The name of Vilnius is spoken with respect and love by Jews in France and Russia, USA and South Africa, Argentina and Israel. Some may have very little knowledge of Vilnius itself, but they all know of the Vilnius Gaon, and will certainly have heard the oft repeated reference to Vilnius as Jerusalem of Lithuania. Most have their own notion of what this means, but they all connect the name of Vilnius with the holy name of Jerusalem.

            The Great sinsgogue in Vilnius

       Water-color by artist J.Kamarauskas

                   Phot. by V.Ilčiukas

It should be mentioned that Vilnius was not the only city to have merited this title. Once upon a time Toledo was called Jerusalem of Spain, Trua, the home of Rashi, was Jerusalem of France, Prague -Jerusalem of Bohemia, and so on. However, none of them, or any of the other cities called 'Jerusalem', were ever so popular in the Jewish world, nor were they known by this name for so long.

Various legends describe how Vilnius acquired this holy name. It is said that when Napo­leon saw its numerous synagogues, and witnessed the devotion of the Jews, he exclaimed: - It's Jerusalem in Lithuania! Another legend has it that the title arose in the 17th, not the 19th century: it seems that, at a time when the Va'ad leaders of four countries did not want to accept Vilnius into their council, they received a letter with the names and addresses of 333 Vilnius Jews who knew the Talmud by heart. One of the Va'ad sages thereupon said: - It is trulyjerusalem of the Diaspora.

These are only legends, but they - especially the last one - hold a large grain of truth. Anyway, the name stuck - and for a long time. The great historian Simon Dubnow emphasized that for him, Vilnius is not only Jerusalem of Lithuania, but of the entire Diaspora. Philologist Max Weinreich attached even greater significance to the meaning of Jewish Vilnius, when, in 1965, he said: "It's no exaggeration: the fate of world Jewry depends on the scale with which the Jews of Jerusalem, Moscow, Buenos Aires, and most importantly, New York, become immersed in the spirit of Jerusalem of Lithuania."

What exactly was this spirit, and where are its roots?

Vilnius was a Jewish city in the traditional sense. From times of old, the community was renowned for its spiritual leaders. By the first half of the I 7th century, Vilnius already had 40 famous rabbis among its small population of 2,500 Jews. Shabbetay Ha-kohen, Moses Rivkes, Aaron Samuel Koidanover and others who lived there significantly before the time of the Gaon, brought Vilnius its reputation of the city of sages. But it was the Gaon Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720-1 797) who gave the city an entirely new status - with him it became the indisputable capital of Jewishness. Recent history has seen no greater religious authority than the Gaon. After his death, he remained a symbol of the sacred Jewish Vilnius, through its association with Jerusalem: as they do at the Wailing Wall, Jews leave notes at his gravesite expressing their deepest wishes. Prof. Ben-Zion Dinur writes that he once committed a sin: curious to know their contents, he took several of these notes from the gravesite. One of them wrote: "I pray and ask for kindness, that I may have the good fortune to choose good books to read." A specific Vilnius spirit, its unique charm, emanated from this note, says Dinur.

After the Gaon, there were other world-renowned sages in Vilnius. Chayim of Volozhin - the Gaon's closest pupil, and founder of the famous Volozhin Yeshiva - carried on his ideas. Hafets Chayim (Israel Meir Ha-kohen), whom many called chief rabbi of the Diaspora Jews, did not live right in Vilnius (he was head of the Radin Yeshiva), but he was very attached to it, and honored its name. The list of such authorities goes on.

Before the Catastrophe, Vilnius had approximately I 10 synagogues and study and prayer houses, and about 10 yeshivot, including the exceptional Ramaile Yeshiva; for a time, it was headed by Israel Salanter (Lipkin), founder of the Musar movement. The shulhoyf surrounding the Great Synagogue was the embodiment of the traditional religious Vilnius: this single courtyard embraced more than 10 prayer houses!

There was also the Romm publishing firm, which not only printed prayer books, but was responsible for the arrangement and publication of a version of the Talmud whose scholarly level is such, that owning this book is considered good fortune by Jews everywhere in the world. Scholars from every country came to Vilnius, to share in its wealth of books. First of all - to the Strashun Library, where they would rejuvenate their thinking, and find inspiration for their scien­tific endeavors. "Go to Lodz for work, and to Vilnius for wisdom," - they used to say in those days.

