Vilna’s Jewish Public Library and Its Post-Holocaust Fate

Like his father Shmuel, Matisyahu Strashun (1817-1885) was a successful businessman and an accomplished talmudic scholar, as well as a prominent member of Vilna’s Jewish community. He also participated in the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), then in its heyday in Eastern Europe. In his lifetime, he amassed one of the world’s most extensive Judaica libraries. After his death, the collection took on a life of its own. Dan Rabinowitz writes:

At the time of his death, [Strashun had] amassed a collection of over 5,700 books and manuscripts. His collection included incunabula, rare and controversial works, and manuscripts. . . . Strashun’s collection included rabbinic and Haskalah works, and books in non-Hebrew languages.

At his death in 1885, Strashun left no direct heirs. He did, however, provide for the disposition of his library in his will. In the past, those with large libraries had sold [them] or left [them] to relatives; Strashun [instead] bequeathed his library to the Vilna Jewish community writ large, with instructions to establish a . . . public library. His vision for the library was modeled on “the non-Jewish libraries that he saw in the Diaspora.” To that end, Strashun provided not only the books but also the funds to support the creation and maintenance of the library. . . .

[In the early 20th century], many Vilna scholars donated their collections to the library, and, by the 1930s, [it] had grown to over 35,000 volumes.

In the aftermath of World War II, during which the Nazis had looted the library and removed some of its books to Frankfurt, many of its remaining holdings found a home at the YIVO Institute in New York.

Read more at Seforim

More about: Books, Haskalah, History & Ideas, Holocaust, Vilna

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF