, nors ra\u0161ant \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus istorij\u0105 reik\u0117jo mok\u0117ti daug kalb\u0173, iki 1990-\u0173j\u0173 galima buvo nesunkiai apsieiti be lietuvi\u0173 kalbos. Bet ateityje taip nebebus. Naujoji lietuvi\u0161ka \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus istoriografija, kuri\u0105 Jurgita Verbickien\u0117 vadina naujai i\u0161mokta atmintimi, tikiuosi, ateityje duos reik\u0161ming\u0173 rezultat\u0173.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Itin svarbi knyga apie Vilni\u0173, mano nuomone, yra Annos Lipphard \u201eVilne. Die Juden aus Vilnius nach dem Holocaust. Eine transnationale beziehungsgeschichte<\/em>\u201c. \u0160i knyga \u012fsp\u016bdinga d\u0117l pa\u010dios savo apimties ir d\u0117l nepaprastai a\u0161traus Lipphart susitelkimo ties atmintimi ir reprezentacija, grupi\u0173 Nusekh Vilne<\/em> veikla JAV ir Beit Vilne<\/em> \u2013 Izraelyje, ties bandymais sovietme\u010diu i\u0161trinti \u017eydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus p\u0117dsakus ir kaip situacija vyst\u0117si po 1991 m. Autor\u0117 tyrin\u0117ja, kod\u0117l \u0161is gan\u0117tinai ma\u017eas miestas buvo toks svarbus.<\/p>\n

Ji pamini \u017eymi\u0105 Hir\u0161o Gliko sukurt\u0105 dain\u0105 Zog not keynmol az du geyst dem letstn veg<\/em> (\u201eNiekuomet nesakyk, kad \u017eengi paskutinius \u017eingsnius\u201c). \u0160i daina spar\u010diai i\u0161populiar\u0117jo ir prasid\u0117jus karui tapo \u017eyd\u0173 pasiprie\u0161inimo naciams simboliu. Daug kas j\u0105 klaidingai siejo su Var\u0161uvos geto sukilimu.<\/p>\n

7-ojo de\u0161imtme\u010dio pabaigoje Var\u0161uvoje i\u0161leistoje knygoje literat\u016bros kritikas \u0160loyme Belis apie \u0161i\u0105 dain\u0105 ra\u0161\u0117:<\/p>\n

\u201eNejaugi ne simboli\u0161ka? Var\u0161uva kovojo, Vilnius suteik\u0117 dain\u0105. Argi tai neatspindi visos \u0161i\u0173 dviej\u0173 did\u017ei\u0173 \u017eydi\u0161k\u0173 centr\u0173 istorijos? (…) Var\u0161uvai viet\u0105 (Ryt\u0173 Europos \u017eyd\u0173 istorijoje) u\u017etikrino jos kiekyb\u0117 ir kokyb\u0117. (…) D\u0117l mil\u017eini\u0161kos \u017eyd\u0173 populiacijos ji pirmavo visame \u017eydi\u0161kame pasaulyje. (…) Vilnius buvo id\u0117j\u0173 lop\u0161ys, kolektyvin\u0117s k\u016brybos \u017eidinys, jame susik\u016br\u0117 jud\u0117jimai, kurie v\u0117liau pasklido ir suklest\u0117jo kitur.\u201c<\/p>\n

Belis mums dar syk\u012f primena, kad nor\u0117dami i\u0161 ties\u0173 suprasti Ryt\u0173 Europos \u017eyd\u0173 istorij\u0105 ypa\u010d privalome atsi\u017evelgti \u012f regionus ir miestus ir itin daug d\u0117mesio skirti tokiems miestams, kuri\u0173 vaidmuo \u017eyd\u0173 vaizduot\u0117je buvo didesnis negu jie patys.<\/p>\n

(vert\u0117 Migl\u0117 Anu\u0161auskait\u0117)<\/p>\n

\"kassow2\"<\/p>\n

EN:<\/p>\n

In 1935, in an article written for a massive Yiddish language almanac on Vilna published in New York Max Weinreich, the longtime director of the YIVO, the Yiddish Scientific Institute, tried to explain why the YIVO had made its home in impoverished Vilna rather than in richer cities like New York or Berlin. The answer, Weinreich explained, was that Vilna had something other cities lacked: \u201cgenius of place\u201d, the intersection of urban space and memory, of regional identity and a gorgeous natural setting, of Jewish pride in the Jerusalem of Lithuania and a keen awareness of the other peoples who lived in Vilnius, Wilno and Vilnya.<\/p>\n

