ISSN 1822-5152

tAUŠRA PAULAUSKIENĖ Three Narratives Of Litvak Identity: cahan, Brudno And Stone

Lithuanian and Jewish historiogra- Once formed, the Lithuanian Jew- phies share the myth of the Grand Duchy of ish community continued to evolve as an , a Duchy that came into being in autonomous organism within the bor- the fourteenth century as a result of the uni- ders of historic Lithuania, with little re- fication of Lithuanian tribes and the annex- gard to Lithuania’s shifting political sta- ation of Byelorussia and parts of Ukraine. tus. Its Lithuanianism can be defined by The Encyclopedia Judaica continues to refer its attachment to the land where Lithua- to Lithuania as “grand duchy” after Lithua- nian Jews felt relatively safe and free to nia’s merging with Poland in the sixteenth evolve as a cultural group. The authors century, and sees it as distinct from but not of the Encyclopedia Judaica and the au- inferior or subordinate to Poland (13). thors of recent histories of Lithuanian Even after the partitioning of Polish- Jews unanimously agree that Lithuanian Lithuanian state, Lithuania existed in the Jews were a distinct group of Eastern Eu- memory of its indigenous Jewry. Masha ropean Jewry and that the Grand Duchy Greenbaum claims that “Lithuanian Jew- of Lithuania was a hospitable host to its ry maintained both its Lithuanian and its ethnic minority. Jewish identity under Czarist rule” (160). However, in American scholarship For the Grand Duchy re- Litvak identity is not as conspicuous as mained intact until the emergence of three the umbrella identity of the Russian Jew. states after World War I: independent American Jewish writers of Litvak origin, Lithuania, Byelorussian Soviet Republic, Abraham Cahan for example, are identi- and Poland. Only then was Lithuanian fied as Russian Jews. Thus Cahan’s city Jewry divided among these three states. of childhood and youth, Vilna, becomes

110 o i k o s Lietuvių migracijos ir diasporos studijos ISSN 1822-5152 a Russian city to Cahan’s biographers. nian language as a local peasant dialect. Upon reading American literary criti- Therefore, Russian culture, shunned by cism about Cahan, my first impulse was Lithuanians and the majority of Lithua- to protest Lithuania’s erasure and to in- nian Jews, became a desirable option for form American scholars that Cahan was Cahan. Does that mean that Lithuania a product of Lithuanian, not Russian gets no credit for raising this genius on culture or, at least, a product of Lithua- its soil? nian as well as Russian cultures. How- Abraham Cahan is the most famous ever, Cahan’s autobiography reveals that, transplant from Lithuania in American although born and raised in Lithuania, letters. He is well known as an author Cahan did in fact have very few contacts who recorded Jewish-American immi- with Lithuanian culture. Ezra Brudno’s grant experience in his two novels and a autobiographical novel demonstrates number of short stories. For almost half similar absence of Lithuanian signs. a century, forty-nine years to be exact, Goldie Stone’s autobiography, on the Cahan headed the Jewish Daily Forward. other hand, tells a different story of a Jew He ranks among the great American assimilated and acculturated to Lithua- newspaper editors, while “in the annals nian, not Russian, culture. In these au- of journalism he continues to tobiographical texts, three peers, born in know no peer (Encyclopedia Judaica 14). the 1860s (Cahan) and the 1870s (Stone TheEncyclopedia Judaica calls him an in- and Brudno), record their formative years carnation of the “epic Jewish migration in Lithuania and their transplantation to from Eastern Europe to America” (14). the U.S. in early adulthood. There is no doubt that Abraham Cahan Cahan was born in a village near can be considered one of the most fa- , the Eastern part of ethnic mous Jewish-Americans, and deservedly Lithuania, which held a considerable so. Lithuania should take pride in rais- Slavic, mostly Polish and Belorussian, ing such a talent on its soil, as it takes population. He spent his youth in Vilna, pride in raising Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a the Lithuanian metropolis, which shaped hero of the American Revolution, Adam Cahan as an urbanized and a modernized Mickiewicz, a world-famous poet, or Cz- Jew. The Vilna of Cahan’s time offered eslaw Milosz, the 1980 Nobel Prize win- him three possibilities: to become a rab- ner in literature. binical scholar, to follow the Haskala, or In “Dialogue about Wilno with To- to pursue modernization through accul- mas Venclova,” Milosz wrote, “The city turation. This latter option required an that I knew belonged to Poland and was adoption of a gentile language and cul- called Wilno. . .. Your city was the capi- ture. In Tsarist Russia that language and tal of the Lithuanian SSR and was called culture happened to be Russian. Lithua- Vilnius . . .. Nonetheless, it is the same nian culture of the time was perceived as city: its architecture, the landscape of the a regional folk culture and the Lithua- surrounding region, and its sky shaped

