Say ME if you identify with this: ...certain distinctive characteristics have historically been attributed to all Litvaks, who are commonly portrayed in Jewish folklore as cold, calculating, lacking in emotional depth, overly rational, skeptical, and prone to heretical thinking—all in contradistinction to their warmer, more emotive, naive, and pious Jewish coreligionists to the south. Although Litvaks are thus portrayed as being very different from the Jews living throughout southern and western Poland, Hungary, and Romania, the most common stereotypical contrast found in Yiddish literature, music, theater, and folklore is between Litvaks and Galitsianers (Galician Jews), who are viewed as polar opposites in their emotions, intellectual sensibilities, speech, food, dress, and religious demeanor. ...the stereotypical Litvak is portrayed as unemotional, withdrawn, intellectual, and mercilessly critical; he challenges authority and is by nature skeptical, stubborn, and impatient with, and suspicious of, others. The Litvak’s commitment to tradition is suspect; his Judaism purely intellectual. Hyperbolic expressions of the stereotype maintained that even when he is studying Torah, the Litvak has one leg out the door of the bet midrash (study hall), on his way to inevitable apostasy. He studies Mishnah, Talmud, and halakhic codes publicly, went the stereotype, while at the same time furtively glances into Christian scripture or reads Marx and Tolstoy. The Litvak was called, derisively, tselem kopf—meaning, split the head of a Litvak and you’ll find a cross. There was widespread suspicion among Polish Jews that Litvaks somehow lacked a yidishe neshome, an authentic Jewish soul, and that there was something inherently flawed, “goyish” and lacking in authentic Jewish flavor (yidisher tam), about them—the latter confirmed by the Litvak’s austere diet, which contrasted with the sweeter and more complex foods of Galitsianers. While Polish, Galician, and Romanian Jews would typically sweeten the most popular Jewish staple foods (e.g., gefilte fish or kugel) with sugar, cinnamon, raisins, and the like, Litvaks prepared their food with salt and pepper—appropriate, according to the stereotype, to their bitter personalities. “The Galitsianer’s gut is too big, but he has a small head,” wrote Mendele Moykher-Sforim; “the Litvak’s gut is too small, but he has a big head. Most of the traits attributed to Litvaks grew out of, when they were not defined by, developments in East European Jewish history after the late eighteenth century, the most far-reaching of which was the widespread opposition to Hasidism among Lithuanian Jews and the emergence of Vilna as the intellectual capital of East European Jewry. Litvaks, who for the most part were Misnagdim, rejected Hasidic religious enthusiasm and emotionalism and all forms of mystical superstition. In contrast to Hasidim, who maintained a worshipful and unquestioning attitude toward the tsadik or rebbe, the Misnagdic Litvaks tended to question all authority, a tendency encouraged and reinforced by the culture of the yeshivas, where critical learning was prized above piety or blind faith, and no one was above criticism.” ...sources identify a number of mundane characteristics contrasting Litvaks from other Ashkenazi Jews including Yiddish dialect differences, culinary tastes and varying methods of food preparation. They cite the practice of Litvaks in reciting Friday night Kiddush sitting, and point out that when a Litvak prays he stands rock still and only moves his lips. However, these are outward manifestations of a divergence of customs within the larger Ashkenazi Jewish community. In a more general sense Litvaks are characterised as being more rational, dogmatic and authoritarian than other branches of Ashkenazi Jewry. In the popular perception, Litvaks were considered to be more intellectual and stoic than their rivals, the Galitzianers, who thought of them as cold fish. They, in turn, disdained Galitzianers as irrational and uneducated. Yoni Isaacson Menachem Mendel Engel Moshe Kalonymus Fink
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 09:17:40 +0000
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