The Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department announced they are already planning for this year’s European Day of Jewish Culture and have selected a theme, “The Diaspora and Heritage: The Shtetl.” They characterized the choice as an intentional, mature and topical one for a country where the formerly large Jewish ethnic and religious minority thrived until the 1940s in shtetls.
They explained the word “shtetl” means small town in Yiddish. “When the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., Jews spread throughout the world, starting a new stage in the existence of the people, life in the Diaspora. Jews who settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the latter half of the 14th century and their descendants are called Litvaks. They are a branch of the Ashkenazi, Jews fleeing persecution in the German lands in the Middle Ages,” the department noted in a press release.
They continue: “It’s possible the origins of the shtetls reach back to the 18th century, but one shouldn’t get the mistaken impression that every historical Lithuanian Grand Duchy or Lithuanian town may be called a shtetl. Not so! Only a town where Litvaks comprised up to half, and often more, of the population and where the spirit of Litvak enterprise and intellectual ferment was felt can be called a shtetl without reservations.”
Department director Diana Varnaitė is quoted in the press release: “The reality in Lithuania is such: if we want to learn more about the material and immaterial cultural heritage (stylistic features of buildings and ‘aura,’ demographic changes and reflections of those changes in the structure of the town and finally shifts in the political order and the ideological canon of construction they introduced) of a given historical town, sooner or later we cannot avoid the word ‘shtetl.’ There is no better opportunity than the events of European Day of Jewish Culture on September 3 for understanding what this means and trying to discern the shtetl in parts of existing town buildings and in the overall layout of the town.”
The Cultural Heritage Department under the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture has been coordinating European Day of Jewish Culture events in Lithuania since 2004, according to the press release. Last year participants learned the Yiddish names of well-known Lithuanian cities and towns: Joniškis was and is Yanishok, Pandėlys is Pandele, Eišiškės is Eyshishok, Kėdainiai is Keydan, Šiauliai is Shavl, and Rokiškis is Rakishok, among many others. This year the department is promising a kind of time travel where experts will conduct surveys with the public of town squares with an towards surviving Jewish heritage, “looking for our heritage and history” beginning from simple red-brick houses.