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107-521: Grodno District or Hrodna District ( Belarusian : Гродзенскі раён ; Russian : Гродненский район ) is a district ( raion ) of Grodno Region in Belarus . The administrative center is Grodno , which is administratively separated from the district. As of 2024, it has a population of 48,494. This Belarus location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Belarusian language Before Belarus gained independence in 1991,

214-516: A Jewish community which was forbidden by the local authorities to kill cattle and to sell meat—an occupation which provided a livelihood for a large portion of the Lithuanian Jews. For the period of a year following this prohibition the Jewish community was on several occasions assessed at the rate of three gulden per head of cattle in order to furnish funds with which to induce the officials to grant

321-707: A Ukrainian Jew, was First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belorussia (i.e. the de facto head of state) from December 1928 to October 1929. However, the Soviet policy later turned against the Jews (see Stalin's antisemitism ). Atrocities against the Jewish population in the German-conquered areas began almost immediately, with the dispatch of Einsatzgruppen (task groups) to round up Jews and shoot them. Local anti-semites were encouraged to carry out their own pogroms . By

428-422: A hearing of the case. The Jews finally reached an agreement with the town magistrates under which they were to pay forty gulden annually for the right to slaughter cattle. According to Hillel ben Naphtali Herz ( Bet Hillel, Yoreh De'ah , § 157), Naphtali says the Jews of Vilna had been compelled to uncover when taking an oath in court, but later purchased from the tribunal the privilege to swear with covered head,

535-527: A language generally referred to as Ruthenian (13th to 18th centuries), which had, in turn, descended from what is referred to as Old East Slavic (10th to 13th centuries). In the first Belarusian census in 1999, the Belarusian language was declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 3,686,000 Belarusian citizens (36.7% of the population). About 6,984,000 (85.6%) of Belarusians declared it their "mother tongue". Other sources, such as Ethnologue , put

642-479: A number of names, both contemporary and historical. Some of the most dissimilar are from the Old Belarusian period. Although closely related to other East Slavic languages , especially Ukrainian , Belarusian phonology is distinct in a number of ways. The phoneme inventory of the modern Belarusian language consists of 45 to 54 phonemes: 6 vowels and 39 to 48 consonants , depending on how they are counted. When

749-461: A number of radical changes. A fully phonetic orthography was introduced. One of the most distinctive changes brought in was the principle of akanye (Belarusian: а́канне ), wherein unstressed "o", pronounced in both Russian and Belarusian as /a/ , is written as "а". The Belarusian Academic Conference on Reform of the Orthography and Alphabet was convened in 1926. After discussions on the project,

856-453: A perception that Belarusian was a "rural" and "uneducated" language. However, the census was a major breakthrough for the first steps of the Belarusian national self-awareness and identity, since it clearly showed to the Imperial authorities and the still-strong Polish minority that the population and the language were neither Polish nor Russian. The rising influence of Socialist ideas advanced

963-512: A period of two years, was extended "because of the extreme poverty of the Jews on account of the great losses sustained by them." The extension, which applied to all the towns of the kingdom, accorded the enjoyment of all the liberties that had been granted to their Polish brethren ( Kraków , June 29, 1498). The expelled Karaites settled in the Polish town of Ratno . The causes of the unexpected expulsion were probably many, including religious reasons,

1070-575: A practise subsequently made unnecessary by a decision of one of their rabbis to the effect that an oath might be taken with uncovered head. The responsa of Meir Lublin show (§ 40) that the Lithuanian communities frequently aided the German and the Austrian Jews. On the expulsion of the Jews from Silesia , when the Jewish inhabitants of Silz had the privilege of remaining on condition that they would pay

1177-547: A time of prosperity and relative safety for the Jews of both countries (with the exception of the Chmielnicki Uprising in the 17th century). However, a few events, such as the expulsion of the Jews from Lithuania between 1495 and 1503 occurred just within the Grand Duchy. Casimir was succeeded as king of Poland by his son John Albert, and on the Lithuanian throne by his younger son, Alexander Jagellon. The latter confirmed

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1284-517: Is a Jewish city, and the Jews are not concerned for the place they live in. They have turned Babruysk into a pigsty . Look at Israel — I was there and saw it myself... I call on Jews who have money to come back to Babruysk." Members of the US House of Representatives sent a letter to the Belarusian ambassador to the US, Mikhail Khvostov , addressing Lukashenko's comments with a strong request to retract them, and

1391-635: Is also made by Gans of the head of the Kremenetz yeshiva, Isaac Cohen (d. 1573) , of whom but little is known otherwise. At the time of the Lublin Union , Solomon Luria was rabbi of Ostrog, and was regarded as one of the greatest Talmudic authorities in Poland and the GDL. In 1568 King Sigismund ordered that the suits between Isaac Borodavka and Mendel Isakovich, who were partners in the farming of certain customs taxes in

1498-503: Is cited as follows: "I emphatically protest against the custom of our communal leaders of purchasing the freedom of Jewish criminals. Such a policy encourages crime among our people. I am especially troubled by the fact that, thanks to the clergy, such criminals may escape punishment by adopting Christianity. Mistaken piety impels our leaders to bribe the officials, in order to prevent such conversions. We should endeavor to deprive criminals of opportunities to escape justice." The same sentiment

