The Jews

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); Tautos; The Grand Duchy of Lithuania; Nations.

ENCompared with other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the first Jewish communities of Lithuania appeared relatively late. It is thought that towards the close of the 14th century the first privilege was granted to the Jews by Vytautas the Great and that Jewish communities established themselves in Brest (it was this community that succeeded in securing the privilege), Grodno and Trakai. The establishment and growth of the Jewish community of the Grand Duchy was the result of several Jewish migration waves, but Jews from Kiev were certainly the first to reach Lithuania. The subsequent process of expansion of the Jewish communities, most dynamic in the Ruthenian parts of the State, advanced north-eastward, as was the general tendency of Jewish migration in Europe at that time. Another characteristic tendency of Jewish expansion (shared, in this case, with the Karaims and Tatars) was the establishment of a dense web of Jewish settlements in lands belonging to the state, especially until the second half of the 16th century. Up to the middle of the 16th century, there were only two Jewish communities in ethnic Lithuania: Vilnius (established 1568-1569) and Trakai (before 1388). In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the Grand Dukes granted profitable privileges to the Jews in order to stimulate economic activity in the cities and townlets of Lithuania, and this led to a rapid growth of Jewish communities in ethnic Lithuania. Soon a dense web of relatively small Jewish settlements spread over the country. As the cities and especially the small townlets of Lithuania started attracting Jewish settlers, their dcmographical structure radically changed in the second half of the 18th century: in some townlets the Jews began to outnumber the Christian population. The characteristic culture and way of life of the Jewish shtetl were born in the small towns of Lithuania. [From the publication]