Although a lot of people are still away on vacations, in a last desperate attempt to rest before the next school year begins, my talk today will be a typical "what I did last summer" story.

I went to Lithuania.

For the seventh time.

I did spend time with our sister congregation in Kovne, the new "Hasidim": they are mostly fine, and Miriam, who was here in Washington last November, asked about everyone at TI; but they realize now that without a Torah, they are and will remain, very limited in the services they can conduct, even when special rabbis or rabbinical students come to spend holidays with them. Although they are registered with the state government as an official religious entity, they are not being recognized by any Jewish groups outside Lithuania. One result is that, this summer even while I was in Lithuania, an important rabbi visited from Israel, and recommended that a huge stash of Torah scrolls --confiscated by the Germans but hidden from the Soviets in Vilne---that this collection of scrolls be sent to Israel since "there are no Jews in Lithuania who need them". I can attest that there are at least 4 other groups of Jews who are waiting for Torah scrolls in Lithuania. This kind of attitude from the very people whom the Lithuanian Jews had hoped would send help, is finally beginning to depress the local Jews.

There is not a happy ending in sight for that situation. But I was able to help with an antidote for another part of Eastern European Jewish culture that was crushed by several political regimes.

Still another group of Israelis came to Lithuania for a tour---perhaps half of the group was people who had been born in Lithuania. One of our "Kovner Hasidim" , a woman named Asia, was their tour guide. At the beginning of the tour, there was the usual negotiating about what language would be best for the group. Everyone understood Yiddish; most could speak Yiddish with ease; but the Israeli leader said the tour MUST be conducted in English or Hebrew: to use Yiddish---even in Eastern Europe, even when giving place names and family names in Yiddish pronunciation--- was "out of the question".

This gave Asia a new phrase in English--"out of the question". And, this attitude of dismissal from Jews who wish to distance themselves from the thousand-year old European Jewish culture because it ended badly in 1944, used to cause Asia some amount of anguish.

But this time she told her mother and me about it with a hearty laugh and a shake of her head, sure this time that they were crazy, not she---because just the week before, she had received, at Vilnius University in Vilne, a certificate confirming her completion of an intensive course in Yiddish Language and Literature.

Yiddish is Asia's native language, her real mame loshn, or mother tongue. She spoke no other language until she began school when she was 6 years old, in the 1950s, and was taught Lithuanian. Still, Yiddish remained the language of her home, of her parents and grandparents. But, like all other post-war Jewish children under the Soviets, she could never learn to read or write in the Hebrew alphabet. What an anomaly! What flowing, flawless Yiddish, without being able to read the words themselves!

She was not the only one--Roza, a curator at the Jewish Museum in Vilne; and Yudis, a historian there, could speak Yiddish but not read or write. So, several years ago--in fact, during the Government shut-downs--I invented a short course, with word charts and an audio tape, for those people to teach themselves.

But it was too difficult, without a live teacher.

Last year, Dr. Dovid Katz, a famous Yiddish linguist who founded the school for Yiddish in Oxford, England, obtained minimal financial support to attempt to create a Summer Course in Lithuania. The financial support really was minimal---but Yiddish fanatics lept at the opportunity to teach Yiddish, and to do it in Vilne, a town AS famous for Yiddish literature as it is for the vilner sha"s , that definitive edition of the Talmud. I of course was first in the line of fanatics, right after Dovid, and bought my own plane ticket to go there to work all summer for an Eastern Euopean salary.

Would enough students come to pay for the facilities?

Would any Americans come? Were they more afraid of Russian tanks in the streets, or of a rumored lack of toilet paper?

Rabbi Khaym Eyzer Grodzhinski, rabbi of Vilne until his death by natural causes in 1940, declared that G-d has specially blessed Vilne because He had opened the city to all yeshive students fleeing German persecution. Without opening a discussion about what happened between R' Grodshinski's remark and this Summer Course, the streets of Vilne and the classrooms at the University felt like a place truly blessed this summer.

Enough students came:

71 students from 14 countries
41 students from America and Western Europe
30 students from Eastern Europe, all on full scholarships

The youngest was a 13-year-old girl who lives in Vilne, whose grandfather was a famous Yiddish writer. The oldest was Avrom, an 82-year-old man from New York, whose family came from Vilne.

But that's not all-- 15 people came from America; but there were students from Finland, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Germany and South Africa. Of the 30 Jewish and non-Jewish Eastern Europeans, 15 came from parts of Lithuania; 11 came from Belarus; 2 from Russia, and 2 from Poland.