1605-399: Is found in the representation of vowel reduction, and in particular akanje , the merger of unstressed /a/ and /o/, which exists in both Russian and Belarusian. Belarusian always spells this merged sound as ⟨a⟩ , whereas Russian uses either ⟨a⟩ or ⟨o⟩ , according to what the "underlying" phoneme is (determined by identifying the related words where

1712-499: Is indicated by numerous lawsuits on the return of the exiles to Lithuania in 1503. It is known from the Hebrew sources that some of the exiles migrated to the Crimea , and that by far the greater number settled in Poland, where, by permission of King John Albert, they established themselves in the towns situated near the boundary of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This permission, given at first for

1819-528: Is known of the fortunes of the Belarusian Jews during the troublous times that followed the death of Gediminas and the accession of his grandson Vitaut (1341). To the latter, the Jews owed a charter of privileges which was momentous in the subsequent history of the Jews of Belarus and Lithuania. The documents granting privileges first to the Jews of Brest (July 1, 1388) and later to those of Hrodna , Troki (1389), Lutsk , Vladimir, and other large towns are

1926-480: Is known of these early yeshivas. No mention is made of them or of prominent Lithuanian rabbis in Jewish writings until the 16th century. The first known rabbinical authority and head of a yeshiva was Isaac Bezaleel of Vladimir, Volhynia, who was already an old man when Solomon Luria went to Ostrog in the fourth decade of the 16th century. Another rabbinical authority, Kalman Haberkaster , rabbi of Ostrog and predecessor of Luria, died in 1559. Occasional references to

2033-400: Is mostly synthetic and partly analytic, and overall quite similar to Russian grammar . Belarusian orthography, however, differs significantly from Russian orthography in some respects, due to the fact that it is a phonemic orthography that closely represents the surface phonology, whereas Russian orthography represents the underlying morphophonology . The most significant instance of this

2140-496: Is rarely used. Standardized Belarusian grammar in its modern form was adopted in 1959, with minor amendments in 1985 and 2008. It was developed from the initial form set down by Branislaw Tarashkyevich (first printed in Vilnius , 1918), and it is mainly based on the Belarusian folk dialects of Minsk - Vilnius region. Historically, there have been several other alternative standardized forms of Belarusian grammar. Belarusian grammar

2247-560: Is the usual conventional borderline between the Ruthenian and Modern Belarusian stages of development. By the end of the 18th century, (Old) Belarusian was still common among the minor nobility in the eastern part, in the territory of present-day Belarus, of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (hereafter GDL). Jan Czeczot in the 1840s had mentioned that even his generation's grandfathers preferred speaking (Old) Belarusian. According to A. N. Pypin,

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2354-578: The kahals to summon the criminals before the Jewish courts for punishment and exclusion from the community when necessary." The efforts to resurrect the old power of the kahals were not successful. The founding of the yeshivas in Belarus was due to the Lithuanian-Polish Jews who studied in the west, and to the German Jews who migrated about that time to Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. Very little

2461-588: The Belarusian Democratic Republic , Belarusian was used as the only official language (decreed by Belarusian People's Secretariat on 28 April 1918). Subsequently, in the Byelorussian SSR , Belarusian was decreed to be one of the four (Belarusian, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish) official languages (decreed by Central Executive Committee of BSSR in February 1921). A decree of 15 July 1924 confirmed that

2568-737: The Old Church Slavonic language. The modern Belarusian form was defined in 1918, and consists of thirty-two letters. Before that, Belarusian had also been written in the Belarusian Latin alphabet (Łacinka / Лацінка), the Belarusian Arabic alphabet (by Lipka Tatars ) and the Hebrew alphabet (by Belarusian Jews ). The Glagolitic script was used, sporadically, until the 11th or 12th century. There are several systems of romanization of Belarusian written texts. The Belarusian Latin alphabet

2675-727: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and included much of present-day Belarus , Republic of Lithuania , Poland , Moldova , Ukraine , and parts of western Russia . By the end of the 19th century, many Belarusian Jews were part of the general flight of Jews from Eastern Europe to the New World due to conflicts and pogroms engulfing the Russian Empire and the anti-Semitism of the Russian czars . Millions of Jews, including tens of thousands of Jews from Belarus, emigrated to

2782-543: The Russian Academy of Sciences refused to print his submission, on the basis that it had not been prepared in a sufficiently scientific manner. From the mid-1830s ethnographic works began to appear, and tentative attempts to study the language were instigated (e.g. Shpilevskiy's grammar). The Belarusian literary tradition began to re-form, based on the folk language, initiated by the works of Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich . See also : Jan Czeczot , Jan Barszczewski . At

2889-552: The Soviet annexation of Eastern Poland in 1939, including Western Belorussia, Belarus would again have 1,175,000 Jews within its borders, including 275,000 Jews from Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere. It is estimated 800,000 of 900,000 — 90% of the Jews of Belarus —were killed during the Holocaust . According to the 2019 Belarusian census , there were 13,705 self-identifying Jews in Belarus, of which most are of Ashkenazi origin. However,