111 us both” (Milosz 23). Abraham Cahan the governmental wealth that contrasted knew the same city when it belonged to with the poverty of Vilna’s Jews. Not sur- the and called it in Yid- prisingly, the “sparkling silver buttons and dish--Vilna. He, like Milosz and Ven- galloons” of gymnasium students fascinat- clova, matured in Vilna/Wilno/Vilnius ed adolescent Cahan, who walked in his and he, like the other two, chose a life of “old brown drab” coat. (75). Seventeen- exile in America. Even if Cahan did not year-old Cahan feels as if his “dearest wish, claim his Lithuanian roots, who can deny [his] fondest hope” was finally fulfilled: “I the fact that Cahan was born, raised and am a student at the Vilna Teacher Train- educated in Lithuania? ing Institute--eating government meals, Despite the undeniable facts that wearing a government uniform” (105). Abraham Cahan came from Lithua- According to Sanders, Cahan was nia and that he was of Litvak stock, his of a small “class of Russified Jews” that American biographers have had grounds was “coming into being” in the nine- to claim a Russian element in his iden- teenth-century Russia (27). Cahan’s Rus- tity. I believe Ronald Sanders put it best sification makes him a minority among when he identified Cahan as “thoroughly Litvaks, especially among small-town a Litvak longing to be a Russian” (29- Litvaks. Urban Vilna facilitated his as- 31). The Education of Abraham Cahan simlation to Russian culture, but even (1969) reveals a tension between Cahan’s among Vilna Jews it was rare. Russifica- Litvak roots and his desire to become a tion implicitly meant rejecting “a good Russian. The Education of Abraham Ca­ many of the practices that had made the han is the English translation of the first Polish and Russian Jews distinctive for so two volumes of Cahan’s autobiography many centuries” (12) ?. Cahan’s desire to written in Yiddish in 1926. Abraham be a “Russian” implies his unwillingness Cahan belonged to a small minority of to be a Litvak. The Education reveals that Litvaks who chose Russification as a way Lithuania was largely invisible to Cahan. to modernization. In his translated autobiography The Education abounds in evidence Cahan records only one encounter with of Cahan’s infatuation with all that is Rus- Lithuanians. While traveling in a hired sian. While Cahan’s parents worked to- cart to “Malat” (Moletai) on a socialist wards ensuring proper religious education mission , he got caught in a heavy rain for their only son, the nine-year-old spent and sought refuge in a tavern: three pennies a week for Russian lessons The tavern . . . was crowded with from another Jewish youngster who was perspiring, pipe-smoking peasants who taught Russian at school. In the 1870s the spoke Lithuanian. I could hardly breathe. number of Jewish gymnasium students I couldn’t understand a word of what was rapidly increasing: “All Vilna seemed they were saying (159). to sparkle with their silver buttons and Later he passed peasant women who galloons” (74). A big attracting force was were “walking barefooted in the rain, car-