Genius of place, Weinreich stressed, integrated past and present. \u00a0Jews could build a better future only if they did not forget the past. Jewish culture that repudiated the past, Weinreich warned, promised only sterility and failure. The example of the neighboring Soviet Union was more than implicit.<\/p>\n

Weinreich\u2019s term \u201cgenius of place\u201d anticipated what Barbara Mann calls today the \u201cspatial turn\u201d in modern Jewish studies points to aspects of what German scholars call heimatsgeschichte<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Jews were a people not only of texts but also of places, and Jewish space and geography often differed strikingly from those non Jewish counterparts: The Jewish Ger and Kotsk were different form the Polish Gora Kalwaleria and Kock, Lodz was not the same as Lodz, Kuzmir was quite different from Kazimierz Dolny. Again, I quote Weinreich, from a later post war writing: \u201cEven the geographic map of Jewishness is unique. Ashkenaz II is seemingly identical with eastern Europe, but Vilna, thanks to the Gaon, the Maskilim of the nineteenth century, and the builders of Yiddish of the twentieth century, will have to figure on the map in larger letters than Vilnius, Viljn’a, Wilno on a non-Jewish map.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexandra Nocke points out in the introduction to her book Jewish Topographies there is a complex relationship between place as interpreted by texts and lived space and place, as something that is in a constant process of development. This fusion of tradition and modernity was epitomized by the physical layout of Jewish Vilna, by the creative tension between three rings of Jewish settlement in Vilna:\u00a0 the old Jewish section, the more modern 19th<\/sup> century districts that housed the Jewish professional and middle classes, and then the shtetl like neighborhoods that ringed the city. Distances, social and spatial, were less than Warsaw or Lodz.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

And Jewish Vilna between the wars saw a fascinating interplay between space read and space lived: of a constant instrumentalization of collective memory.<\/p>\n

Indeed, consider the most famous poem about interwar Vilna, Moshe Kulbaks’s Vilne, written in 1926. Kulbak saw Vilna as a crucible that transformed memory and tradition into a new secular Jewishness. Vilna was an amulet etched in Lithuania, each stone of her old streets was a holy book (du bist a tunkele kmie ayngefast in Lite farshribn gro un alt arum mit mokh un mit leshayes. A sefer iz ayeder shteyn, a parmet yede vant tsebeltern soydesdik un oyfgeefnt in der nakht<\/em>; you are a dark amulet set in Lithuanias, each stone a holy book, parchment every wall). But later in this poem Kulbak affirmed and contested the past in order to legitimize a new Jewish Vilna as a fusion of people, language and urban space:\u00a0 Un Yidish iz der proster krantz fun dembenbleter, oyf di arayngangen di heylig-vokhige fun shtot<\/em>, \u201cYiddish is the homely crown of oak leaves, over the gates, sacred and profane into the city\u201d. Vilna was now defined by its Yiddish speech; the city itself transformed what had been profane and routine into a something higher and better.<\/p>\n

A key question is why, in modern Jewish cultural history, Vilna \u201cpunched so much above its weight\u201d or, per Weinreich, possessed the genius of place. Now one could plausibly argue that \u00a0Weinreich was deluding himself (after all this was the same man who encouraged Lucy Dawidowicz in 1939 to stay on for\u00a0 a second year of graduate study in the YIVO and who was happily making plans for its 1940 YIVO world conference). Or perhaps aware that he was writing for an audience of Vilna landslayt<\/em> in the United States, he engaged in a little boosterism to raise badly needed funds for a struggling community. When Weinreich wrote these lines Vilna was an impoverished city, is Jewish population of 55,000 a mere sixth of Warsaw. It could not rival New York or Warsaw as a center of Yiddish press or theater, a proud Litvak capital that had seen better times. And between the wars new political boundaries split and splintered what one French scholar called la Litvaquie<\/em>\u2014the great Litvak heartland.<\/p>\n