2996-753: The United States of America and South Africa. A small number also emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine . Jewish political organizations, including the General Jewish Labour Bund , participated in the creation of the Belarusian People's Republic in 1918. During the first years of Soviet power in Belarus , in the 1920s, Yiddish was an official language in East Belarus along with Belarusian , Polish and Russian . Yakov Gamarnik ,

3103-502: The "soft sounding R" ( мякка-эравы ) and "strong akanye " ( моцнае аканне ), and the South-Western dialect is chiefly characterized by the "hard sounding R" ( цвёрда-эравы ) and "moderate akanye" ( умеранае аканне ). The West Polesian dialect group is separated from the rest of the country by the conventional line Pruzhany – Ivatsevichy – Tsyelyakhany – Luninyets – Stolin . There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among

3210-431: The 1897 Russian Empire census , about 5.89 million people declared themselves speakers of Belarusian (then known as White Russian). The end of the 19th century, however, still showed that the urban language of Belarusian towns remained either Polish or Russian. The same census showed that towns with a population greater than 50,000 had fewer than a tenth Belarusian speakers. This state of affairs greatly contributed to

3317-613: The 1990s ). The 1999 census estimated that there were only 27,798 Jews left in the country, which further declined to 12,926 in 2009 and marginally rose to 13,705 in 2019, although oddly in that year, 10,269 men but only 3,436 women identified as Jewish. However, local Jewish organizations put the number at 50,000 in 2006. About half of the country's Jews live in Minsk . National Jewish organizations, local cultural groups, religious schools, charitable organizations, and organizations for war veterans and Holocaust survivors have been formed. Since

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3424-640: The 8th century Jews lived in parts of the lands of modern Belarus. Beginning with that period they conducted the trade between Ruthenia , Lithuania, and the Baltic , especially with Danzig , Julin (Vineta or Wollin, in Pomerania ), and other cities on the Vistula , Oder , and Elbe . The origin of Belarusian Jews has been the subject of much speculation. It is believed that they were made up of two distinct streams of Jewish immigration. The older and significantly smaller of

3531-517: The 8th century. Jews lived in all parts of the lands of modern Belarus . In 1897, the Jewish population of Belarus reached 910,900, or 14.2% of the total population. Following the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1920), under the terms of the Treaty of Riga , Belarus was split into Eastern Belorussia (under Soviet occupation) and Western Belorussia (under Polish occupation), and causing 350,000-450,000 of

3638-558: The Belarusian grammar. In 1915, Rev. Balyaslaw Pachopka had prepared a Belarusian grammar using the Latin script. Belarusian linguist S. M. Nyekrashevich considered Pachopka's grammar unscientific and ignorant of the principles of the language. But Pachopka's grammar was reportedly taught in an unidentified number of schools, from 1918 for an unspecified period. Another grammar was supposedly jointly prepared by A. Lutskyevich and Ya. Stankyevich, and differed from Tarashkyevich's grammar somewhat in

3745-574: The Belarusian language is declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 40,000 inhabitants According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, while Belarusian is actively used by only 11.9% of Belarusians (others speak a mixture of Russian and Belarusian, known as Trasianka ). Approximately 29.4% of Belarusians can write, speak, and read Belarusian, while 52.5% can only read and speak it. Nevertheless, there are no Belarusian-language universities in Belarus. The Belarusian language has been known under

3852-453: The Belarusian language was spoken in some areas among the minor nobility during the 19th century. In its vernacular form, it was the language of the smaller town dwellers and of the peasantry and it had been the language of oral folklore. Teaching in Belarusian was conducted mainly in schools run by the Basilian order . The development of Belarusian in the 19th century was strongly influenced by

3959-682: The Belarusian, Russian, Yiddish and Polish languages had equal status in Soviet Belarus. In the BSSR, Tarashkyevich's grammar had been officially accepted for use in state schooling after its re-publication in unchanged form, first in 1922 by Yazep Lyosik under his own name as Practical grammar. Part I , then in 1923 by the Belarusian State Publishing House under the title Belarusian language. Grammar. Ed. I. 1923 , also by "Ya. Lyosik". In 1925, Lyosik added two new chapters, addressing

4066-511: The Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian languages. Within East Slavic, the Belarusian language is most closely related to Ukrainian . The modern Belarusian language was redeveloped on the base of the vernacular spoken remnants of the Ruthenian language , surviving in the ethnic Belarusian territories in the 19th century. The end of the 18th century (the times of the Divisions of Commonwealth )

4173-536: The Commission had actually prepared the project for spelling reform. The resulting project had included both completely new rules and existing rules in unchanged and changed forms, some of the changes being the work of the Commission itself, and others resulting from the resolutions of the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926), re-approved by the Commission. Notably, the use of the Ь (soft sign) before

