קהילת יהודי ליטא

Grigori Andreyevich Gershuni (1870-1908), revolutionary, born in Tavrova in Kovno province, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), to a Jewish peasant family. He studied for a short period in the religious “heder”, and was sent by his parents to a secular Russian high school in Shavli (Siauliai), Lithuania, until the age of 15. He then became a pharmacist's apprentice. In 1898 he moved to Minsk (now in Belarus), where he set up a bacteriological laboratory.

He joined the quasi-legal educational circles of the working class and was gradually drawn into clandestine activities. He came under the influence of Yekaterina Breshkovskaya, the “grandmother” of the Russian revolution. In 1900 he was arrested by the police who tried in vain to persuade him to support the Czar. Gershuni joined an anti-Czar terrorist group. In 1901 he was amongst the founders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and headed the Fighting Organization of the party which was responsible for the murders of a number of important government ministers and officials. He was betrayed and turned over to the police. Gershuni was sentenced to death by a military tribunal but the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment, first in Schluesselburg fortress and later in Siberia. He escaped from prison and reached the USA via Japan and China, where he met Sun Yat Sen, one of the founders of modern China. In the USA he addressed meetings of Jewish and other workers and collected funds for the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party. In 1906 he returned to Europe to persuade people to rise up against the regime of the Czar. He contacted tuberculosis and died in Zurich, Switzerland. He is buried in Paris, France.

Despite being completely assimilated into Russian culture Gershuni felt strongly about his Jewish ancestry. In order to avoid the taunts of anti-Semites he always stressed the proud behavior of the Jews in the revolutionary movement and violently rejected the attitude that Jews were cowards.

Yehezkel Abrahamsky (1886-1976). He was a Talmudic scholar and considered by many to be one of the world leading Orthodox rabbis of the 20th century. Abrahamsky was born near Grodno then Lithuania (now in Belarus), the son of a local timber merchant. He studied in the yeshivot of Telz, Mir, Slobodka and Brisk under Rabbi Chaim Soloveichik. He also studied under Rabbi Haim Ozer Grodenzki of Vilna. He was ordained as a rabbi at the age of 17 and served in Smolensk and Slutsk. During World War I and the early 1920's, he went from place to place in Russia (and the Soviet Union, as it became) seeking to strengthen Jewish observance. In 1926 and again in 1928 he applied for permission to leave the Soviet Union to take up a rabbinical position in Petach Tikva, Eretz Israel – but on both occasions he was refused. In 1928, to his surprise the Soviets allowed him to start a Hebrew magazine, Yagdil Torah, but it was closed down after two issues. In 1929 he was arrested as a "counter revolutionary" (1930), and was sentenced to a term of hard labour in Siberia. Two years later, he was released with the help of his wife and friends, and went to London, England.

In London Abrahamsky was first appointed rabbi of the Machzike Hadath congregation. In 1934 he was made senior dayan of the London Beth Din, a position which he held until 1951. The appointment of an Eastern European traditional rabbi to the London Beth Din was a departure which changed the character of the organization and the leadership of Anglo-Jewry. In 1951 he moved to Israel where he became member of the Moetzet Gedolei ha-Torah, the supervisory rabbinical body of of Agudat Israel and served as Rosh Yeshiva of the Slobodka yeshiva in Bnei Brak.

He was a profuse writer and was awarded the Israel Prize for his rabbinical literature in 1955. Some of his responsa were published in London (1937). His most important work was "Hazon Yehezkel", a 24 volume commentary on the Tosefta written between 1925 and 1975.

Rahel Szalit (1896-1942), painter and etcher. Born in Ishgenty, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). Most of her works depicted Eastern European Jewish life. After studying in Munich, Paris and London, she worked in Berlin until 1933. In a style which is based on vigorous, nervous lines and a freedom of expression she succeeded in effectively portraying the lives of the Jews in Lithuania and Poland. She drew inspiration from the work of Yiddish writers as well as from her own memories. Her pictures had a very original style. They showed the poverty of the Jews, their modesty, their patience in suffering, their often disreputable appearance and - in contrast – the ecstatic mysticism of their Hasidic fantasies.