But before we accuse Weinreich of Litvak megalomania or excessive local boosterism, let\u2019s remember that he was hardly alone in his claims for Vilna\u2019s salience. Zalman Reizen, the editor of Vilna\u2019s leading Yiddish daily, Der Tog<\/em>, called Vilna the mother city of Jewish public life (gezelshaftlikhkayt<\/em>). The head of the Vilna Jewish kehilla, famed lawyer Yosef Chernikhov declared in 1937 that Vilna was the modern equivalent of Yavne, where Yochanan Ben Zakkai had gone after the fall of the Second temple to found a yeshiva and ensure the continuity of the Jewish people. Not infrequently Vilna\u2019s virtues were defined by its differences with Warsaw. In Vilna, supposedly, there was more national pride, more self respect. The social and cultural differences that made Warsaw Jewry a mosaic of different Jewish worlds \u2013 Polish speakers, Hasidim, migrant Litvaks \u2013 were tempered in Vilna with more social solidarity and cultural homogeneity. In a 1926 article in Literarishe Bleter<\/em> the writer Israel Joshua Singer made a strident defense of Vilna\u2019s virtues at Warsaw\u2019s expense. Both Vilna and Warsaw, Singer asserted, had spent a century under Russian rule. But Jewish Vilna had taken the best of what Russian culture had to offer: idealism, a determination to work for the good of the community. Jewish Warsaw on the other hand had taken the worst: philistine poshlost\u2019<\/em>, selfishness, materialism and corruption. Vilna, not Warsaw, Singer concluded, was the world center of Yiddish culture.<\/p>\n

Naturally many of those asserting Vilna\u2019s role as a rode star and as a moral compass were supporters of various forms of Diapsora Nationalism, left wing Yiddishm, or just plain doikayt<\/em>. Doigkayt needed markers on the compass, points of inspiration. And Yiddishland certainly needed a capital, a role that Warsaw could never fulfill. \u00a0But it was not only the secular Yiddishists that sang Vilna\u2019s praises between the wars. It was a Zionist leader, Dr. Yankev Vygodsky who saw Vilna \u2013 with its Jewish pride and determination to fight for Jewish rights\u2014as a moral model for all of Polish Jewry.<\/p>\n

And even those who recanted their previous infatuation with secular doikayt<\/em> often damned with deep praise. One example is Zelig Kalmanovich, a YIVO leader who by the late 1930\u2019s had begun to question his lifetime dedication to secular Yiddishism and began to return to a Jewishness based on Torah and on Zionism. In his Vilna ghetto diary on 19 July 1942 Kalmanovich wrote: \u201cWhen God decided to destroy Jewish Vilna, perhaps he had a purpose-to hasten the redemption, warn those who can still be warned, tell them that there is no hope in the Diaspora. Jewish Vilna was a model, an example for a Jewish community with its own unique culture in the Diaspora. But many, too many did not see the dangers that lurked in this culture. And now the temple of Goles Yidishkayt <\/em>(Diaspora Jewishness) is ruined, her temple is forever destroyed (\u2026) One didn\u2019t need the present khurbn<\/em> to predict the destruction of Vilna Jewry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201ctemple of Goles Yidishkayt<\/em>\u201d. It goes without saying that for Kalmanvich goles yidishkayt<\/em> is not just the secular doikayt<\/em> of the YIVO. It also included the orthodox Vilna of Khaim Oyzer Grodzensky, and the Zionist Vilna of Yankev Vygodsky and of a Hebrew school system whose graduates included Abba Kovner and Yitzhak Zuckerman, later heroes of the Jewish resistance. But Kalmanovich\u2019s meaning was clear. If any Jewish community seemed to prove that Jews could live a live of Jewish pride and cultural self-sufficiency in the Diaspora, then that community was Vilna. And the destruction of Jewish Vilna, Kalmanovich write, showed that that illusion was over.<\/p>\n

As was mentioned before, a major feature of interwar Jewish Vilna was the creative instrumentalization of collective memory. Kulbak\u2019s poem, just cited, is one example. And in the same 1935 collection that published Weinreich\u2019s article, the Yiddish literary critic Shmuel Niger recounted a popular story in Vilna about the children who ran after the Vilna Goen and yelled: \u201cThe Vilna Goen! The Vilna Goen!\u201d The GRA allegedly turned to them and replied: \u201cVil nor vest oykh zayn a goen.\u201d \u201cVil nor\u201d was a pun on the name Vilna. It appropriated the precious words of the Goen to legitimize the image of a secular Vilna that connoted will, determination and consistent effort. (The GRA was probably turning over in his grave) It was Vil nor<\/em> that bridged the dialectical tension between the image of Vilna as Jewish cultural Mecca and its appalling poverty \u2013 a tension, by the way, noted by the late Shmuel Verses in his article about the image of Vilna in the writings of 19th<\/sup> century Maskilim. And as Doctor Tzemach Szabad noted it was Vilna\u2019s very poverty that made its cultural achievements so heroic.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