4280-643: The Conference made resolutions on some of the problems. However, the Lyosik brothers' project had not addressed all the problematic issues, so the Conference was not able to address all of those. As the outcome of the conference, the Orthographic Commission was created to prepare the project of the actual reform. This was instigated on 1 October 1927, headed by S. Nyekrashevich, with the following principal guidelines of its work adopted: During its work in 1927–29,

4387-513: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania secured a charter from King Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki (1669–1673), decreeing "that on account of the increasing number of Jews guilty of offenses against the Szlachta and other Christians, which result in the enmity of the Christians toward the Jews, and because of the inability of the Jewish elders to punish such offenders, who are protected by the lords, the king permits

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4494-539: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, be carried for decision to Rabbi Solomon Luria and two auxiliary rabbis from Pinsk and Tiktin . The far-reaching authority of the leading rabbis of Poland and Lithuania, and their wide knowledge of practical life, are apparent from numerous decisions cited in the responsa . They were always the champions of justice and morality. In the Eitan ha-Ezrachi (Ostrog, 1796) of Abraham Rapoport (known also as Abraham Schrenzel; d. 1650), Rabbi Meïr Sack

4601-508: The Israeli embassy in Belarus claims to know about 30-50 thousand Belarusians with Jewish descent (as of 2017). Throughout several centuries the lands of modern-day Belarus were a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . Therefore, the history of Belarusian Jews is closely related to the history of Jews in Lithuania and historically they could be seen as a subset of Lithuanian Jews . As early as

4708-500: The Jew Shlioma from drowning. A number of Christians had looked on indifferently while the drowning Jew was struggling in the water. They were upbraided and beaten severely by the priest, who appeared a few minutes later, for having failed to rescue the Jew. Solomon Luria gives an account ( Responsa, § 20) of a quarrel that occurred in a Lithuanian community concerning a cantor whom some of

4815-517: The Jewish inhabitants of these territories were induced to spread throughout the northern provinces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . The probable importance of the southern Jews in the development of Belarus and Lithuania is indicated by their numerical prominence in Volhynia in the 13th century. According to an annalist who describes the funeral of the grand duke Vladimir Vasilkovich in the city of Vladimir (Volhynia), "the Jews wept at his funeral as at

4922-439: The Jews and their attempt to regain their old possessions led to many difficulties and lawsuits. Alexander found it necessary to issue an additional decree (April, 1503), directing his vice-regent to enforce the law. In spite of this some of the property was not recovered by the Jews for years. The middle of the 16th century witnessed a growing antagonism between the lesser nobility and the Jews. Their relations became strained, and

5029-409: The Jews as middlemen, thus creating a feeling of injury on the part of the szlachta . The exemption of the Jews from military service and the power and wealth of the Jewish tax-farmers intensified the resentment of the szlachta . Members of the nobility attempted to compete with the Jews as leaseholders of customs revenues, but were never successful. Since the Jews lived in the towns and on the lands of

5136-430: The Jews to be governed by Poland. Prior to World War II, Jews were the third largest ethnic group in Belarus and comprised more than 40% of the urban population. The population of cities such as Minsk , Pinsk , Mogilev , Babruysk , Vitebsk , and Gomel was more than 50% Jewish. In 1926 and 1939 there were between 375,000 and 407,000 Jews in Belarus (Eastern Belorussia) or 6.7-8.2% of the total population. Following

5243-447: The Jews were given extensive autonomy. Under these equitable laws the Jews of Belarus and Lithuania reached a degree of prosperity unknown to their Polish and German co-religionists at that time. The communities of Brest, Grodno, Minsk , Trakai and Lutsk rapidly grew in wealth and influence. Every community had at its head a Jewish elder. These elders represented the communities in all external relations, in securing new privileges, and in

5350-505: The Jews. At the Diet of Vilnius in 1551 the nobility urged the imposition of a special polltax of one ducat per head, and the Volhynian nobles demanded that the Jewish tax-collectors be forbidden to erect tollhouses or place guards at the taverns on their estates. The opposition to the Jews was finally crystallized and found definite expression in the repressive Lithuanian statute of 1566, when

5457-443: The Russian language and literature department of St. Petersburg University, approached the board of the Belarusian newspaper Nasha Niva with a proposal that a Belarusian linguist be trained under his supervision in order to be able to create documentation of the grammar. Initially, the famous Belarusian poet Maksim Bahdanovič was to be entrusted with this work. However, Bahdanovič's poor health (tuberculosis) precluded his living in

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5564-411: The Russian language." It is not so with Brisk, in the district of Kujawa, the name of that town being always spelled "Brisk." Katz (a German) at the conclusion of his responsum expresses the hope that when Lithuania shall have become more enlightened, the people will speak one language only— German —and that also Brest-Litovsk will be written "Brisk." The responsa shed an interesting light also on

5671-460: The South-Western. In addition, there is a transitional Middle Belarusian dialect group and the separate West Polesian dialect group. The North-Eastern and the South-Western dialects are separated by a hypothetical line Ashmyany – Minsk – Babruysk – Gomel , with the area of the Middle Belarusian dialect group placed on and along this line. The North-Eastern dialect is chiefly characterized by