112 o i k o s Lietuvių migracijos ir diasporos studijos rying their shoes cradled in their arms” geographical and social distance. A Jew (159). These meager memories suggest of the Pale, a poor and provincial Litvak almost no points of contact between Ca- from the Vilna Jewish ghetto was now han and the native population of ethnic an insider among city-bred, gymnasium- Lithuania. He is a recent graduate of a and university-educated Kiev, Kremen- colonizer-run educational institution chug or St. Petersburg Jews, who spoke and an ardent newly converted socialist Russian as if it was their native language. with an underground mission visiting a In America, Cahan became a “Russian” “backward village” where peasants walk Jew in two meanings of the term. First, barefoot in the rain, smoke pipes in an he achieved a greater degree of accultura- overcrowded tavern and speak a totally tion into Russian culture than he had in unfamiliar language. Lithuania. Second, he fit into the con- However, displacement made Ca- struct of a “Russian” Jew that was used han more aware of his Lithuanian roots. by Americans to identify the Jews from An outsider to Lithuania and Lithua- Russian Empire and to draw a line be- nians, Cahan the emigrant perceives tween them and the German Jews. How- himself as an insider to Lithuanian Jew- ever, the narrative of Cahan’s identity did ishness. Cahan’s ethnic awareness was not stop there. While in America, his born, or at least enhanced, by comparing “Russian” identity contended with his himself to other Jews and seeing himself Lithuanian-Jewish self. through their eyes. Cahan’s allusions to Cahan’s Litvak identity emerged his Litvak identity frequently occur dur- in his discussion with a Russian-Jewish ing his long passage to the United States. revolutionary from Petersburg named He sees other places of the Russian em- Mirovitch, the leader of a propaganda so- pire and meets diverse Jews. The United ciety. “If it is for Jewish immigrants, asks States, in particular, made Cahan aware Cahan, “why are the speeches in Russian of his arrival into a ready niche of pre- and German?” (237). “What language do scribed identity. The first meal in Ameri- you suggest?” Mirovitch asks derisively. ca “smacked of charity and the barracks” “What Jew doesn’t know Russian?” “My (218). Nobody called him a Litvak here-- father,” replies Cahan (237). Mirovitch, he fit into a broader stereotype of a “wild who was not able to speak a word of Yid- Russian” (218). dish himself, could not “imagine a Jew In America the dream of Cahan’s who was unable to understand Russian” youth to belong to the Russian-speak- (237). In Odessa, Kiev or St. Petersburg ing world finally came true. Paradoxi- even uneducated Jews understood Rus- cally, America speeded up and facilitated sian (235). Litvaks could be identified by the process of Cahan’s Russification. It the lack of Russian and the knowledge allowed him to mix with the Russified of Yiddish. Cahan, a rare case of a Russi- Jewish “intelligentsia” that was inac- fied Litvak, was fluent in both languages. cessible to him in Lithuania because of “Well, why don’t you deliver a speech

113 in Yiddish?” offers Mirovitch taunt- cally remembered Russia mostly for its ingly (237). As to many others, the idea brutish, unpredictable violence” (5). of making “a serious political speech in Brudno emphasizes the persecution and this homey language,” suitable only for discrimination that his protagonist, Is- home and market, seemed “comical” to rael, experiences in the Russian empire. him. Cahan accepted the challenge and He models his protagonist’s life story to made “the first socialist speech in - Yid fit the construct of the “Russian” Jew in dish to be delivered in America” (237). American public imagination. His en- A Litvak who had yearned to unlearn tire journey of a “wanderer in search of a Yiddish and who had achieved his dream home” can be interpreted as an encoun- of blending with “Russian” Jews proudly ter with and escape from different mani- acknowledged his roots. The most telling festations of anti-Semitism that deprive evidence of such an acknowledgement him of the feeling of security and belong- was the success of the Yiddish newspa- ing that a home is supposed to provide. per, Jewish Daily Forward, run by Cahan The book records the smashed hope of for almost five decades. Russified Jews to become legitimate sons Ezra Brudno, another Jewish- of their Russian “fatherland.” American author with Lithuanian roots, Despite Brudno’s frequent refer- is an unknown literary figure, hardly ences to Lithuania, a lack of Lithuanian mentioned in American reference books cultural signs makes Brudno’s Lithuania and overlooked by Encyclopedia Judaica. unrecognizable to ethnic Lithuanians. Al- Taken as a whole, Brudno’s six novels though the narrator claims to have been reveal his gradual disavowal of his iden- born in an “old, dirty, lethargic, typically tity as an immigrant and a Jew before his Lithuanian” town (3), he is not consist- American audience. The Old Country ent in his description of the “typical” is present only in the first two, and only Lithuania. He describes frosty “Russian” the first one,The Fugitive (1904) displays winters and dense and deep “genuine autobiographical allusions to Lithuania. Russian forest” (43). The narrator, Israel, Brudno shaped his identity as an Ameri- seems to be using “Lithuania” as a ter- can author by gradually eliminating his ritorial term, referring to a geographical early cultural identity from his literary region of the Empire. “Typically Lithua- work. His autobiographical The Fugitive nian” can be “genuinely Russian” at the also needs to be read with an awareness same time. The cultural and geographi- of Brudno’s desire to suit his audience. cal intersections of the gentile world, the The subtitle, “memoirs of the wanderer distinctions between the colonized and in search of a home,” fits the image of a the colonizer, are blurred in the childish persecuted “Russian” Jew who finds his memory of the protagonist. new homeland in the United States. Israel’s Lithuanian period holds but Steven J. Zipperstein remarks that few elements that can be construed as “before the 1950s typi- characteristically Lithuanian: “a tall black

