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Category: Cemeteries & Epitaphs

Life After Death: The Afterlife of Tombstone Inscriptions in the Old Jewish Cemetery of Vilna

Life After Death: The Afterlife of Tombstone Inscriptions in the Old Jewish Cemetery of Vilna

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The ultimate purpose of any Jewish cemetery is to provide a resting place, with dignity, for the Jewish dead. Jewish law and custom have played a major role in regulating almost every aspect of burial from the moment of death through the funeral itself, the period of mourning that follows the funeral, and – ultimately – the erection of a tombstone over the grave. Once the tombstone is in place, the living return to the cemetery for occasional visits, usually…

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The Paper Brigade’s Recording of Epitaphs in Vilna’s Old Jewish Cemetery: A Literary Analysis

The Paper Brigade’s Recording of Epitaphs in Vilna’s Old Jewish Cemetery: A Literary Analysis

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I. Introduction. Shortly after the Nazis captured Vilna on June 24, 1941, representatives from the “Special Detail of Reich-Administrator Alfred Rosenberg” (Einsatzstab des Reichleiter Alfred Rosenberg) arrived in Vilna. Their task was to loot the literary (and other) treasures of Vilna’s Jewish community, and to ship them to Frankfurt. Under the aegis of Nazi “experts” in Jewish matters, a slave-labor unit consisting at times of some 40 Jews was established. Like the other slave-labor units, the group gathered early in…

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Identity of the Unknown Tomb. Who is buried in the unmarked grave next to the Vilna Gaon?

Identity of the Unknown Tomb. Who is buried in the unmarked grave next to the Vilna Gaon?

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Among the seven graves in the Ohel of the Vilna Gaon (R’ Eliyahu M’vilna) there is one without an identifying headstone. The sign above the entrance to the Ohel identifies this grave as the resting place for the ashes of the Ger Tzedek of Vilna, Avraham ben Avraham Potocki This identification is accepted without questioning by many books and articles written about the Gaon when the origins of this theory and its veracity are suspect. This article will investigate how…

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A Picture and its One Thousand Words: The Old Jewish Cemetery of Vilna Revisited*

A Picture and its One Thousand Words: The Old Jewish Cemetery of Vilna Revisited*

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A. The Photograph. Recently, I had occasion to publish the above photograph – a treasure that offers a glimpse of what the old Jewish cemetery of Vilna looked like in the inter-war period. Indeed, it captures the oldest portion of the rabbinic section of the old Jewish cemetery. The purpose of this essay is to identify the persons buried here and – where possible – to reconstruct and print the epitaphs on their tombstones. Seven partially legible inscriptions can be…

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Lithuanian Government Announces Construction of a $25,000,000 Convention Center in the Center of Vilna’s Oldest Jewish Cemetery

Lithuanian Government Announces Construction of a $25,000,000 Convention Center in the Center of Vilna’s Oldest Jewish Cemetery

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According to Russian statistics, Vilna had close to 200,000 inhabitants just prior to World War I, roughly forty percent of whom were Jewish, more than thirty percent were Polish, and about twenty percent were Russian and the rest consisted of small Lithuanian, Byelorussian, German and Tartar minorities. In 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was convened by the winning parties of World War I. Its purpose was to map the future of postwar Europe. When the status of Vilna came up…

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Who is Buried in the Vilna Gaon’s Tomb? A Contribution Toward the Identification of the Authentic Grave of the Vilna Gaon

Who is Buried in the Vilna Gaon’s Tomb? A Contribution Toward the Identification of the Authentic Grave of the Vilna Gaon

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1. Prologue This essay attempts to identify the authentic grave of the Vilna Gaon (d. 1797).1 As will become apparent, it surely is not the grave that Jewish pilgrims are shown today when they visit Vilna. We shall attempt to identify his authentic grave by applying the biblical rule: על פי שני עדים יקום דבר “a matter is established by the testimony of two witnesses.” We shall cite two different kinds of witnesses. One witness will represent primarily תורה שבכתב,…

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?האם אמנם קבר רחל אמנו נמצא בבת לחם

?האם אמנם קבר רחל אמנו נמצא בבת לחם

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has published numerous works in virtually all areas of Torah scholarship. The Seforim Blog is grateful that he has chosen to publish his latest essay here. מפורסם באומה כי קברה של רחל נמצא בבית לחם. יש שם גם מבנה ומצבה המציין כך. וכך כתוב בתורה “ויהי עוד כברת הארץ לבוא אפרתה ותלד רחל ותקש בלדתה וכו’. ותמת רחל ותקבר [נפעל] בדרך אפרתה היא בית לחם. ויצב יעקב מצבה על קבורתה, היא מצבת קבורת רחל עד היום, (בראשית לה, טז-כ). שוב…

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Shnayer Leiman: Notes on Rabbinic Epitaphs I

Shnayer Leiman: Notes on Rabbinic Epitaphs I

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The newly recovered tombstone of R. Yosef Trani (1568-1639), the Maharit, among the greatest of the early aharonim, is a truly remarkable event. The discoverer, the noted bibliophile and book dealer R. Shlomo Epstein, had searched all the Jewish cemeteries in Istanbul (formerly: Constantinople), but could not locate the Maharit’s grave. On a recent visit to Safed, where he went to pray at the tomb of R, Moshe Alshekh (circa 1520-1593), he noticed nearby a fragmented, barely legible tombstone (see…

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Akiva Leiman: Gravely Mistaken

Akiva Leiman: Gravely Mistaken

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R. Leiman teaches high school at the Yeshiva of Greater Washington in Silver Spring, Maryland. Additionally, he leads trips to sites of Jewish interest in Eastern Europe. This is his first contribution to the Seforim blog. One hardly need go far to find errors in published materials, but when even moderate research would suffice to unearth correct information lack of such an effort would seem egregious. Jewish burial sites have often been lost: Nazis or indigenous peoples destroyed cemeteries, acid…

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Charles H. Manekin — Moritz Steinschneider’s Indecent Burial

Charles H. Manekin — Moritz Steinschneider’s Indecent Burial

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University of Maryland, College Park / Bar Ilan University Over a century has passed since the death of Moritz Steinschneider, the great orientalist, bibliographer, and historian of Jewish literature and culture. When Steinschneider died in 1907 at the age of 91, he was recognized by many as the greatest Jewish scholar of the previous century. His scholarly output numbered over fourteen hundred publications, ranging from short notices to books of over a thousand pages, a number that does not take…

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