5778-410: The adjacent territories were summarily ordered to leave the country. The expulsion was evidently not accompanied by the usual cruelties; for there was no popular animosity toward the Jews, and the decree was regarded as an act of mere willfulness on the part of an absolute ruler. Some of the nobility, however, approved Alexander's decree, expecting to profit by the departure of their Jewish creditors, as

5885-545: The all-Russian " narodniki " and Belarusian national movements (late 1870s–early 1880s) renewed interest in the Belarusian language (See also: Homan (1884) , Bahushevich , Yefim Karskiy , Dovnar-Zapol'skiy , Bessonov, Pypin, Sheyn, Nasovič). The Belarusian literary tradition was also renewed ( see also : F. Bahushevich ). It was in these times that F. Bahushevich made his famous appeal to Belarusians: "Do not forsake our language, lest you pass away" (Belarusian: Не пакідайце ж мовы нашай, каб не ўмёрлі ). The first dictionary of

5992-407: The application of the interested parties. Either party who failed to obey the judge's summons had to pay him a fine. To him also belonged all fines collected from Jews for minor offenses. His duties included the guardianship of the persons, property, and freedom of worship of the Jews. He had no right to summon any one to his court except upon the complaint of an interested party. In matters of religion

6099-584: The beginning of the 1860s, both the Russian and Polish parties in Belarusian lands had begun to realise that the decisive role in the upcoming conflicts was shifting to the peasantry, overwhelmingly Belarusian. So a large amount of propaganda appeared, targeted at the peasantry and written in Belarusian; notably, the anti-Russian, anti-Tsarist, anti-Eastern Orthodox "Manifesto" and the first newspaper Mužyckaja prauda ( Peasants' Truth ) (1862–1863) by Konstanty Kalinowski , and anti-Polish, anti-Revolutionary, pro-Orthodox booklets and poems (1862). The advent of

6206-560: The charter of privileges granted to the Jews by his predecessors, and even gave them additional rights. His father's Jewish creditors received part of the sums due to them, the rest being withheld under various pretexts. The attitude toward the Jews which had characterized the Lithuanian rulers for generations was unexpectedly and radically changed by a decree promulgated by Alexander in April, 1495. By this decree all Jews living in Lithuania proper and

6313-488: The climate of St. Petersburg, so Branislaw Tarashkyevich , a fresh graduate of the Vilnya Liceum No. 2 , was selected for the task. In the Belarusian community, great interest was vested in this enterprise. The already famous Belarusian poet Yanka Kupala , in his letter to Tarashkyevich, urged him to "hurry with his much-needed work". Tarashkyevich had been working on the preparation of the grammar during 1912–1917, with

6420-427: The combinations "consonant+iotated vowel" ("softened consonants"), which had been previously denounced as highly redundant (e.g., in the proceedings of the Belarusian Academic Conference (1926)), was cancelled. However, the complete resolution of the highly important issue of the orthography of unstressed Е ( IE ) was not achieved. Belarusian Jews The history of the Jews in Belarus begins as early as

6527-570: The condition of the Polish Jews changed for the worse. The influence of the Roman Catholic clergy at the Polish court grew; Louis of Anjou was indifferent to the welfare of his subjects, and his eagerness to convert the Jews to Christianity, together with the increased Jewish immigration from Germany, caused the Polish Jews to become apprehensive for their future. On this account it seems more than likely that influential Polish Jews cooperated with

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6634-444: The earliest documents to recognize the Jews of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as possessing a distinct organization. The gathering together of the scattered Jewish settlers in sufficient numbers and with enough power to form such an organization and to obtain privileges from their Lithuanian rulers implies the lapse of considerable time. The Jews who dwelt in smaller towns and villages were not in need of such privileges at this time, and

6741-531: The educational system. The Polish and Russian languages were being introduced and re-introduced, while the general state of the people's education remained poor until the very end of the Russian Empire. In summary, the first two decades of the 19th century had seen the unprecedented prosperity of Polish culture and language in the former GDL lands, and had prepared the era of such famous Polish writers as Adam Mickiewicz and Władysław Syrokomla . The era had seen

6848-522: The effect that Jews may employ in their religious services the melodies used in Christian churches, "since music is neither Jewish nor Christian, and is governed by universal laws." Decisions by Luria, Meïr Katz , and Mordecai Jaffe show that the rabbis were acquainted with the Russian language and its philology. Jaffe, for instance, in a divorce case where the spelling of the woman's name as Lupka or Lubka

6955-514: The effective completion of the Polonization of the lowest level of the nobility, the further reduction of the area of use of contemporary Belarusian, and the effective folklorization of Belarusian culture. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 19th century "there began a revival of national pride within the country ... and a growth in interest [in Belarusian] from outside". Due both to the state of

7062-427: The emancipation of the Belarusian language even further ( see also: Belarusian Socialist Assembly , Circle of Belarusian People's Education and Belarusian Culture , Belarusian Socialist Lot , Socialist Party "White Russia" , Alaiza Pashkevich , Nasha Dolya ). The fundamental works of Yefim Karsky marked a turning point in the scientific perception of Belarusian. The ban on publishing books and papers in Belarusian

