S/o dif types of litvaks

zaq

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 2:14 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

Jews in America before the 1700s who maintained their unbroken Yiddishkeit are...I don't want to say unicorns but few and far between.

For the most part and probably for the whole part, they are of Spanish/Portuguese descent. There were few if any Ashkenazic Jews in the New World before the 1800s. The great wave of Eastern European immigration started in the late 1800s and continued through the first half of the 1900s.

Read The Grandees about the Spanish/Portuguese elite of New York. Many Jews of Spanish/Portuguese descent are members of Shearith Israel, aka "The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue," an Orthodox congregation in Manhattan that is the oldest congregation in the US. It dates back to the mid-1600s, though the building itself, designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany of stained-glass fame, goes back only to the 1800s. The congregation moved several times over the centuries as NYC expanded northward and lower Manhattan became more commercial and more crowded. See https://shearithisrael.org/history.

Chayalle

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 2:15 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

Many of the litvish people living in the US today are, as PinkFridge and keym said, descendants of people who came here before World War II, and many before World War I.

Since there was no real Chassidish infrastructure here, the boys who remained frum went to "regular" yeshivos and became litvish. Some kept their old minhagim, but many didn't.

I think many of us have Chassidish/yekkish ancestors. Many may have come from "litvish" areas such as Russia or Lithuania, but many didn't.

Well, in the early days of Torah Vodaas, boys came from all types of backgrounds. The Bostoner Rebbe z'l is an example of a Chassidish Rebbe who learned there.

And I remember reading that I believe the Munkatcher Rebbe learned in Telze.

amother

Dodgerblue

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 2:19 pm

Chayalle wrote:

My grandfather was an Oberlander Hungarian. Three generations of his ancestors were Talmidim of the Chasam Sofer and kept yekkish minhagim. I remember my grandfather told me that his grandfather washed for Hamotzi on Shabbos before Kiddish.

My grandfather's father, however, went to Chassidish yeshivas in another part of Hungary that was more Chassidish, and married my great-grandmother who was from a Chassidish-Hungarian family. He started keeping minhagim like he saw in his yeshiva, many of which were Chassidish minhagim (including his havarah). And I think this happened a lot in Oberland Hungary.

Your husband is not confused, just his family kept their original minhagim.

That’s so cool! Thanks!

amother

Puce

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 2:34 pm

zaq wrote:

I used to work there. I don't think I met a single family that was a descendants of any original families.

It's a beautiful building and an interesting history. But a handful of the families that attended were shomer shabbat. And they were mostly Moroccan.

octopus

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 2:41 pm

I have to agree to an above poster about many litvishe families in america that came before the war to america. Both my family and my husband's family are testament to that. Neither me or my husband would be here if our families had stayed behind in europe as our lithuanian/polish/russian extended families were decimated and we are the remnant. I'm pretty sure the litvishe havara (pronunciation) was basically lost. For example torah would be pronounced teyra not toirah.

amother

Ginger

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 2:42 pm

Chayalle wrote:

Since the German Kehillos were decimated by the holocaust, they don't have their own yeshivos. Many yekke boys learned in Litvish yeshivos and adopted yeshivish/litvish customs (while maintaining some of their own unique minhagim).

(told to my DD by a boy from a yekke/yeshivish family)

It has nothing to do with the Holocaust. Few German kehillos had their own yeshivos even before WWII, and there were no great yeshivos in Germany. Lita was the Torah center of the world at the time, and for advanced torah study, no matter where they lived, most men went to the yeshivos in Lithuania.