Sitting side by side on the long benches in the Strashun Library one would find the hatted Torah expert buried deep in his thick folio, and the youth enthusiastically reading a lay book. Prof. Dinur perceives here a deep feeling of Jewish fraternity: no Jewish community embraced this sentiment as strongly as the one in Vilnius, claims the distinguished scholar. Naturally there were arguments and discussions, but once the Hasidim were ex-communicated, this 'weapon' was laid aside. It was replaced by humor, irony and sarcasm. Vilnius also has a claim to being the capital of Jewish humor - especially as one of the "kings"of this genre, Motke Chabad, never stepped foot outside this city.

It would be unforgivable not to mention the cantors of Vilnius. The genius Vilniusr Balabesl initiated an entire galaxy of cantors on the level of Gershon Sirota, the brothers Kusevitski, etc. Vilnius was a true conservatory, nurturing to maturity many of the world's most famous syna­gogue cantors.

When Haskalah began spreading throughout Eastern Europe in the 19th century, Vilnius became its most famous centre in Russian empire. In Western Europe, where, since the time of emancipation, Jews had considered themselves not a nation but a religious group - "Frenchmen or Germans of the faith of Moses" - Haskalah often led to assimilation. Vilnius had no Lithuanians or Poles of the faith of Moses - only Jews. And here Haskalah did not create such assimilative tendencies. Here the Jewish culture flourished - in both Hebrew and Yiddish. Yehuda Leib Gor­don was the most prominent Hebrew poet, Abraham Mapu - its best known prose writer. Eliyezer Ben Yehuda - who brought new life to the Hebrew language in Erez Israel - was not a Vilnius resident, but he came from its surrounding regions, and one can imagine that he also was touched by the city's aura. Vilnius was most famous for its flourishing Yiddish culture, but here the 'yiddishists' and 'hebraists' were not in conflict - unlike in Sholom Aleichem's book, "Kasrilovka's Progress". Jewish brotherhood dominated in this area as well.

             Vilnius had a very developed education system - from kindergartens, to gymnasiums and teachers' seminaries in both languages. Nowhere else was there such a wealth of Jewish children attending Jewish schools. In 1907, a year prior to the celebrated 1908 Czernowitz Conference, a Jewish teachers' conference was held here. And the Boris Kletskin Publishers supplied not only Yiddish schools in Vilnius with textbooks written by Vilnius teachers - its books were basicaly used by Yiddish schools throughout the world. World literary classics were published here in Yiddish. YIVO, the famous Jewish Scientific Institute, brainchild of Max Weinreich and his col­leagues, was established in Vilnius in 1925, and found itself under the patronage of the world's most famous Jews - Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, theoretician of the Second International Edward Bernstein, and others. S. Dubnow, head of the history unit at the Institute, saw the parallel: the Jewish University was established in Jerusalem in 1925 - the same year that the Jewish Scientific Institute was set up in Vilnius. In 1940, a Yiddish Language and Literature Depart­ment was organized at the Vilnius University. During the time of the First World War, the "Vilniusr Trupe" theatre group, which later became known world-wide, was established in Vilnius. "Jung Vilnius" united young writers and artists, and produced such Yiddish classics as Chaim Grade and Abraham Sutzkever. Jewish literary writers Mendele Moicher Sforim, Isaac Leib Peretz, Sholom Aleichem, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Sholom Ash never lived in Vilnius, but they considered it crucial that one visit there for a while, to breathe in the city air, to soak up its atmosphere. As the popular saying went, "Peretz writes his books in Warsaw, but they are read in Vilnius".

Six Jewish daily newspapers were published in Vilnius; it had several choirs, orchestras, music institutes, and many other cultural institutions.

Vilnius Jews were always known for their public activism and social involvement. At the beginning of the 20th century, Hirsh Leckert's attempted shooting of a Governor who had or­dered that demonstrators be flogged, echoed around the world. One might not agree with his actions, but it is impossible not to admire the young man's selflessness, for he knew that it was the gallows he would face.

The Jewish socialist movement began in Vilnius, and its native Aharon Lieberman is rightfully called the father of Jewish socialism. No less famous is Aharon Zundelevich, organizer of the first revolutionary group of Vilnius Jews. Another epochal event was the founding in Vilnius of the Bund, the socialist union of all Jewish workers in Russia, Poland and Lithuania. The Bund was not Zionist - it was more anti-Zionist in fact - but it accomplished a great deal for Jewishness, a national consciousness, and social justice.

Nonetheless, Vilnius can also be called a fortress of Zionism. The first "Chovevey Zion" circles were set up here, and for a while the city was home to the central committee of the entire Zionist organization of Russia. But most importantly, it was here that the founda­tion was laid for the Mizrachi religious Zionist organization - which eventually became one of the major Zionist parties.

