Written by Živilė Juonytė Bagel Shop Tolerance Campaign volunteer, translated by Geoff Vasil. ,
December 4, 2014
Meet Dr.Lara Lempertienė, historian of Jewish culture and bibliographer. Although she denied during the interview being a qualified Jewish book specialist and added that there were none such in Lithuania, she has worked for two decades now at the Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library in the retrospective bibliography section. She seemed able to go on for hours about her field, the Jewish book and book culture, providing many interesting facts and unexpected discoveries.
Both Student and Teacher
L.Lempertienė told how her career began accidentally. After being graduated from Vilnius University with a degree in Russian philology, she was invited to learn Hebrew in a private group. "A close friend of mine was the teacher there, and the lessons became a pretext for me to leave the house, where I was raising two small children. I quickly became excited by the Hebrew language," she recalled.
Less than a year after she began to learn Hebrew, a mass migration of Lithuanian Jews to Israel began. Those leaving wanted to get at least some of the basics of the language down, so everyone with any knowledge at all was recruited for the effort. "There were so many people, unbelievably many, and objections that you didn't know enough didn't help. It was no longer a personal curiosity or some kind of hobby, I had to prepare lessons responsibly and expand my knowledge," Lempertienė said about the period just before Lithuania's declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.
She recalled working in Lithuania and abroad. "In 1997 I studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and when I got back I was invited to work at two places immediately: at Sholem Aleichem school, and at the Vilnius University Center for Judaica Studies, which later became the Cultural Communities Studies Center which is still operating today. I taught Hebrew language and the basics of the Torah at the Jewish school, and taught biblical Hebrew and traditional Jewish Bible interpretation at the Judaica center. Hebrew language and culture and classic Jewish texts were for a long time my main interest," the Jewish cultural historian who defended her dissertation on the topic of rabbinical literature remembered.
A Multifaceted Culture Where a Self-Taught Craftsman Demonstrates Unexpected Knowledge of Religious Texts
L.Lempertienė revealed it took her a long time to understand the complexity of Litvak culture: "Over a long period of time, studying the Haskala movement (Jewish Enlightenment) which reached great heights in Lithuania in the first half of the 19th century, I realized Hebrew language and culture were an indivisible part of the culture of Litvaks and Eastern European Jews. It is a multifaceted culture, not exclusively Hebrew, not exclusively Yiddish, but simply Eastern European Jewish culture, of many colors." She said she was pleasantly surprised by the intellectual baggage of people who belonged to this culture: "A self-taught craftsman without any formal education in creating the interior of a synagogue demonstrated incredible knowledge of classical texts."
Manuscript Book: Method for Transmitting a Text, or Work of Art?
Asked about the meaning of the book of Jewish culture, Lempertienė stated with a smile the question may be answered in two ways: if briefly, then the meaning is great, but if not so briefly, then very great. Jewish culture is a textual culture from its inception. While manuscript books were considered works of art in mediaeval Europe, in Jewish culture they were primarily a means for transmitting a text. "That caused rapid adoption of Gutenberg's invention of printing among Jewish communities of Europe," Lempertienė commented.
Printing of Jewish books in Lithuania began in a big way at the end of the 18th century. At first, religious literature was expensive because of the long period of time required to arrange and print it. The Romm edition of the Talmud took 20 years to print in Vilnius, from 1860 till 1880, but for that reason, perhaps, this edition of the Talmud with commentary by the Vilna Gaon is studied around the world by orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews and is much valued by scholars.
The high price of books and such high demand for reading materials meant that synagogues became important reading centers. "Many people didn't have finances for collecting books at home, so they organized into reading groups at synagogues which had collections. These groups had their own stamps made and placed them, not just on the book they were reading, but also on supplementary publications; studying Talmud you need to use the Talmudic commentaries, and analyzing a specific religious text you need to use the Talmud itself," Lempertienė explained.
Lines of People Waiting at the Library
The historian said a new stage in Jewish book culture arrived during what could be called the golden age of Jewish books which began with the 18th century and endured until the Holocaust. One of the features of this stage was the emergence of a network of public libraries.
"When bibliophile and collector M. Strashun died in 1885, his will was executed, including the donation of his collection to the Jewish community. The community already had a library, books were held at the Great Synagogue and were accessible by readers there. In his last will and testament Strashun left a building to house a library as well as his large collection of books. The building wasn't ready for hosting a library, the collection wasn't catalogued, and a Jewish public library had no precedent in the Russian Empire, making the acquisition of a license to establish one prolonged. For these reasons the library only opened its doors to the public in 1902," Lempertienė said. She explained there were a hundred seats in the library, but that these weren't sufficient, so people waited in lines for a free chair. Books weren't loaned out to take home, this practice only arrived later and became popular in the period between the two world wars.