More than one commentator noted a capacious collective memory large enough to embrace both the Vilna Goen and Hirshke Lekert, the first martyr of the Bund. Another key pillar of Vilna collective memory was the legend of the Ger Tzedek<\/em>, the Polish nobleman Valentin Potocki who converted to Judaism in the 1740\u2019s and was burned at the stake (scholars like Magda Teter doubt that this really happened). Supposedly a courageous Jew stole Ger Tzedek\u2019s ashes from the stake and buried them in Jewish cemetery. Decades later the Vilna Goen was buried nearby. A large tree grew near these graves that resemble a human with outstretched arms. Jews would come to the tree to pray. Legend had it that as long as tree stood Vilna Jews would survive. In Kruk\u2019s diary of the Vilna ghetto we read of first meeting of Vilna Judenrat. 4 of July, 1941, Dr. Gershuni opened the meeting by stating that we Vilna Jews had believed for centuries that in the zchus<\/em> (in the merit) of the Vilna Goen and the Ger Tzedek Vilna would be spared. But our luck has run out (by the way, the tree was cut down by Polish hooligans in 1935).<\/p>\n

Not only people but specific places anchored the collective memory of Jewish Vilna. Pride of place here belongs to the synagogue court, the shul hoyf<\/em>, with dozens of old synagogues that surrounded the central one.<\/p>\n

The Jews had many legends about the old synagogue: when the Jews had finished building the shul, the Karaites appeared and said: \u201cYo, we\u2019re the real Jews, not you. So the synagogue belongs to us!\u201d Since the Jews told them to get lost both sides had to go to the Polish Voyevode to get a final decision on the ownership of the synagogue. As they came into the Poles\u2019 house the Karaites took off their shoes and left them in the front hall. Now a smart Jew came to argue against the Karaites: he also took off his shoes, but instead of leaving them in the front hall, he hung them around his neck and went in. And the Karaites asked: \u201cWhat are you coming in with your shoes for?\u201d And the Jew answered: \u201cYou know, when Moses went up to Mount Sinai to get the Tora, he left his shoes at the foot of the mountain. And some Karaite came and stole his shoes. So I\u2019m scared: If I leave them in the front hall, the Karaites will rip them off!\u201d The Karaites had a good laugh: \u201cYou idiot, what are you talking about, when Moses was on Mount Sinai, there were no Karaites yet!\u201d And the smart Vilna Jew turned to the Pole and said\u201d \u201cYou see? If that\u2019s so, then how can the Karaites say that they are the true Jews?\u201d And the Jews got to keep the shtot<\/em> shul<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In his memoirs Shmarye Levin, a Zionist leader, wrote: \u201cI could wander for hours in that ancient courtyard\u2026 The same feeling, I suppose, comes over the sensitive Englishman when he wanders among the colleges and cloisters of Oxford. The Vilna synagogue courtyard was the Oxford of a people in exile, and its study rooms were its colleges.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nestled right near the shul hoyf<\/em> was the Strashun library, a reminder that Vilna, unlike Warsaw, had been a major center of the Haskole. Matiyahu Strashun, a Vilna Maskil, began the library with 7000 volumes and it grew to 40,000 between wars. Add YIVO and Mefitsei Haskole and Vilna had one of greatest collections of Judaica and libraries in world (eagerly looted by Nazi scholars).<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\u00a0In a stimulating essay on interwar Vilna Michael Astur perceptively noted that one of the keys to understanding the place of Vilna in modern Jewish life was to remember that it belied a commonplace notion that the Haskala had declined and died by the beginning of the 20th<\/sup> century. Interwar Vilna lived out a practical Haskala by creating opportunities for Jews to negotiate on their own terms their own individual decisions on how to integrate their Jewishness with modern European culture.<\/p>\n

While the old shul hoyf<\/em> reminded Jews of what Vilna had been, the modern and airy new YIVO building reminded Jews that Vilna had a new role \u2013 as the capital of an imaginary world called Yiddishland.<\/p>\n

