Windows to a Lost Jewish Past Vilna Book Stamps

WINDOWS TO A LOST JEWISH PAST VILNA BOOK STAMPS DOVID KATZ WINDOWS TO A LOST JEWISH PAST VILNA BOOK STAMPS V E R S U S A U R E U S UDK 097(474.5) Vi203 © Dovid Katz 2008 ISBN 978-9955-34-126-0 © Versus Aureus Publishers 2008 Contents Preface ..........................................................................................................................................................................7 Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................................................9 The Vilna Gaon’s kloyz ..........................................................................................................................................12 A Christian book at the “Light of Torah” synagogue ..................................................................................14 An early Strashún Library stamp ......................................................................................................................16 A gift to the Strashún kloyz ................................................................................................................................18 A poor man’s book stamp ...................................................................................................................................20 Elegance of a scribal hand ..................................................................................................................................22 Defective, but fixed by proofreader no. 4 .....................................................................................................24 Gitkin’s Bible ............................................................................................................................................................26 A book of many owners ......................................................................................................................................28 Ramailes Yeshiva calls for support ...................................................................................................................30 Gitl of Tatar Street ..................................................................................................................................................32 Chaya-Miriam in memory of her daughter Hinda-Rochel ......................................................................34 A fellow from “Little Shnípeshok” .....................................................................................................................36 The rabbi’s receipt for his son’s tuition fee ....................................................................................................38 The Book of Job at the dairyman’s inn ...........................................................................................................40 Leather merchants’ society .................................................................................................................................42 At the hospital ........................................................................................................................................................44 Mr. and Mrs. Kirzner’s Lubavitch prayerhouse .............................................................................................46 Yiddish literature for a new century, over at Funk’s ..................................................................................48 Hebrew language for the new century, at the other Funk’s ...................................................................50 “Yekopo” ...................................................................................................................................................................52 Yivo (1) .......................................................................................................................................................................54 Yivo (2) .......................................................................................................................................................................56 With love from Vilna — to a prison in Jerusalem .......................................................................................58 Chaikel Lunski .........................................................................................................................................................60 5 The An-sky Society for History and Ethnography ......................................................................................62 A socialist educator donates a religious book .............................................................................................64 The Boys’ School of Mefítsey Haskóle .............................................................................................................66 Hammurabi at the Humanistic Yiddish High School ...............................................................................68 For Hebrew teachers-in-training ......................................................................................................................70 Vilna Tech in Yiddish .............................................................................................................................................72 The family Braz........................................................................................................................................................74 Herzl in Yiddish, printed in Warsaw, read in Vilna ......................................................................................76 Modern Hebrew poetry at the Great Synagogue ......................................................................................78 Daughters of Zion ..................................................................................................................................................80 Sholem Aleichem in Hebrew, in a Yiddishist library ..................................................................................82 When the stamp is crossed out .......................................................................................................................84 Gakhsho: for when the time tolls .....................................................................................................................86 1939 ...........................................................................................................................................................................88 1940—1941 ............................................................................................................................................................90 1942—1943 .............................................................................................................................................................92 After the End ...........................................................................................................................................................94 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................97 6 Preface Like most remarkable cities, Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, has its ghosts of previous peoples that are there no more, and of which only scant traces remain on site. As history goes, the annihilation of its erstwhile Jewish people, who comprised around a third of the population before the war, was both recent and brutally near-complete. It happened in the years 1941 to 1943, when nearly all the city’s Jews were murdered at Ponár (now Paneriai), by the Nazis and their enthusiastic local henchmen. There are diverse ways to “touch and feel” the living Jewish civilization that pulsated through the city’s streets for centuries. By “civilization” we refer to an array of cultures rather than any single one. The vibrant diversity of Jewish Vilna spans the gamut from the most piously religious prayer and study houses and yeshivas to the movements dedicated to modernist Yiddish culture (often affiliated to socialist and social-democratic movements) and to modern Hebrew culture (usually affiliated to the Zionist movement). The Lithuanian-language form Vilnius is the proper way to refer to the city’s present incarnation. But for its classical periods, and right up to the war, the English form Vilna is perhaps most appropri- ate, approximating the name of the city (in alphabetic order!) in Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Russian, and close to the Polish Wilno. In prewar Jewish usage, the notion ‘Vilna’ was itself spelled in three different ways, reflecting three of the Jewish cultures of the city. First, with the word-final Hebrew letter alef (giving Vílno, or in more casual pronunciation Vílne), an ancient Aramaic noun-ending form. And then, from around the turn of the twentieth century, the two competing modernist Jew- ish cultures — and the city became a major international center for both — introduced their own variations on the name of the city. The Yiddishists spelled it with phonetic Yiddish ayin at the end (giving Vílne). The Hebraists respelled the city’s name with the Biblical-style word-final hey, rendered in speech in the “Sephardic” (eventually Israeli) pronunciation, giving: Vílna. And with that, we return to the question of how to fathom today these lost terrains of culture? There are still survivors (alas, fewer with each passing day) of that prewar life. There are the books and magazines and

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