Lithuania as the Jewish country (16-18th centuries)

• straipsnio tekstas

ENLithuania was an important Ashkenazi diaspora land in the early modern ages. However, the historian studying the history of Jews in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania paid much less attention to Jews in the Lithuanian lands than in Polish ones, assuming that the processes and phenomena concerning Poland applied equally to Lithuania. The article presents the functioning of Jewish Lithuania as a separate country (Hebr. medinah), the word conveying a special kind of sovereignty within Jewish structures. The first factor that warrants the treatment of Jewish Lithuania as a separate country is its objective legal and political distinctness, involving the law and jurisdiction and local-government institutions (these including first and foremost the separate Sejm (parliament) of Lithuanian Jews). The second and much more subjective factor was the sense of distinctness and separate identity of Lithuania’s Jewry. Both these factors are accompanied by a number of elements that make up the specific characteristics of the Lithuanian Jewish communities and contribute to their sense of distinctness even though they alone are not the decisive factor here. These factors include settlement and professional structure and the spiritual life, culture and language of Lithuania’s Jews. Keywords: Lithuanian Jewry, legal distinctness of Jews in Lithuania, Jewish settlement in Lithuania, Jewish self-government, Council of Lithuanian Jews (Lithuanian Vaad). [From the publication]