The best of Rahel Szalit's folios were the sixteen lithographs to Mendele's Fishke der Krummer (1921). She also illustrated the Hebraische Melodien of Heine (1922), Buber's Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman and Kindergeschichten, Israel Zangwill's King of the Schnorrers and Shalom Aleichem's Menshen und Zenen, as well as some of the works of Dickens, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Alter Druyanov (Drujanow) (1870-1938), Hebrew writer and Zionist leader, born near Vilna,Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire) and studied in the Volozhin yeshiva. When he was 20 years old he start to write for Hebrew language magazines using several pen names. He went to live in Odessa, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), where he met many Zionists, was infuenced by them and became secretary of the "Va'ad le-Yishuv Erets-Yisrael" ("Committee for the Settlement of the Land of Israel"). He migrated to Palestine in 1906, but was not able to earn a living there so in 1909 he returned to Russia where he became editor of the Hebrew language newspaper "HaOlam", the official journal of the World Zionist Organization, a position he filled until 1914.

In 1921, Druyanov returned to Eretz Israel where he met up with H.N.Bialik and Y.K. Ravnitski. Together they edited the first four volumes of "Reshumot" (1919-1926), a Hebrew journal devoted to Jewish folklore. Druyanov's own writing included Zionist articles, literary criticism, and journalistic articles on subjects of public interest.

Druyanov is chiefly remembered today for his three-volume anthology of Jewish humor, "Sefer HaBedikha ve-HaKhidud" ("Book of Jokes and Wit"). He also edited the chapters of modern Hebrew literature, folklore and geography of Eretz Israel in the Hebrew and German Encyclopedia "Eshkol".

Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887-1974), scholar, philosopher and historian at Harvard University. He is probably best known as the first chairman of a department of Jewish studies at a major US university. Born in Astryna, province of Vilna, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), he studied at the Slobodka Yeshiva under Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein and on his immigration to the United States, in 1903, at the Yeshiva of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan. He was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University where he received his bachelors and masters degrees and finally, in 1915, a Ph.D. He was a Harvard Sheldon Traveling Fellow from 1912 to 1914, and studied in France, Germany and England. He remained at Harvard for the remainder of his careeer.

In 1915 Wolfson was appointed instructor in Jewish literature and philosophy at Harvard. He became assistant professor in 1921. He also taught at the Jewish Institute of Religion from 1923 to 1925 as professor of Jewish history and philosophy. In 1925 he was appointed Nathan Littauer Professor of Jewish Literature and Philosophy at Harvard, teaching text courses in Talmud, Midrash, Biblical commentaries and medieval philosophy. He held this position for almost half a century. He was honorary curator of Jewish history and literature in the University. He received honorary doctorates from 10 different universities. He was a founding member and in 1935-7 president of the American Academy for Jewish Research

Wolfson is the author of many articles and essays on Jewish and general subjects, in both English and Hebrew. His major works are on philosophy. He wrote a translation and commentary on Crescas' Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle's Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy (1929). In 1934 he published The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of his Reasoning. In 1947 emerged perhaps his most important book, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He published his work on The Philosophy of the Church Fathers in 1956 and The Philosophy of the Kalam (1979) [Kalam is the Islamic philosophy of seeking theological principles]. In many ways he broke down the artificial barriers between the studies of Christian, Jewish and Islamic philosophy,

Other important works, which clearly demonstrate Wolfson's range of scholarship, included The meaning of "ex Nihilo" in the Church Fathers, Arabic and Hebrew Philosophy(1948), The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew Philosophical texts (1935), The Amphibolous terms in Arustotle, Arabic Philosophy and Maimionides (1938), and The Testimony of Clemens of Alexandria Concerning an Unknown Custom in the Yom Kippur Avodah in the Temple, (1936). His articles include Classification of the Sciences in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (1925); On Maimonides' Classification of the Sciences (1936); and a study of Solomon Pappenheim on Time and Space and His Relation to Locke and Kant, (1927).

