Jewish Religious Life in Lithuania in the 18th-20th Centuries

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-73540-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 82, 380 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Studies in Jewish History and Culture

This volume attempts to address the complicated issue of distinctive characteristics of Jewish religious life in Lithuania. Its authors and editors deal with the range of religious expressions, with the religious life of different sectors of the Jewish community of Lithuania and with the dynamics of change in religious life in Lithuania over time. In this volume, Lithuania is more a historical and social concept than a geographical territory with clearly delineated borders and political identity. The authors deliberate how “Lithuanian” are the religious phenomena they discuss and what the historical agents understood as Lithuania in their given period, area, and historical circumstances.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Wodzinski, Marcin

Stampfer, Shaul

Lempertiene, Lara

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien: Leben & Praxis, Soziale Aspekte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Note on Transcription and Place Names

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Lithuanian Jews and Their Religious Life: Introduction

1 “A True Servant of the Divine”: the Devotional World of Rabbi Alexander Zisskind of Grodno Ariel Evan Mayse

2 The Gaon and the Hasid: The Image of the Vilna Gaon in Hasidic Memory Uriel Gellman

3 The Earliest Maskilic Treatise on Hasidism: a View from Vilna Marcin Wodzinski

4 The Doctrine of Tsimtsum in Hasidic and Mitnagdic Schools of Lithuania and Its Contemporary Social Implications Daniel Reiser

5 Rabbi Israel Salanter and Cholera: Anatomy of the Legend Alexander Lvov (transl. by Julia Korostenskiene)

6 Toward a Modern Conception of Orthodox Womanhood: the Case of Lithuanian Bet Jakob Tzipora Weinberg

7 The Status of the Rabbinical Association in Lithuania Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky

8 Lithuanian Musar Thought: Afflictions of Love (Yesurim shel ahavah) Gershon Greenberg

9 Together and Apart: Social Aspects of Lithuanian Synagogues Vladimir Levin

10 Chaim Grade’s Quarrels with Musar Yehudah DovBer Zirkind

11 Religious Jewish Life and Secular Jewish Life in Lithuania—a Complex Reality Shaul Stampher

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Marcin Wodzinski is a professor of Jewish history and literature at the Taube Department of Jewish Studies, University of Wroclaw. His research focuses on the social and religious history of East European Jews in modern times, especially the Haskalah and Hasidism.

Shaul Stampfer, PhD, Hebrew University. He has written on various themes, including the rise of Lithuanian yeshiva, the historicity of the story of the Khazar conversion to Judaism, the demography of Eastern European Jewry, and more.

Lara Lempertiene, PhD, Vilnius University, is Head of the Judaica Research Center at the National Library of Lithuania. She has edited and co-edited several scholarly monographs and collections and published articles on the cultural history of European Jewry.