The different political factions of Vilna Jewry fought each other fiercely, but they shared a commitment to a civic culture, based on a common language, Yiddish. Vilna was one of the few major Jewish cities in Europe that had a public sphere based on Yiddish.<\/p>\n

Yiddish was not only the common language of Jewish public life. It was also a source of pride. One visitor from Krakow was amazed when he took a walk on the famous Vilna castle hill with the great poet Moshe Kulbak and some of his students from the Yiddish Realgymnasium. The visitor\u2019s Yiddish was rusty so the group was speaking in Polish. But as some Poles approached, Kulbak and the students said that they were embarrassed to be speaking Polish in front of Poles and so switched to Yiddish. Amazed, the visitor from Krakow noticed that in Krakow Jews would have done just the opposite. In the presence of the Poles they would have switched to Polish. In the late 1930\u2019s a YIVO graduate student from Warsaw noted that when he came to Vilna he saw for the first time how Jewish professionals and members of the middle class used Yiddish.<\/p>\n

Nahum Shtif wrote in the Vilna Tog<\/em> in those years that the great Yiddish writer Peretz wrote in Warsaw but he was read in Vilna. Zalman Reyzen called for Vilna to take the lead in implementing Peretz\u2019s vision of a new Yidishkayt that would link Jewish tradition and European humanism. The Boris Kletzkin\u2019s publishing house became the largest publisher of Yiddish books and a great proportion of its titles were Yiddish translations of foreign literature. In Vilna especially Yiddish was not just Jewish: it led outward to world literature, theater and music.<\/p>\n

Between the wars Vilna became the center of a remarkable project of Jewish historiography begun in 1915 and cut short by the war. While important histories of Jewish Vilna had already appeared \u2013 Shmuel Finn\u2019s Kirya Neemanah<\/em> and Hillel Noakh Magid Steinshneider \u2019s Ir Vilna<\/em> \u2013 these post-1915 publications were different. They were for the most part collective enterprises. Just to list some of them serves as a reminder that Vilna was doing something that no other Jewish community in the world was attempting to do: to rethink the very idea of communal history, to write about itself in real time, to expand the scope of the traditional chronicle to encompass a new Jewish reality. In 1916 and 1918 we have two volumes of the Vilna Zamlbikher<\/em> edited by Dr. Tzemach Shabad; then in 1922 the 1000 plus page War Chronicle<\/em> again edited by Zalmen Raizen and Shabad; in 1924 the School Chronicle<\/em>; in 1931 the 1000 plus page chronicle of the key relief organization EKOPO<\/em> edited by Moshe Shalit; in 1935 the 1000 plus page Vilna<\/em> edited by Yefim Yeshurun, where Weinreich\u2019s article appears; in 1939 two important books appear. The Vilna Alamanach<\/em> edited by A. I. Grodzensky and the tourist guide to Vilna and its environs commissioned by the landkenetnish<\/em> society and authored by Zalman Szyk. While the second volume of this critically important guide never appeared, the first volume alone is significant. It is a guide that gives full attention to the place of Vilna in Polish Lithuanian and Belarussian culture, in stark contrast to the Polish tourist guides that scanted the Jewish presence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This new Vilna Jewish historiography was a collective effort that brought together political rivals. Following the footsteps of Simon Dubnow, Sh. Ansky and Y. L. Peretz, these texts epitomized the political and cultural urgency of zamling<\/em>, of documenting Jewish life in all its variety. Including a vast array of subjects these thousands of pages were a kind of vast \u201ckol bo\u201d, a capacious almanac whose implicit message was that that the new Jewish world aborning in Vilna \u2013 the schools, sports clubs, libraries \u2013 was too diverse, too much a work in progress to fit into the Procrustean bed of narrow ideology. Ideologies, parties by all means. They imparted hope and the determination to face obstacles. But they were only one side of the coin, the other being a civil society of organizations where rivals could work together. This was what Zalmen Reyzen meant when he called Vilna the center of Jewish gezelshaftlekhkayt<\/em>. Perhaps Vilna was the right size for this civil society \u2013 big enough to support dozens of key institutions and a professional intelligentsia<\/em>, small enough to engender the relative social cohesion missing in a big metropolis like Warsaw.<\/p>\n

