Reflections on YIVO’s 2018 Lithuania & Poland Study Tour

by ALEX WEISER

Religious, secular, Zionist, Bundist. The makeup of the participants on YIVO’s Lithuania and Poland Study Tour in many ways reflected the diversity of the Jewish world whose remnants we were exploring.

It was a diversity we saw captured in the matseyves of the Jewish cemeteries we visited. The varying cultural, religious, and political convictions of the memorialized were poignantly reflected in various combinations of Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, and Russian inscribed on gravestones that ranged from plain and unadorned to richly ornate, with religious, political, or artistic iconography.

We saw the same kind of diversity in memorial sites and in museums, where the mixed language and divergent narratives reflect the perspectives of those doing the remembering. In many locations there were numerous plaques in different languages sharing the same setting but subtly different narratives.

After pogroms, two world wars, the Shoah, the oppression of Jewry by the Soviet Union, and mass Jewish migrations, the old Jewish world, once a tumultuous hot bed of Jewish culture, is now gone. How this world should be remembered and perpetuated is an open question. Today, we often find ourselves looking back to the old Jewish world for inspiration to create continuity and to build our future on the foundation of the past. In doing so, we are faced with pressing questions: How do we remember that world? How does that world relate to this world? How can and how should this history inform the culture and the political life we create today?

With these questions in mind it was fascinating to visit beautiful synagogues and Jewish community centers throughout Lithuania and Poland—some of which are still active, though with much smaller communities now—trying to answer those questions through the work they do: the upkeep of heritage sites, memorials, education initiatives, community gatherings, and Shabes dinners. We discussed the challenges they are facing: how to make sense of history to create a “usable past”; how to create a Jewish communal space for religious and secular individuals; how to cultivate dialogue between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds; how to relate to Israel in a diaspora Jewish community.

These are many of the same challenges we are facing in New York City today, and these questions are at the root of much of what we do at YIVO as we work to know Jewish history and explore Jewish culture through our collections, events, exhibitions, and education initiatives. YIVO’s Lithuania and Poland Study Tour is a bridge to Jewish individuals and cultural institutions in Eastern Europe and an important step in connecting disparate Jewish communities around the world.

17 participants, ranging in age from late twenties to early eighties, joined YIVO for the 2018 Lithuania & Poland Study Tour, which took place June 19-July 1, 2018. The tour was led by noted historian Dr. Samuel Kassow. Irene Pletka, Vice-Chair of the YIVO Board of Directors, chaired the trip. Alex Weiser is YIVO’s Director of Public Programs.