Lithuanian Jews

Lithuanian Jews, (In Yiddish known as Litvish or Litvaks) are Ashkenazi Jews who have their origins in historic Lithuania.

Map of present-day Lithuania

Etymology of term

The word Litvish means "Lithuanian" in Yiddish. (Latvian Jews, were known as Lettishe). The four main Yiddish dialects in Europe were: German (or Western), Polish/Galician (or Central/Mid-Eastern), Litvish (or North-Eastern), and Ukrainian (or South-Eastern). Litvisher Yiddish was spoken by Jews in Lithuania, Latvia, and Belarus (Russia), and in the northeastern Sulwaki region of Poland .

Ethnicity, religious customs and heritage

Lithuanian Jews are almost all Ashkenazi Jews and Mitnagdim who were opposed to the new inroads of Hasidism. Religiously, they were adherents of Haredi Judaism, but with the spread of the Enlightenment, many became devotees of the Haskala movement in Eastern Europe.

Identified with Vilna Gaon

Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon, known as the Vilna Gaon, considered to be the greatest of all Litvish Jews

Religious observances owe greatly to Elijah ben Solomon Kramer, the Vilna Gaon who lived in Lithuania's greatest city Vilna. His style of Torah and Talmud study shaped the analytical "Lithuanian-style" form of learning still practiced is most yeshivas. The yeshiva movement itself is a typical Lithuanian development, initiated by Kramer's main disciple, Rabbi Chaim Volozhin.

Litvish and mitnagdish are used almost interchangeably. The Mitnagdim were the early opponents of Hasidic Judaism, led by the Vilna Gaon who sharply denounced the innovations by the Hasidim.

Emigration, World War I and the Holocaust

By the end of the nineteenth century, many of Lithuania's Jews were part of the general flight of Jews from Eastern Europe to the New World due to conflicts and pogroms engulfing the Russian Empire and the Anti-Semitism of the Russian Czars.

Millions of Jews, including tens of thousands of Lithuanian Jews emigrated to the United States of America. Many Lithuanian Jews emigrated to South Africa which became famous as a haven for its 120,000 Jews who were spared the Holocaust. A small number also emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine. The rise of the Nazis in Germany and the ensuing Holocaust, destroyed almost all the Jews who had not managed to leave Lithuania and its environs.

Famous Jews with Lithuanian parentage