This Jewish civil society, with Yiddish as its public language, took root in the turbulent years of World War I and Its aftermath. Those years saw a passing of the baton to new leaders \u2013 people like Dr. Tzemach Szabad, Dr. Yankev Vygodsky, Rabbi Yitzhak Rubenstein, Lazar Kruk, the head of the artisans. These new leaders had all been tested in a crucible of war and violence when, by 1922, Vilna had changed hands seven times. They had been there during the trauma of April 19 1919, which Poles celebrated as the city\u2019s liberation day and Jews remembered as a bloody pogrom which claimed 55 victims. In 1915 most of the old leaders, including the heads of the Tzedokah Gedolah<\/em> and Gorodzensky himself had fled the city with the retreating Russian army. But new elites had stayed behind to build new schools, to defend Vilna Jews from the German occupation authorities, establish a new democratic kehillah<\/em>. There would be these new elites who would try shape a new image of the city, rewrite its history, enlist its landmarks in a new project of collective memory built on landkentenish<\/em> and public awareness. In these new elites, professionals \u2013 doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers \u2013 would play an outstanding role. These new elites saw themselves as inheriting and combining the best traditions of Lithuanian Jewry with the populist ethos of the old Russian intelligentsia<\/em>. Though they had been largely russified before World War I, they understood that with the end of Russian rule Litvak Jewry had to unite behind Yiddish as a public language of Jewish life and as a badge of Jewish honor. On this issue of Yiddish Zionists and folkists could agree. All throughout the interwar period visitors to Vilna from Krakow or Lwow would marvel that doctors and lawyers spoke Yiddish in public without a hint\u00a0 of embarrassment.<\/p>\n

These new elites would include women. Here too the instrumentalization of the memory for the saintly Dvoyre Ester played a key role. In no other Jewish city in Eastern Europe were women as prominent in the public sphere: Vita Levin, who ran a model school for mentally challenged children; Anna Rosenthal, a leader of the Bund; and teachers such as Mira Berstein, to whom Abraham Sutzkever dedicated a poem in the Vilna ghetto.<\/p>\n

All of these Jewish professionals, men and women, inspired respect as doers rather than as thinkers. They led by sheer force of personality. They crafted models of behavior and public involvement that well suited the particular needs of Vilna Jewry. Their personalities bolstered Vilna Jewry\u2019s sense of itself as a distinct community.<\/p>\n

Vilna was perceived as a city with shared rules and norms of conduct, as a city that fostered a Jewish moral solidarity. Long after the Holocaust a Jewish writer Avrom Karpinovich published two volumes of short stories of life in Vilna between the wars. One story, \u201cNit far Vilne\u201d, had to do with the Jewish underworld. Smole Dudke has been deported back to Vilna after serving a ten-year sentence in Sing Sing. Smole calls together his old Vilna friends, Elimelekh der Khokhem, Shmul der Izvozchik, Esterke mit di Briln, and proposed that they kidnap a seven-year-old son of a wealthy Vilna Jew. They kidnapped the kid and told the father to leave the ransom in an old Vilna Jewish landmark, near the tomb of the Ger Tzedek in the old Jewish cemetery. But the Vilna crooks immediately experienced terrible feelings of guilt. Esterke who looked after the child stuffed him with food and hot chocolate, and told him not to walk barefoot or he\u2019ll catch a cold. The father of the boy\u00a0 failed to leave the ransom in the tomb of the Ger Tzedek, but Esther let the boy go. Smole Dudke is furious, but the Vilna crooks support Esther: \u201cMaybe you do such things in the United States,\u201d \u2013 they tell Smole, \u2013 \u201cAber dos iz nisht far Vilne! (This simply isn\u2019t Vilna!)\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Vilna ghetto this keen interplay of space and memory continued. A popular ghetto song was \u201cVilna shtot fun gayst un tmimes\u201d, that had actually been written before the war. Another striking examples of this instrumentalization of Vilna\u2019s past, in a starkly different context, was Avrom Sutzkever\u2019s 1943 symbolic poem \u201cThe Lead Plates of the Romm Press\u201d, where fighters take the lead plates of the Romm Press that had printed the<\/em> Vilna Shas, the Vilna Talmud<\/em>, and melt them into bullets. Here Jewish Vilna in its dying moments is linked in a chain of memory that includes the Temple of Jerusalem and Talmud of Babylonia. And tellingly one might read this poem in a different way: the FPO in the Vilna Ghetto had failed to gain the support of the ghetto population, they were leaving the ghetto for the forests, Jewish Vilna was doomed, but through poetry it would live on, not just as a memory, but as a link in a living chain of Jewish history.<\/p>\n