114 o i k o s Lietuvių migracijos ir diasporos studijos cross standing somberly in the centre of literature in general. Although Brudno the marketplace,” a water-mill at one end annihilates the beauty of this spiritually of the town and a windmill at the other uplifting scene by turning it into a vio- end, the “bluish-green forests, waving lent anti-Semitic attack, the description wheatfields, and blossoming orchards” suggests that Brudno had such encoun- (3). The most familiarly Lithuanian scene ters with the folk culture of local gentiles in the novel is Israel’s description of gen- and was able to appreciate its charm. tile boys whose activity, appearance and To both Cahan and Brudno, behavior suggest their Lithuanian ethnic- Lithuania was visible only as the Jewish ity. After the fire destroys his native town, Lithuania in the bondage of the Russian Israel wanders in the forest and encounters empire. Their unawareness of the Lithua- a group of “swineherds” (49). Unnoticed nian element of the geographic place by them, he watches five boys dressed in called Lithuania confirms the observa- shirts and trousers of unbleached linen, tions of numerous Jewish and Lithua- barefooted, their flaxen hair hanging nian historians about the isolation of the around their shoulders “like fringes of raw Lithuanian Jewish community from the hemp” (49). The boys’ appearance is char- Lithuanian community. Lithuanian Jew- acteristic of, but may be not exclusive to, ish identity is recognizably Lithuanian Lithuanian ethnicity. when compared to other European Jew- “As I watched them,” Israel remem- ish identities. However, Lithuanian Jew- bers, “ they took up their pipes, made ishness has little to do with Lithuanian- of willow bark, and in turn played their ness of ethnic Lithuanians. The same peasant melodies” (47). It is the only epi- land fed the roots of two very different sode in the novel when the narrator ad- groups of people. mires the local peasant culture. He finds On the other hand, due to the their melodies “sweet, eloquent, wild, yet demographic situation of nineteenth- how simple” (47). He reads “in their rus- century Lithuania, some Jews had con- tic airs their people’s history, their char- siderably more contacts with ethnic acter, their manners, their hopes and as- Lithuanians than others. Brudno most pirations” (47-48). He even envies these probably grew up in Eastern Lithua- boys and expresses a wish to adopt their nia among a mixed and predominantly culture, to be one of them. “Envy filled Slavic population. Abraham Cahan was my heart. I wished I, too, were a swine- raised in a major Lithuanian city, Vilna, herd rolling over deep grass in the shade where Jews composed more than a half of of trees and piping melodies” (48). This the city’s population, while Lithuanians tenderly rendered pastoral scene can be barely composed two percent. Howev- read as a rare case of a Jewish desire to er, in certain areas of ethnic Lithuania, identify with a peasant gentile culture, Lithuanians constituted a majority and not only in Brudno’s work but in the Jews a minority of population. It would turn-of-the-century Jewish-American be expected that proximity to each other