7169-712: The end of 1941, there were more than 5,000 troops devoted to rounding up and killing Jews. The gradual industrialization of killing led to adoption of the Final Solution and the establishment of the Operation Reinhard extermination camps: the machinery of the Holocaust. Of the Soviet Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, 246,000 Jews were Belarusian: some 66% of the total number of Belarusian Jews. In 1968, several thousand Jewish youths were arrested for Zionist activity. In

7276-604: The enmity of the Christians began to disturb the life of the Litvak Jews. The anti-Jewish feeling, due at first to economic causes engendered by competition, was fostered by the clergy, who were then engaged in a crusade against " heretics ," notably the Lutherans , Calvinists , and Jews. The Reformation , which had spread from Germany, tended to weaken the allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church. Frequent instances occurred of

7383-464: The fall of Jerusalem , or when being led into the Babylonian captivity ." This sympathy and the record thereof would seem to indicate that long before the event in question the Jews had enjoyed considerable prosperity and influence, and this gave them a certain standing under the new régime . They took an active part in the development of the new cities under the tolerant rule of duke Gediminas. Little

7490-543: The figure at approximately 3.5 million active speakers in Belarus. In Russia , the Belarusian language is declared as a "familiar language" by about 316,000 inhabitants, among them about 248,000 Belarusians, comprising about 30.7% of Belarusians living in Russia. In Ukraine , the Belarusian language is declared as a "native language" by about 55,000 Belarusians, which comprise about 19.7% of Belarusians living in Ukraine. In Poland ,

7597-404: The foreign speakers' task of learning these paradigms; on the other hand, though, it makes spelling easier for native speakers. An example illustrating the contrast between the treatment of akanje in Russian and Belarusian orthography is the spelling of the word for "products; food": Besides the standardized lect , there are two main dialects of the Belarusian language, the North-Eastern and

7704-553: The help and supervision of Shakhmatov and Karskiy. Tarashkyevich had completed the work by the autumn of 1917, even moving from the tumultuous Petrograd of 1917 to the relative calm of Finland in order to be able to complete it uninterrupted. By the summer of 1918, it became obvious that there were insurmountable problems with the printing of Tarashkyevich's grammar in Petrograd: a lack of paper, type and qualified personnel. Meanwhile, his grammar had apparently been planned to be adopted in

7811-520: The jurisdiction of the grand duke and his official representatives, and in petty suits to the jurisdiction of local officials on an equal footing with the lesser nobles ( szlachta ), boyars , and other free citizens. The official representatives of the grand duke were the elder ( starosta ), known as the "Jewish judge" ( judex Judæorum ), and his deputy. The Jewish judge decided all cases between Christians and Jews and all criminal suits in which Jews were concerned; in civil suits, however, he acted only on

7918-423: The king, the nobility could not wield any authority over them nor derive profit from them. They had not even the right to settle Jews on their estates without the permission of the king; but, on the other hand, they were often annoyed by the erection on their estates of the tollhouses of the Jewish tax-collectors. Hence when the strategic moment arrived, the Lithuanian nobility endeavored to secure greater power over

8025-613: The lands between the Baltic and Black Seas that would become part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The later and much larger stream of immigration originated in the 12th century and received an impetus from the persecution of the German Jews by the Crusaders . The traditional language of the vast majority of Lithuanian Jews, Yiddish, is based largely upon the Medieval German and Hebrew spoken by

8132-499: The language was known in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian , or alternatively as White Russian . Following independence, it became known as Belarusian , or alternatively as Belarusan . As one of the East Slavic languages, Belarusian shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. To some extent, Russian, Ukrainian , and Belarusian retain a degree of mutual intelligibility . Belarusian descends from

8239-520: The leading Belarusian and Lithuanian communities in securing a special charter from Vytautas . The preamble of the charter reads as follows: The charter itself was modeled upon similar documents granted by Casimir the Great, and earlier by Boleslaw of Kalisz , to the Jews in Poland in 1084. Under the charter, the Jews of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania formed a class of freemen subject in all criminal cases directly to

8346-471: The life of the Lithuanian Jews and on their relations to their Christian neighbors. Benjamin Slonik  [ pl ] states in his Mas'at Binyamin (end of sixteenth and beginning of 17th century) that "the Christians borrow clothes and jewelry from the Jews when they go to church." Joel Sirkis (l.c. § 79) relates that a Christian woman came to the rabbi and expressed her regret at having been unable to save

8453-406: The marriage of Catholic women to Jews, Turks , or Tatars . The Bishop of Vilnius complained to Sigismund August (Dec., 1548) of the frequency of such mixed marriages and of the education of the offspring in their fathers' faiths. The szlachta also saw in the Jews dangerous competitors in commercial and financial undertakings. In their dealings with the agricultural classes the lords preferred

8560-437: The mass immigration of the 1990s, there has been some continuous immigration to Israel. In 2002, 974 Belarusians moved to Israel, and between 2003 and 2005, 4,854 followed suit. In October 2007, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko , known for his authoritarian rule, was accused of making antisemitic comments; addressing the "miserable state of the city of Babruysk " on a live broadcast on state radio, he stated: "This

