Born in Vilna, Soviet Lithuania.
B.SC. & M.SC., Electronic Engineering, Tel-Aviv University.
Ph.D., Jewish Studies, Tel-Aviv University.
Researching the East-European Jewry in the 19th and the 20th centuries with emphasis on the Lithuanian Jews.
Living in Elkana, Western Samaria.
After many very satisfying years of innovative engineering career, I decided to make a turn to Jewish history in general and to the history of the Lithuanian Jewry in particular.
As known, 95% of the Jews of independent Lithuania were cruelly massacred, mostly during the first months of the German invasion into Lithuania. While the designers of their murder were the Nazis, the executors were mostly the local Lithuanians - some of them close neighbors and previous friends of the Jews (read more about it in David Bankier's book, Expulsion and Extermination).
This total annihilation erased almost completely any trace of the Lithuanian Jewry, which was very influential among East European Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries. The achievements of this Jewry were the Yeshiva world on one side and the Bundist world on the other side, the Musar movement, the "Mithnagdim", the Lithuanian Yiddish (which became standard in Yiddish literature), the Jewish Lithuanian food, and much more. All this was doomed to forgetfulness.
My parents were luckily saved from the horrible fate of their close relatives in Lithuania (why and how read in my mom's book "From the Ends of the Earth"), and I was born after the war in Lithuania. Hence I have felt a holy duty to research and tell the story of this vanished world of the Lithuanian Jewry. A beginning of it you can find at this site in the important books which you can purchase and in the interesting articles which you may download.
Services:
- Translation of documents, newspapers and letters from Yiddish.
- Professional guidance of trips to Lithuania.
- Editing Hebrew articles.
- Delivering lectures about East European Jewries.
Optional lectures:
Russian Jewry:
- The Gradual Elimination of Jewish Life in the Soviet Union in the Interwar Period
- The Fascinating Story of Jewish Exiles in the Arctic Circle During WWII
East-European Jewry:
- The Caracteristics and Uniqueness of the Lithuanian Jewry
- The Jews and the Bund in the 1905 Revolution in Russia and Poland
- The Mass Exile of Lithuanian Jews in the First World War and its Spiritual Effects
- The National and Cultural Autonomy of the Lithuanian Jews in the Interwar Period
- The Position of the Rabbinical Association in Lithuania Between the Two World Wars
- The Dilemmas of Orthodox Judaism in Poland in the Interwar Period
- The Jews of the Baltic Countries Between Soviet Annexation and German Occupation
The Torah World in Eastern Europe:
- The Foundation of the Modern Lithuanian Yeshiva World in Eastern Europe
- The Musar Movement and the Lithuanian Yeshiva in the Russian Empire
- The Yeshiva World in Exile During the First World War
- The Golden Age of the Lithuanian Yeshiva in Eastern Europe in the Interwar Period
- Protest and Violence in the Lithuanian Yeshivas in Eastern Europe
- The Revolution of Vaad Hayeshives in the Polish Kresy in the Interwar Period
- Tifereth Bachurim: A Broad Torah Learning Movement for Young Members of the Working Classes in Interwar Lithuania and Poland
- Beith Yaakov: A Large-Scale Women's Religious Movement in Lithuania Between the Two World Wars
- The Yeshiva World in Wanderings During World War II
Torah Figures in Eastern Europe:
- The Revolutionary Rabbi - Rabbi Itzele Rabinovitch of Ponevezh
- The Original Image of Rabbi Shimon Shkop, Head of the Grodno Yeshiva
- A Worldwide Operation of Writing a Torah-Scroll on the Chofetz-Chaim's Name
- Visits to Eretz-Yisroel by the Heads of the Lithuanian Yeshivas
Holocaust Days in Lithuania:
- The Jews in the Large Ghettos of Lithuania: Vilna, Kovna and Shavl
- "The Most Terrible Days": Aktion of the Children and Elderly in the Kovna Ghetto
- The Systematic Process of the Extermination of the Jews in the Lithuanian Province
- The Total Destruction of the Telz Community
- Resistance of Jews During the Destruction of the Lithuanian Jewish Communities
- The Clergy and the Rabbis in the Holocaust of the Lithuanian Provincial Jewry