115 would bring into contact even separate and “riding or trudging to and from field communities. Goldie Stone’s autobiogra- and church” (3). Stone’s descriptions em- phy confirms this hypothesis. phasize the hospitality and simple beauty Goldie Stone grew up in “Suv- of Lithuanian homes. Stone sees “cheer- alkai,” or “Suwalk,” as she spells it. Her ful” flower gardens at every house (21), original name is Olga Tuvin--Goldie is “brightly colored ribbons” in Lithuanian Yiddish for Olga and Tuvin is her maiden girls’ hair (21), and “gay colored wool” name. My Caravan of Years: An Autobiog­ (46) used for home-made garments. raphy (1945), set in the same time period While observing Lithuanian weavers, she as Brudno’s autobiographical novel and hears the shuttle and “nimble fingers” Cahan’s autobiography, at the turn of the play a “soundless song of content” (46). twentieth century, is a memory about a The poetic image of a singing loom could recognizably Lithuanian past. Stone’s text be related to actual songs Olga used to reveals a unique case of Lithuania’s visibil- hear Lithuanians sing. “Often they sang ity to a Lithuanian Jew. Another unique to me their ‘dainos’ or ballads” (50). Stone aspect of Stone’s recorded memory is a uses the Lithuanian word for “song” and picture of positive symbiosis between translates it as “ballad” to suggest their Lithuanian Jews and ethnic Lithuanians, specific Lithuanian character and their and even a case of a certain acculturation special role in Lithuanian culture. of a nineteenth-century Jew to Lithua- Olga feels welcome in the homes nian culture. In this respect, Stone’s per- of her Lithuanian friends and in the sonal memory of her Lithuanian past Lithuanian parish school. Stone makes contradicts not only into the dominant the point that the mixed gentile-Jewish trend of memory among American Jews community of her native Ploksh lives in but also violates the belief in the aloofness a friendly atmosphere of mutual respect of Lithuanian Jews to Lithuanian culture of differing religions and cultures. Polish and statehood entrenched in Lithuanian Graf Katil, who owns an estate in Ploksh, historiography. invites Tuvin to dinner and goes to ex- “We spoke Lithuanian in the tremes to accommodate the ’s com- village” (24), Stone reminisces, and re- plex Jewish dietary laws. The Lithuanian veals that the village was predominantly Bishop, Father Gregory, is well versed in Lithuanian and that all her family could Hebrew and is a frequent guest in Rabbi speak Lithuanian. The narrator’s memo- Tuvin’s house. Stone emphasizes the idyl- ry recreates the scenery of the town with lic coexistence of Jews and gentiles in her “the little wooden church on top of the town. There are rumors of pogroms in hill with its gabled steeple pointing im- neighboring villages, visiting robbers of periously at the sky” (3). It caters to the Catholic churches, “ignorant” Russian needs of Lithuanian peasants, who are peasants in other villages, but nothing inscribed in Olga’s memory as “laugh- disturbs the pastoral atmosphere of Ol- ing,” wearing “gay colored costumes” ga’s Lithuanian town. Stone’s portrayal of