8667-450: The members wished to dismiss. The synagogue was closed in order to prevent him from exercising his functions, and religious services were thus discontinued for several days. The matter was thereupon carried to the local lord, who ordered the reopening of the building, saying that the house of God might not be closed, and that the cantor's claims should be decided by the learned rabbis of Lithuania. Joseph Katz mentions ( She'erit Yosef, § 70)

8774-411: The mode of life, as Abraham Harkavy suggests, "the comparative poverty, and the ignorance of Jewish learning among the Lithuanian Jews retarded their intercommunal organization." But powerful forces hastened this organization toward the close of the 14th century. The chief of these was probably the cooperation of the Jews of Poland with their brethren in the GDL. After the death of Casimir III (1370),

8881-786: The modern Belarusian language authored by Nasovič was published in 1870. In the editorial introduction to the dictionary, it is noted that: The Belarusian local tongue, which dominates a vast area from the Nioman and the Narew to the Upper Volga and from the Western Dvina to the Prypiac and the Ipuc and which is spoken by inhabitants of the North-Western and certain adjacent provinces, or those lands that were in

8988-566: The need to fill a depleted treasury by confiscating the Jews' money, personal animosity, and other causes. Soon after Alexander's accession to the throne of Poland he permitted the Jewish exiles to return to Lithuania. Beginning in March, 1503, as is shown by documents still extant, their houses, lands, synagogues , and cemeteries were returned to them, and permission was granted them to collect their old debts. The new charter of privileges permitted them to live throughout Lithuania as before. The return of

9095-457: The nine geminate consonants are excluded as mere variations, there are 39 consonants, and excluding rare consonants further decreases the count. The number 48 includes all consonant sounds, including variations and rare sounds, which may be phonetically distinct in the modern Belarusian language. The Belarusian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic script , which was first used as an alphabet for

9202-514: The nobles of Belarus and Lithuania were first allowed to take part in the national legislation. Paragraph Twelve of this statute contains the following articles: Other restrictions of a similar nature are contained in the same paragraph. However, the king checked the desire of the nobility to modify essentially the old charters of the Jews. The fury of the 1648–1657 Cossack rebellion in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth destroyed

9309-492: The organization of the Jewish communities in Belarus. The survivors who returned to their old homes in the latter half of the 17th century were practically destitute. John Casimir (1648–1668) sought to ameliorate their condition by granting various concessions to the Jewish communities of Lithuania. Attempts to return to the old order in the communal organization were not wanting, as is evident from contemporary documents. Thus in 1672, Jewish elders from various towns and villages in

9416-528: The orthography of compound words and partly modifying the orthography of assimilated words. From this point on, Belarusian grammar had been popularized and taught in the educational system in that form. The ambiguous and insufficient development of several components of Tarashkyevich's grammar was perceived to be the cause of some problems in practical usage, and this led to discontent with the grammar. In 1924–25, Lyosik and his brother Anton Lyosik prepared and published their project of orthographic reform, proposing

9523-422: The particularities of different Belarusian dialects. The scientific groundwork for the introduction of a truly scientific and modern grammar of the Belarusian language was laid down by the linguist Yefim Karsky. By the early 1910s, the continuing lack of a codified Belarusian grammar was becoming intolerably obstructive in the opinion of uniformitarian prescriptivists. Then Russian academician Shakhmatov , chair of

9630-555: The past settled by the Kryvic tribe , has long attracted the attention of our philologists because of those precious remains of the ancient Ruthenian language that survived in that tongue. In 1891, in the preface to the Belarusian Flute , Francišak Bahuševič wrote, "There have been many peoples, which first lost their language… and then they perished entirely. So do not abandon our Belarusian language, lest we perish!" According to

9737-453: The people's education and to the strong positions of Polish and Polonized nobility, it was only after the 1880s–1890s that the educated Belarusian element, still shunned because of "peasant origin", began to appear in state offices. In 1846, ethnographer Pavel Shpilevskiy prepared a Belarusian grammar (using the Cyrillic alphabet) on the basis of the folk dialects of the Minsk region. However,

9844-462: The political conflict in the territories of the former GDL, between the Russian Imperial authorities, trying to consolidate their rule over the "joined provinces", and the Polish and Polonized nobility, trying to bring back its pre-Partitions rule (see also Polonization in times of Partitions ). One of the important manifestations of this conflict was the struggle for ideological control over

9951-467: The rabbi and elder. The goodwill and tolerance of Vytautas endeared him to his Jewish subjects, and for a long time traditions concerning his generosity and nobility of character were current among them. His cousin, the king of Poland Jogaila , did not interfere with his administration during Vytautas's lifetime. In 1569 the Kingdom Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were united. It was generally

10058-399: The rabbi, whose jurisdiction included all Jewish affairs with the exception of judicial cases assigned to the court of the deputy, and by the latter to the king. In religious affairs, however, an appeal from the decision of the rabbi and the elder was permitted only to a council consisting of the chief rabbis of the king's cities. The cantor, sexton, and shochet were subject to the orders of