The single common language was Yiddish.

They were beginners who could not speak a complete sentence, and they were advanced students who came to read whole books of literature. And they were those native speakers like Asia, who left at the end of the course empowered, enabled now to read.

A miracle, a nes !! She didn't believe it could happen.

Roza and Yudis went back to their jobs at the Jewish Museum, where they use their new skills every day in their work. This is the critical factor of putting Yiddish back where it came from--in the future we must turn some of the same native speakers into teachers, and we will have succeeded in replanting a tiny corner of this once-vast garden.

The leaders of the Jewish Community in Vilne were visibly thrilled at this infusion of energy and joy into their society; social figures and businessmen came to address the classes in Yiddish; a 19-year-old Vilne woman led folk-singing sessions; Yiddish writers and activists were bussed in from Belarus to give lectures on literature, history and the states of their communities; at the one working synagogue, there were so many guests each Shabes that not everyone could have an aliye; a Conservative rabbi from New Jersey read Torah; Survivors from the Holocaust gave walking tours of what is left of Jewish streets and architecture; there was a day-trip to a shtetl, a small town outside of Vilne.

Alts af yidish, everything in Yiddish.

There are no Russian tanks and there is plenty of toilet paper; there is a kosher place to eat at the Lubavitchers' new center in town, and, for those who eat in restaurants there are many fine cafes and kavinas. There are flowers everywhere and the vegetables are fresh and sweet.

The Americans went away very happy, even reluctant to leave.

As one put it, when you make a Yiddish course in New York or Oxford, the environment is a little artificial; In Vilne everyplace you step was stepped on by Yiddish-speaking Jews. Also---unless you know Lithuanian---you cannot cheat and revert to English--alts af yidish! ---I can still hear Dovid shouting.

Another advantage of having the Yiddish course in Eastern Europe is the friendships that are made among people who would otherwise never, ever, meet. A woman in Mount Kisco, New York, is now writing to a woman in Lithuania. A law professor from Indiana found a new friend in the woman he rented a room from---she is an editor of the Yiddish newspaper in Vilne. Books and newspapers are being sent now to Minsk, from a California woman who found out that they have little new to read there.

There were actually Americans who went to the territories of the former Soviet Union yemakh shemo who forgot that anything had happened to the Jews there between the Holocaust and today. OOOOOpps! They won't forget again---they did not find greyed-out, depressed people---they found ground-down people who never gave in to the grinding, and the foreigners have come away inspired. Yiddish was not the only new language they learned.

The graduation ceremonies on the last Friday of the course were attended by a representative from the President of Lithuania; an attache from the American and German Embassies; the Rector of Vilnius University; the Chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania; members of the Jewish and non-Jewish communities, all the students and some of their families; reporters from Lietuvos Rytas , a daily newspaper, and Lithuanian State Television.

The diplomas handed out that day were the first certificates of Yiddish accomplishment given in Vilne since 1940.

During those days I would stand looking out over a room of people from opposite sides of the world talking about their lessons or their children, in Yiddish; or would walk to the university in the morning, turn a corner and hear Yiddish in the street; or would stay late in the office xeroxing copies of Mendele's Fishke der krumer for the advanced class. The teachers would look at one another and say, "s'iz dos a kholem?" is this a dream? Our answer would be "I don't care!" or "Don't wake me up!"

I borrowed a slogan from Herzl some time ago--after all, it worked for him--"ven me' vilt es, s'iz nit ken kholem" If you will it, it is not a dream.

But I am not the first to have this dream, although I am living it for quite a few other people. One of them is Dorothy Bilik, once my Yiddish teacher at the University of Maryland, later a colleague and friend. Last year, when I came back from Lithuania, she decided that she would go with me next summer. Her father had come from there, and she had never seen it although she felt a strong attachment to it. Unfortunately, Dorothy died on the last day of 1997, and I had to go to Vilne without her. But if she could fly, as she believed that she would "on the other side", then she was in Vilne with everyone else. Dorothy had a whacky sense of humor, and she and I sometimes made up "Jew" words to popular songs---"I only wanna be with Jews" instead of "I only want to be with you" and so on. More true now in Vilne than ever, I saw part of our dream come true, and can sing for Dorothy, "I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing Jews".

Tina Lunson
parshas shoftim
29 August 1998
Tifereth Israel Congregation