With Jewish Vilna largely destroyed the writing of Vilna Jewish history now continued in new directions.\u00a0 One took up the tradition of the old Vilna zamlbikher<\/em> and of Yiddish secularist Vilna. Pride of place here belongs to Lazar Rans\u2019s stunning three volume picture history of Vilna, compiled in part against what Rans called the Ponar of Jewish memory<\/em>, the Soviet attempt to excise any memory of Jewish Vilna.<\/p>\n

Another track now ran through the academy and professional scholarly history. Where the recent historiography of Vilna does excel is, no surprise, in intellectual history defined in the widest sense: not just ideas and books, but also their social context. We may include here work on the Vilna Goen by Immanuael Etkes and Eliyahu Stern, the specific social context of the Vilna Haskala by Mordecai Zalkin , Cecile Kuznitz\u2019s\u00a0 and Kamil Kajek\u2019s work on the YIVO, Andrew Koss\u2019s dissertation on Vilna during the transformative WWI period, Joanna Lissek\u2019s study of Jung Vilne<\/em>, Dovid Katz on Litvak Yiddish and culture.<\/p>\n

Another major development, building on the writings of Czeslaw Milosz and Tomas Venclova, has been the kind of thoughtful consideration of multiethnic Vilna exemplified by Thed Week\u2019s recent study Vilnius Beetween the Nations<\/em>. Let me add that until now while one needed many languages to write the history of Jewish Vilna, one could, until the 1990\u2019s, largely get by without Lithuanian. But this will no longer be the case in the future. The new Lithuanian historiography of Jewish Vilna, what Jurgita Verbicken\u0117 called a new learned memory, I hope will produce important results in the future.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

One book on Vilna that in my opinion is of special importance is Anna Lipphardt\u2019s Vilne. Die Juden aus Vilnius nach dem Holocaust<\/em>. Eine transnationale beziehungsgeschichte.<\/em> What makes this book so interesting is its sheer sweep and Lipphart\u2019s laser-like focus on memory and representation, the activities of Nuzekh Vilne<\/em> in the US and Beit Vilne<\/em> in Israel, the attempts to erase the trace of Jewish Vilna in Soviet times, developments since 1991. She explores why this relatively small city mattered so much.<\/p>\n

She mentions the famous song Zog not keynmol az du geyst dem letstn veg<\/em>, composed by Hirshke Glick. This song spread quickly and after the war came to symbolize Jewish resistance to the Nazis. Many people mistakenly associated with the battle of the Warsaw ghetto.<\/p>\n

In a book published here in Warsaw in the late 1960\u2019s the literary critic Shloyme Belis wrote about this song:<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it not symbolic? Warsaw struggled, Vilna furnished the song. Is that not a reflection of the entire history of these two great Jewish centers? … Warsaw earned its place in East European Jewish history because of its quantity as well as its quality … Because of her enormous Jewish population she took the first place in the Jewish world … Vilna was a cradle of ideas, a hotbed of collective creativity, an originator of movements which then went on to flourish elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belis reminds us once again that in order to really understand East European Jewish history we must pay special attention to regions and cities, and especially to the cities that played such an outsized role in the Jewish imagination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gegu\u017e\u0117s 23 d. Judaikos tyrim\u0173 centre vyko vieno \u017eymiausi\u0173 \u017eyd\u0173 istorijos tyr\u0117j\u0173, \u201eTrinity\u201c\u00a0koled\u017eo (JAV) istorijos profesoriaus Samuelio Kassowo paskaita\u00a0\u201e\u017dydi\u0161kojo Vilniaus unikalumas\u201c. Paskaita vyko angl\u0173 kalba, o \u017ead\u0117t\u0105 lietuvi\u0161k\u0105 paskaitos teksto vertim\u0105 pateikiame \u010dia. Tekstas angl\u0173 k. pateikiamas po lietuvi\u0161kojo. Straipsnyje, kur\u012f 1935 m. para\u0161\u0117 did\u017eiuliam Niujorke leistam Vilniui skirtam almanachui jidi\u0161 kalba, ilgametis YIVO (\u017dyd\u0173 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":3531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-musu-sveciai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lnb.lt\/judaika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}