From the 1880s to the 1920s, an estimated one million Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks) left their native Lita, on the western edge of the Russian Empire, due to the anti-semitism of the Czars. They emigrated to the United States and other countries throughout the world.
The cultural heritage of those Lithuanian Jews is the subject of a new book titled “The Litvak Legacy,” which author Dr. Mark N. Ozer will discuss at the Library of Congress at noon on Thursday, Oct. 15 in the African and Middle Eastern Division Reading Room, located in Room 220 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.
The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division. Tickets are not required.
Ozer, a descendant of Litvaks, is a native of Boston where he trained in modern European history as an undergraduate at Harvard University. Since his retirement as a professor of neurology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, he has written and lectured extensively on the history of cities throughout the world.
{Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}
By Lita, he means a lot more territory than the present small Lithuania. A good chunk of Poland and White Russia is also historically Lita and Jews from those areas observed Lithuanian customs and pronounced an “o” as an “a”.
bialystok, for instance(where my family comes from largely) is now considered poland, but for many years was lita.