Education and the Yiddish language. Litvaks put a strong emphasis on education. Four to five-year-old boys were required to attend a cheder, an elementary religious school. They knew two languages, Hebrew, with elements of Aramaic, and Yiddish. Hebrew was for religious education, liturgy and law. Yiddish was used at home, and it was also a literary language from the middle of the 19th century. Both Hebrew and Yiddish are written from right to left. Learning Hebrew was difficult for children, because only the consonants were written, and unknown words had to be guessed at from the context of the sentence. The Yiddish language, which was based on the language of tenth-century Germany, had vowels in its script.
To make their studies more fun for children, in 1920 Benzion Zukerman published the illustrated Yiddish book Kinstlerisher alef beys (The Alphabet in Art). Visitors to an exhibition in Kaunas in 1920 were fascinated by the richness of the decoration of the prints, and by the artist’s boundless fantasy. The poet Adomas Jakštas wrote: ‘Everything has its place: oriental nature, its fauna and flora, religious symbols, traditional Jewish ornamentation, and various types of Jews. In one letter, you can see an old Jew with the Bible or the Talmud peeking through the decoration; in another, the Egyptian-style head of a Jewish boy, or women’s heads, or a Torah, a seven-branched candelabrum, a hexagonal star, or other Jewish details. It is all combined very beautifully in various ways, with the sense of a true artist, and it makes a very good impression’ (1920, Laisvė, 2:4).
Text author Vilma Gradinskaitė
Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album
STORIES OF LITVAK ART (2023). Compiler and author Vilma Gradinskaitė