10165-452: The regulation of taxes. Such officials are not, however, referred to by the title "elder" before the end of the 16th century. Up to that time the documents merely state, for instance, that the "Jews of Brest humbly apply," etc. On assuming office the elders declared under oath that they would discharge the duties of the position faithfully, and would relinquish the office at the expiration of the appointed term. The elder acted in conjunction with

10272-479: The resolution of some key aspects. On 22 December 1915, Paul von Hindenburg issued an order on schooling in German Army-occupied territories in the Russian Empire ( Ober Ost ), banning schooling in Russian and including the Belarusian language in an exclusive list of four languages made mandatory in the respective native schooling systems (Belarusian, Lithuanian , Polish , Yiddish ). School attendance

10379-542: The second half of the 20th century, there was a large wave of Belarusian Jews immigrating to Israel (see Aliyah from the Soviet Union in the 1970s ), as well as to the United States . In 1979, there were 135,400 Jews in Belarus; a decade later, 112,000 were left. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Belarusian independence saw most of the community, along with the majority of the former Soviet Union's Jewish population, leave for Israel (see Russian immigration to Israel in

10486-469: The sum of 2,000 gulden, the Lithuanian communities contributed one-fifth of the amount. Upon annexation of Belarusian lands, Russian czars included the territory into the so-called Pale of Settlement , a western border region of Imperial Russia in which the permanent residence of Jews was allowed. Though comprising only 20% of the territory of European Russia, the Pale corresponded to the historical borders of

10593-557: The two entered the territory that would later become the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the east. These early immigrants spoke Judeo-Slavic dialects which distinguished them from the later Jewish immigrants who entered the region from the Germanic lands. While the origin of these eastern Jews is not certain, historical evidence places Jewish refugees from Babylonia, Palestine, the Byzantine Empire and other Jewish refugees and settlers in

10700-421: The vowel is being stressed or, if no such words exist, by written tradition, mostly but not always conforming to etymology). This means that Belarusian noun and verb paradigms, in their written form, have numerous instances of alternations between written ⟨a⟩ and ⟨o⟩ , whereas no such alternations exist in the corresponding written paradigms in Russian. This can significantly complicate

10807-443: The western Germanic Jewish immigrants. The peculiar conditions that prevailed in Belarus compelled the first Jewish settlers to adopt a different mode of life from that followed by their western ethnic brethren. At that time there were no cities in the western sense of the word in Belarus, no Magdeburg Rights or close guilds at that time. With the campaign of Gediminas and his subjection of Kiev and Volhynia (1320–1321)

10914-437: The workers' and peasants' schools of Belarus that were to be set up, so Tarashkyevich was permitted to print his book abroad. In June 1918, he arrived in Vilnius , via Finland. The Belarusian Committee petitioned the administration to allow the book to be printed. Finally, the first edition of the "Belarusian grammar for schools" was printed ( Vil'nya , 1918). There existed at least two other contemporary attempts at codifying

11021-450: The yeshiva of Brest are found in the writings of the contemporary rabbis Solomon Luria (d. 1585), Moses Isserles (d. 1572), and David Gans (d. 1589), who speak of its activity. Of the yeshiva of Ostrog and Vladimir in Volhynia it is known that they were in a flourishing condition at the middle of the 16th century, and that their heads vied with one another in Talmudic scholarship. Mention

11128-513: Was expressed in the 16th century by Maharam Lublin ( Responsa , § 138). Another instance, cited by Katz from the same responsa , likewise shows that Jewish criminals invoked the aid of priests against the authority of Jewish courts by promising to become converts to Christianity. The decisions of the Polish-Lithuanian rabbis are frequently marked by breadth of view also, as is instanced by a decision of Joel Sirkes ( Bayis Hadash, § 127) to

11235-413: Was in question, decided that the word is correctly spelled with a "b," and not with a "p," since the origin of the name was the Russian verb lubit = "to love," and not lupit = "to beat" ( Levush ha-Butz we-Argaman, § 129). Meïr Katz ( Geburat Anashim, § 1) explains that the name of Brest-Litovsk is written in divorce cases "Brest" and not "Brisk," "because the majority of the Lithuanian Jews use

11342-532: Was not made mandatory, though. Passports at this time were bilingual, in German and in one of the "native languages". Also at this time, Belarusian preparatory schools, printing houses, press organs were opened ( see also: Homan (1916) ). After the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, the Belarusian language became an important factor in political activities in the Belarusian lands ( see also: Central Council of Belarusian Organisations , Great Belarusian Council , First All-Belarusian Congress , Belnatskom ). In

11449-462: Was officially removed (25 December 1904). The unprecedented surge of national feeling in the 20th century, especially among the workers and peasants, particularly after the events of 1905, gave momentum to the intensive development of Belarusian literature and press (See also: Nasha Niva , Yanka Kupala , Yakub Kolas ). During the 19th and early 20th century, there was no normative Belarusian grammar. Authors wrote as they saw fit, usually representing

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