History of Jews in Lithuania
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
 Lithuania
|
3,050 |
| Languages | |
| Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Belarusian Jews, Russian Jews, Latvian Jews, Ukrainian Jews, Estonian Jews, Polish Jews | |
The history of the Jews in Lithuania spans the period from the 8th century to the present day. There is still a small community in that country, as well as an extensive Lithuanian Jewish diaspora in Israel, the United States and other countries. For more detail, see Lithuanian Jews.
As early as the 8th century Jews lived in parts of the Lithuanian territory. Beginning with that period they conducted trade between Russia, Lithuania, and the Baltic, especially Jomsborg (Vineta or Wollin, in Pomerania), and other cities on the Vistula, Oder, and Elbe.
The origin of the Jews of Lithuania has been the subject of much speculation. It is believed that they were made up of two distinct streams of Jewish immigration. The older and significantly smaller of the two entered the territory that would later become the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the east. These early immigrants spoke Judeo-Slavic dialects which distinguished them from the later Jewish immigrants who entered the region from the Germanic lands.
While the origin of these eastern Jews is not certain, historical evidence places Jewish refugees from Babylonia, Palestine, the Byzantine Empire and other Jewish refugees and settlers in the lands between the Baltic and Black Seas that would become part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The later and much larger stream of immigration originated in the 12th century and received an impetus from the persecution of the German Jews by the Crusaders. The traditional language of the vast majority of Jews of Lithuania, Yiddish, is based largely upon the Medieval German spoken by the western Germanic Jewish immigrants.
The peculiar conditions that prevailed in Lithuania compelled the first Jewish settlers to adopt a different mode of life from that followed by their western co-religionists. In the Lithuania of that day there were no cities in the western sense of the word, no Magdeburg Rights or close guilds.
With the campaign of Gediminas and his subjugation of Kiev and Volhynia (1320–1321) the Jewish inhabitants of these territories were induced to spread throughout the northern provinces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The probable importance of the southern Jews in the development of Lithuania is indicated by their numerical prominence in Volhynia in the 13th century. According to an annalist who describes the funeral of the grand duke Vladimir Vasilkovich in the city of Vladimir (Volhynia), "the Jews wept at his funeral as at the fall of Jerusalem, or when being led into the Babylonian captivity." This sympathy and the record thereof would seem to indicate that long before the event in question the Jews had enjoyed considerable prosperity and influence, and this gave them a certain standing under the new régime. They took an active part in the development of the new cities under the tolerant rule of Gediminas.
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