Not to trivialize G-d forbid the experience of German Jewry in the Holocaust, and not to pull a one-upmanship of misery, but Polish Jewry wasn't just decimated--it was virtually wiped out. 25% of German Jewry perished vs. somewhere between 91%-98% of Polish and 83% of Lithuanian Jewry (Poland and Lithuania in this context meaning the political entities on the map at the time of WWII, not the Jewish spheres of influence.) Just so you know.

amother

Puce

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 2:43 pm

zaq wrote:

amother

Azure

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 4:06 pm

amother [ Ginger ] wrote:

This is true. I will add, though, there were Orthodox Jewish "day schools" in Germany where girls were educated, too, long before the Bais Yaakov movement got started in Poland.

amother

Ginger

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 4:26 pm

amother copper and azure, you are obviously unfamiliar with Khal Adath Jeshurun, the kehilla founded in Frankfort am Main, made famous by Samson Raphael Hirsch and transplanted to NYC where it's known as "Breuer's" after the first rav of the kehilla in the US. It's less rigid than it was 50 years ago as far as dating --back then the kehilla pretty much married the kehilla and would seldom consider anyone out of it, which is why everyone was related to everyone else, usually in several different ways--but they still do the choir thing, tallis at bar mitzvah age thing, the wimpel thing, the three hours after fleishik thing, the special different nusach for every yomtov thing, the nobody gets a kibbud if he's not wearing a hat thing, etc. etc.

amother

Azure

Fri, Jan 15 2021, 4:37 pm

amother [ Ginger ] wrote:

No I'm not. Where do you think my great grandparents lived when they first came to America in the 30s?? But absolutely none of their many descendants attend that type of shul anymore. Some are modern some are very yeshivish, but absolutely none do any of those besides the 3 hours.
Their grandchildren went to regular day schools or yeshivas and "assimilated"-- sure, my uncles wore a tallis after bar mitzvah, but once they went to yeshiva in the 50s and 60s they wanted to blend in, so they dropped that. They
grew comfortable with the type of davening in their yeshiva, so that's what they stuck with and how they raised their children. They married sisters of yeshiva friends, etc. (My mother married a Litvish yeshiva friend of her brother, my father, lol.)

chanchy123

Sat, Jan 16 2021, 12:34 pm

amother [ Puce ] wrote:

I’ve actually met a Seixus (from the original Portuguese Jews who came to America in the 16th century) I think that’s how you spell it, who was certainly shomer Shabbat, it was cool like meeting a living history.

Raisin

Sat, Jan 16 2021, 2:41 pm

amother [ Ginger ] wrote:

Yes, German Jewry actually wasn't decimated in the same way. a large majority of young German Jews escaped before the war. Those who made it to Britain or the USA or other countries outside mainland Europe survived. The UK frum community was greatly enhanced by the frum Yekkes who came there in the 1930s. Many of the institutions and shuls and schools were started by Yekkes. (hasomonean, Kedassia, etc) Rabbi Jakobowitz was a Yekke.

"Lucy Dawidowicz writes in her book, ``The War Against the Jews'': ``When the Nazis seized power in 1933, 500,000 Jews ... lived in Germany. Subject to terror and an accelerating process of discrimination, isolation, and expropriation ... nearly 150,000 Jews emigrated by November 1938. The pogrom of Nov. 10, 1938 (Kristallnacht), and subsequent German policy of forced emigration hastened the exit of another 150,000 Jews.''

Helen Fine, in ``Accounting for Genocide,'' writes, ``Despite some German Jews initial reluctance to leave ... by September 1941 over two out of every three Jews in Germany in 1933 had fled.'' G. Swisher, Oakland, Calif."

leah233

Sat, Jan 16 2021, 7:02 pm

Chayalle wrote:

There were areas in Poland that were closer to Lithuania and were Litvish.

For example, DH's grandparents are from Brisk and Mir. Poland, and Litvish.

If your definition of Litvish is exclusively based on geography then groups like Stolin and Slonim are also Litvish groups.

( Rebbetzin Kaplan who was as Litvish as you can get was from Slonim)

amother

Turquoise

Sat, Jan 16 2021, 7:42 pm

Chayalle wrote:

What about Washington Heights?

PinkFridge

Sun, Jan 17 2021, 9:24 am

Chayalle wrote:

People think of Torah Vodaas as Litvish. Remember that you also had Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, zt"l, the Hungarian Tanya-teaching head of Torah Umesorah, which most of us have strong connections to, through our chinuch and/or our kids.

As I've said, we're all mutts.

PinkFridge

Sun, Jan 17 2021, 9:26 am

octopus wrote:

Lubavitchers are perpetuating that Smile