116 o i k o s Lietuvių migracijos ir diasporos studijos gentile-Jewish relationships in her native and the voice of an informed adult nar- Lithuanian Suwalk contrasts sharply with rator reveals a knowledge of Lithuania’s the customary depiction of hostility and history that she must have acquired later. violence towards the Jews in the Russian Her familiarity with such facts as Lithua- Empire and Eastern Europe. nia’s relative independence in the union In spite of Lithuania’s non-exist- with Poland, its loss of statehood in 1795, ence as a political unit, Olga’s father, the closure of Vilnius University by the Rabbi Tuvin, sees Lithuanians as the na- Russian Tsar after the 1831 uprising or tional populace of the land and supports the prohibition of Lithuanian press sug- Lithuanian nationalist aspirations. As a gest her self-identification as a Lithuanian Lithuanian Jew, he considers himself in- Jewess. Even as an immigrant in the Unit- digenous to the land and identifies him- ed States, she had maintained the mem- self as a Lithuanian. “We, as Lithuanians, ory about and an interest in her native Jews and Christians alike, have much in land and its people. Since she emigrated common,” declares the Jewish rabbi to to America at the age of fifteen, younger the Catholic priest (16). Tuvin estab- than Cahan and Brudno, she could have lishes a link between Lithuanians and forgotten her Lithuanian roots as easily as Lithuanian Jews through parallels in their they did. Olga Tuvin did not forget those national histories, “You, in spite of re- roots because she possessed a conscious- peated invasion by both Teuton and Slav, ness of a Lithuanian Jewess. . . . , have maintained a distinct Lithua- The exceptionality of Stone’s por- nian individuality, and . . . . . have clung trayal of Jewish-Gentile relationships in to and preserved your language”(16). By the general pool of historical and fic- making her father the spokesman, Olga tional accounts can be explained by her Tuvin draws a parallel between Lithua- nostalgic-retrospective view of her native nian and Jewish histories of persecution town and country, by her exceptional up- and establishes a bond between the two bringing in a family with a deep-rooted oppressed nations, both of which live in tradition of tolerance and, most impor- exile, whether physical or spiritual. Stone tantly, by her ideological agenda. Stone presents historical facts from the point seeks to challenge the stereotype of the of view of a Lithuanian nationalist. She “Russian” Jew in American imagination informs her readers that “printing in the and to critique America’s tendency to ex- Lithuanian language” was “prohibited” tinguish the diversity of its immigrants (50). She mentions the so-called “moth- by assigning them into large, suppos- er’s” school and the nationalist newspaper edly homogeneous groups. She empha- “called ‘Auszra’ or Dawn,” which was pub- sizes the cultural tolerance that she and lished in “Tilsit in East Prussia” (51). her family practiced and experienced in Since Olga Tuvin lost her father Lithuania to juxtapose it with a lack of when she was only seven, the specific his- similar respect for cultural differences she torical allusions that she puts in his lips had encountered in America. Olga Tuvin

117 leaves for America in 1889, only half a of our laws and our literature were pre- decade later than Cahan, or Brudno’s served by our Russian, Lithuanian and autobiographical Israel. Like Cahan and Polish Jews. (180) Brudno, she finds herself in the assigned By writing her autobiography, niche of a “Russian” Jew. She arrives as Goldie Stone presented her American au- a Lithuanian Jewess and a Tuvin, but dience with a unique portrait of a Jewess America meets her as if she were a stere- from the Russian Empire. She painted her otypical Jew from the Russian empire. self-portrait to challenge the stereotype Olga’s first appearance in Ameri- of a “Russian” Jew in American imagina- can society hurts her, a representative of tion. Her retrospective vision of Lithua- Old World aristocracy. The society that nia, too, served her ideological purpose. she had known in Lithuania “respected Olga Tuvin’s nostalgic, idealistic view of education, culture, religion and refined her father and her childhood home per- manners” (108). She had been taught sonalized her experience as a non-typical “consideration for the feelings of others” “Russian” Jewess for American readers. (108). “Now,” she says, “I was mocked A romanticized and idealized vision of because my lips could not glibly pro- her native Lithuania created a picture of nounce the words of a newly acquired a multicultural symbiosis, which com- tongue, although I knew five languages pared positively with non-differentiating well” (108). “Americans discriminated America. against foreigners, seemed to consider Stone’s autobiography demon- them as belonging to a lower social or- strates that the beauty and spirituality der,” observes Olga with bitterness (94). of Lithuanian rural culture was visible to In America, Olga retains her identity as some Litvaks. Although the Tuvins clung a Lithuanian Jewess. At the same time, to their culture and religion, they were she develops a sense of solidarity with aware that they were living in a colo- “Russian” or Eastern European Jewry, nized country with its distinct culture. with whom she shares the assigned iden- They felt integrated and comfortable tity and the status of an underprivileged among their Lithuanian neighbors. One sort of American Jewry. Upon hearing a could find less favorable descriptions of German Jewish lady’s insulting remark rural Lithuania in Lithuanian literature, about “Russian” Jews, Olga feels as if her with its social problems and human father is pushing her forward to assert vices. However, Stone chooses to gaze at her identity. Although by her marriage to Lithuania nostalgically, and her vision Julius Stone she considers herself a full- is atypical and exceptional in the whole fledged American, Goldie Stone proudly picture of Litvaks gazing back at Lithua- acknowledges her roots: nia and American Jews gazing back at As a Lithuanian Jewess and in a Eastern Europe. sense belonging with the Russian Jews, As noted by Zipperstein, Eastern may I point out that the rich treasures Europe, despite its increased positive as