          Vilnius embraced an unprecedented number of associations. There were approximately 170 officially registered ones, including 72 charity organizations - a fact which once again illustrates the thesis that Vilnius embodied an exceptionally fraternal spirit.

Other Jewish communities also had charitable societies, poetic and cultural institutions, famous rabbis, scholars, writers, and cantors. "But in its very diversity, multitude of aspects, and range, Vilnius had the advantage over all the other remainingjewish communities," - claims Prof. Abraham Yehoshua Heshel. For this reason, Vilnius is mentioned more often in Jewish history books than the other Jewish centres. In fact, in the Harvard publication of H.H.Ben-Sasson's "A History of the Jewish People", Odessa is mentioned 18 times, Warsaw - 15,Minsk- I2,Lvov-8, Lodz - 6, and Vilnius - 22 times.

In 1903, after unsuccessful negotiations with the Russian czarist authorities in St. Peters­burg, Theodor Hertzl experienced a revival upon visiting Vilnius. In his diary, he writes enthusias­tically about the Vilnius community. And in the mid-19th century, the celebrated English activist, Sir Moses Montefiore, known in history as the great supporter of the Erez Israel yishuv, visited Vilnius after his travels to St. Petersburg and the other northwestern countries. Other famous Jewish lead­ers - David Wolffsohn, Nachum Sokolov, and Vladimir Zhabotinski - also were guests in Vilnius.

Jewish life was not easy in Vilnius. The majority of the population were tormented by poverty, and all by anti-Semitism. Incited from above, it manifested in avariety of forms - hooligan­ism, violence, numerus clausus and ghetto desks at the University, boycotts, etc. But the Vilnius Jews also remember the young Polish M.Dordzik, who died while saving a drowning Jewish child. A memorial in his honour stands not far from the Vilnele River.

The Hitleristic occupation destroyed the Vilnius Jewish community. Ponar was one of the most terrible extermination sites: approximately 70,000 Jews from Vilnius and surrounding regions were killed there. "But even in the terrible time of Nazi rule, their (Vilnius residents' - I.L.) spirit was not crushed, and despite the constant threat of death, they continued to expand their culture,"- states historian Israel Klauzner. It was in the Vilnius Ghetto that the call to fight rather than go to the slaughter like sheep, was first heard. A united partisan organization was formed. The struggle to maintain a spiritual life went on as well, with the organization of a library, schools (including yeshivot), lectures, concerts, exhibitions, even a theatre.

After the restoration of an independent Lithuania, and the abolition of discrimination, a small handful of surviving Vilnius Jews (the present Jewish population numbers ca. 2,800) have been carrying on the struggle to rekindle a spiritual life. There are several state Jewish institutions, and many public organizations, which organize various events at the Community Centre every day.* It is doubtful that there are any more active Jewish communities in Europe at the present time.

Much has been written about Vilnius. The first, a book by Samuel Joseph Finn entitled "Kiriya neemana" ("Faithful City", in Hebrew), was published in I860. Part I of Hilel Noach Magid-Steinshneider's "Ir Vilna" ("Vilnius City", in Hebrew) came out in 1900. Part II of this work was released only 100 years later - arranged by Dr. Mordechai Zalkin (Ben Gurion University, Israel), after he found fragments of the book's continuation in several archives. 1916 saw the release of Ch.Shabad's edited "Vilnius Collection" (in Yiddish); 1939 - A.Grodzenski's edited "Vilnius Almanach" (in Yiddish), and Z.Shick's part I of "Vilnius 1,000 years old" (in Yiddish); 1943 - I.Cohen's "Vilna" (in English), in the USA; 1983 - I.KIauzner's "Vilna, Jerusalem of Lithuania" (in Hebrew), in Israel; 1989 - L.Dawidowicz's "From That Place and Time" (in English; in Lithuanian in 2003); 2001 - the second edition of "The Way of Lithuania's Jews" by Vilnius historian S.Atamukas, presently residing in Israel; and many others.

Vilnius also inspired the work of many other writers, including A.Sutzkever, M.Kulbak, Ch.Grade, G.Kanovich, A.Karpinovich, etc.

The Nazis destroyed the old Jewish Vilnius, but it lives on in books, and its spirit is being revived by the Jews of present-day Vilnius.

Dr. Izraelis Lempertas

Source: Dr. Izraelis Lempertas, "Our Vilne", 2003.