Jews & Contemporary Lithuania
The study of the genocide of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, the robust documentation of historic truth, and the testimonies of the waning Survivor community should not deflect from the ongoing need for much more intensive, serious and widespread study of the living language, literature and culture that is left for us and ever-new generations to study, teach and nurture into the future.
This is most conspicuously applicable to the Yiddish heritage, which was most severely impacted by the Holocaust, and is today in urgent need of dedicated and wholehearted study, preservation and dissemination internationally. Serious study of this heritage entails study of the Yiddish language aimed at high levels of mastery.
The destruction of the Litvak heritage was arguably the most complete in the Holocaust, because: (a) the areas where local Baltic forces carried out much of the genocide had the highest murder rates in Europe; (b) Litvak communities reestablished abroad after the war have been of much lower viability than those carrying forward the southern traditions of East European Jewish culture.
The positive-thinking task before us is therefore clear: the establishment of a viable, robust and intellectually free field of Litvak Studies that will cover with a sense of mission and aspiration to high academic standards the religious, secular, historical, literary, cultural and folkloristic components of Lithuanian Jewry.