118 o i k o s Lietuvių migracijos ir diasporos studijos well as negative significance in American one should not ignore neglected testimo- Jewish imagination since the 1950s, “was nies that challenge some widely accepted emptied, drained of color, texture, and generalizations. Such a-typical memories complexity” (94). What remained was as Goldie Stone’s My Caravan of Years “little more than the name of a town, confirm that generalizations simplify but a province, perhaps a river” (94). The sometimes also distort the truth. Stone’s uniformity and vagueness of Eastern Eu- unusual account of her Lithuanian past rope in the American Jewish imagination and her Lithuanian-Jewish identity does blended with the general image of an not deny the idea of the lack of identifica- indefinite and colorless region, marked tion of Lithuanian Jews with the Lithua- by its “otherness” in the Western imagi- nian polity and Lithuanian culture. Nor nation. Goldie Stone colors one spot in does it deny the image of Russia as the that gray region. Moreover, Stone’s indi- “land of bondage, slavery, oppression, vidual memory challenges two dominant and tyranny” (Milbauer 360) shared by beliefs about the Lithuanian-Jewish past. most American Jewish people of letters. One of the beliefs is that of most Lithua- However, it adds an interesting element nian historians that Lithuanian Jews into the general picture of the Eastern were alien to Lithuanian culture and the European Jewish past, challenges the idea political aspirations of Lithuanians. The of the un-changeability of some widely second belief is that of American histo- accepted images, and invites Western rians and literary scholars that the whole scholars to re-imagine Eastern Europe, of Eastern Europe was a place of consist- past and present, as a place of historical ent bondage and tyranny for its Jews. and cultural variety instead of a place of Although both statements are based vaguely familiar uniformity. on historical research and testimonies,

References

Brudno, Ezra S. The Fugitive: BeingM emoirs of Jewish Literature. Ed. Lewis Fried et al. New a Wanderer in Search of a Home. New York: York: Greenwood, 1988, 357-389. Doubleday, Page & Co, 1904. Milosz, Czeslaw. Beginning with My Streets: Cahan, Abraham. The Education of Abraham Essays and Recollections. Trans. Madeline Cahan. Trans. Leon Stein, Abraham P. Conan G. Levine. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, and Lynn Davison. Philadelphia: The Jewish 1991. Publication Society of America, 1969. Sanders, Ronald. The Downtown Jews: Portraits Encyclopedia Judaica. Vol. 5. New York: Mac- of an Immigrant Generation. New York: Har- millan, 1971 per & Row, 1969. Greenbaum, Masha. The Jews of Lithuania: A Stone, Goldie. My Caravan of Years: An Autobi- History of a Remarkable Community 1316 - ography. New York: Bloch, 1945. 1945. Jerusalem: Gefen, 1995. Zipperstein, Steven J. Imagining Russian Jewry: Milbauer, Asher Z. “Eastern Europe in Ameri- Memory, History, Identity. Seattle: University can-Jewish Writing.” Handbook of American- of Washington, 1999.

119 Aušra PAULAUSKIENĖ

Trys litvakų tapatumo naratyvai: cahan, brudno ir stone Lietuvos žydai, dar vadinami lit- bendraamžio Ezra Brudno identiteto vakais, pasižymėjo jiems būdingu naratyvas panašus, tik emigracijoje jis identitetu ir lojalumu LDK. Tačiau jų transformuojasi ne atgal į litvakišką, bet žydiškumas, anot istorikų, nedaug siejasi į amerikietišką. Trečios tos pačios kar- su lietuviškumu ir Lietuvos valstybin- tos litvakų atstovės, Goldie Stone, taip gumu. Vieno žymiausių Lietuvos žydijos pat emigravusios į JAV, autobiografija atstovų JAV, Abraham Cahan, autobio­ pabrėžia lietuvių ir žydų simbiozę bei grafija patvirtina šią nuomonę. Cahan litvakų lojalumą tiek lietuviškumui, tiek Lietuvos valstybingumui.

120 o i k o s Lietuvių migracijos ir diasporos studijos