Wolfson was a member of the board of the American Philosophical Society, the American Oriental Society, the Mediaeval Academy of America, and the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis; he was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Jewish Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ephraim Ish-Kishor (1863-1945), Zionist leader in England, born in Ponjemon, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). Ish-Kishor went to live in England when he was about 17 years old and supported himself by teaching Hebrew.

He wrote essays and articles in British magazines with the aim of supporting political Zionism. In 1896 he met Theodor Herzl and suggested that Herzl should set up a mass Zionist movement. He later participated in the first Zionist Congress (1897) and was an active member of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain. He immigrated to Palestine in 1933 and helped to found the Judea Insurance Company.

A. Weiter pseudonym of Eisik Meir Devenishsky (1877-1919), political agitator, and Yiddish writer. Born in Biniakon, a village near Vilna, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). He received a traditional education but joined the revolutionary movement, becoming active in the Jewish Labor Bund. He edited the movement's organ Der Werker. In 1899 and again in 1902-4 Weiter was imprisoned for his activities. He returned to Vilna and participated in the 1905 Russian Revolution. After the failure of the revolution he devoted himself to writing and campaigned for national rights for the Jews. In 1912 he was exiled to Siberia, where he remained until the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution. He then lived in Petrograd and Nizhni Novgorod and at the end of 1918 returned to Vilna where he was shot by the Polish Legionnaires who occupied the city in 1919

Weiter wrote plays, short stories, and essays. His early writings were of a political nature, but from 1906 his plays were free of any political motifs. In his blank-verse play, Fartog (1907), he portrayed the mood of Jewish intellectuals on the eve of the 1905 Russian Revolution. In Fayer (1910), he expressed the alienation and loneliness of the younger generation and their longing for a full and creative Jewish life. In his Der Shtumer (1912), he described the suffering of his generation, whose expectations for a new freedom were not fulfilled. In 1908, together with S. Gorelik and Samuel Niger, Weiter edited the Literarishe Monatshriften, a monthly which became a rallying point for young writers who believed in a renaissance of Jewish life and a revitalized Jewish culture. Among the works that Weiter translated were Gorki's My Childhood and Max Halbe's In Stream (together with Z. Reizen). As a journalist he contributed to Falks Zeitung, to Friend and to Morgenstern.

In 1920, the Weiter Buch was published in his memory in Vilna.

Louis Mayer Rabinowitz (1887-1957), manufacturer, philanthropist, born in Raseiniai , Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), he emigrated to the USA in 1901. In 1916 Rabinowitz established a corset manufacturing company in New York, and subsequently became chairman of the US corset industry association (1934). In 1935 he became director of the Businessmen’s Council.

Rabinowitz was deeply involved in Jewish communal causes. He was vice-president of the Hebrew National Orphan Home (1921), the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn, the American Jewish Historical Society, the New York chapter of the American-Israel Society, and director of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City (1935).

Rabinowitz was also a collector of books, manuscripts, and paintings. The collection was bequeathed to the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yale University. At Yale he created the Rabinowitz Fund for Judaica Research and established a chair in Semitic languages and literature (1935). He served as director of the Yale University Association of Fine Arts and as honorary trustee of the Yale Library Associates. In 1942 he donated a collection of over 300 reproductions of classical and modern art to the National Jewish Hospital of Denver. He endowed a surgical fellowship at the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn and donated several murals to the building. A director of the Jewish Theological Seminary, he established the Louis M. Rabinowitz Institute for Research in Rabbinics at the seminary in 1951, and donated many rare books to its library. In 1953, in conjunction with the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati the Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation sponsored a five-year archeological project in Israel.