Birth of Secular Literature
Another feature of the golden age of the Jewish book was the arrival of a secular literature. While religious literature in Hebrew dominated in the selection of Jewish books until the 19th century, beginning around 1840 a secular literature in both Jewish languages–Hebrew and Yiddish–began to gain currency. Dr. Lempertienė says this process conformed to regional trends, and that the 19th century witnessed the birth of belles-lettres–literature as an art in and of itself–in Eastern Europe.
Yiddish did not become established as a language for religious literature. "The ambitions of the Jewish community in Lithuania were quite grand. It was felt that if you could not command the Hebrew language of religious books, or rather, a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic, then it was better not to admit that. Thus religious literature in Yiddish made up just a small portion of published works," Lempertienė claimed.
The Multilingual Interwar Press
Kaunas and Kėdainiai (Kovna and Keydan) became primary centers for Jewish publishing in the interwar period. And many new Jewish printing enterprises arose which also printed Lithuanian material."These printing presses were now operating in independent Lithuania, so they had Lithuanian fonts if only for printing information about the non-Lithuanian book in Lithuanian on the book's cover," Lempertienė said. "Furthermore, there was swift competition and printing houses began to print all sorts of things, including blank forms, single-edition publications and periodicals in different languages."Lempertienė claims the loss of the Vilnius region in the interwar period stimulated patriotism and civic-mindedness among Jews.
"The efforts by the Jews of Lithuania to liberate Vilnius were just as strenuous as those of Lithuanians. Ideological and literary publications and translations were drafted at the time. In 1928, for example, the Union for Liberating Vilnius published the book "Vilnius in New Jewish Poetry" by Dr. Nachman Shapira, director of the Semitics Department of Vytautas Magnus University, and in 1932 a collection about Vilnius called "Vilnius and the Vilnius Land" was translated to Yiddish.
Mission Impossible? Three Workers amid 50,000 Books
The Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library today has over 50,000 books in its judaicacollection, of which several dozen are unique. Exact numbers are difficult to come by since not all the books have been catalogued. Lempertienė does reveal there are many old treasures among them. "We have books which were published as soon as printing books began in Lithuania. We also have fifty palaeotypes from 1501 to 1550 which weren't published in Lithuania."
The National Library's judaica collection is only a small part of the Jewish book heritage of pre-World War II Lithuania hidden from the Nazis during the war and from the Soviets afterwards. "After the war, thanks to Antanas Ulpis, director of the Book Palace, books were saved and conserved at the St. Jurgis monsatery, where the Book Palace was located and which had ample room for hiding them," Lempertienė explained. She said officially work only began on these books in the early 1980s and is being carried on today by the judaica group, which includes a staff of just three.
"We are always looking out for new potential employees in Lithuania who have some linguistic knowledge and are interested in judaica. Often such a person can bring more benefit than a formally trained bibliographer. Our employee Kristina Dūdaitė, for example, who studied history and learned Yiddish, recently authored an exhibition on the topic of Jewish books. Kristina and her colleagues took books of judaica and visited sites where Jewish printing houses and libraries once operated, and held readings and took photographs at these locations, then placed these on public display along with the judaica itself," Lempertienė recalled, noting further that neither Hebrew nor Yiddish are being taught to Lithuania's up-and-coming book specialists, although foreign students, including from Tübbingen and the Russian Humanitarian University, who do know these languages have come to the Lithuanian National Library to do their internship work as bibliographers.
New York YIVO to Give Lithuanian Judaica the Electronic Eye
Dr. Lempertienė says much has been achieved over 20 years of Lithuanian independence, including the creation of a computerized catalogue of the judaica collection which is part of the National Library's bibliographic database , publication of a survey list called "Lithuanian Books in the Hebrew Language 1759-1900" and currently a list is being prepared of publications in Yiddish and Hebrew from 1900-1940.
So far books from abroad in the Jewish languages have not been included in the computerized catalog and challenges continue to crop up in the digitization and restoration of published works. As of the present time, only Jewish periodicals published inside Lithuania have been digitized, and many of them are available online now at the website:epaveldas.lt . A new joint project with the YIVO institute in New York set to start next year and to reach completion over seven years should increase electronic preservation and conservation of the Lithuanian Jewish book legacy by an order of magnitude."We plan to digitize in cooperation with YIVO Yiddish books YIVO doesn't have but which we do, and books from Strashun's private collection. The result of the project will be a data base accessible to everyone," Lempertienė explained.
Thanks to our interviewee for the conversation and we look forward impatiently to the time when we will be able to learn about Lithuanian judaica electronically.