My Y-DNA cousins, Herb Huebscher and Elise Friedman, wrote (“DNA and Jewish Genealogy Join Forces,” AVOTAYNU, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, Summer 2007) about the use of DNA studies showing possible connections between more than 43 families, collectively termed WIRTH (Wolinsky, Issroff, Rossoff, Tenenbaum, Huebscher), covering different surnames and diverse geographic origins. The authors asked whether their most recent common ancestor (MRCA) was Ashkenazic or Sephardic. All but 7 of these 43 families currently are Jewish. Some families come from Lithuania and Latvia; others from Ukraine, Belarus and Central Europe; and one comes from Puerto Rico. What they did not ask was: If Ashkenazic, was the MRCA a Litvak or a Galitzianer? This paper discusses the connections between Galitzianers and Litvaks as demonstrated in these families that were not outlined in the previous paper.

Until recently, large numbers of Eastern European Jewry divided themselves into Litvaks or Galitzianers on the basis of social, cultural, linguistic, culinary and other perceived differences. The “divide” between the two groups was an almost palpable staple of everyday life, and the attitudes of one toward the other often was less than cordial. As the WIRTH group’s DNA shows, however, the difference does not exist. It’s all one family. This paper discusses the connections between Galitzianers and Litvaks demonstrated in these 43 families that were not addressed in the earlier paper—and shows how the genetic marker links demolish the divide.

Herb Huebscher’s Galitzianer family lived approximately 200 years in various areas of the former Hapsburg Empire (originally Hankowce/Gankovsty in Eastern Galicia). My Litvak family goes back for at least an equal time span to the Linkuva area of northeastern Lithuania. We have an exact match on 12 markers[1] and share a number of unique markers within 37 and 67 marker results. Aside from Huebscher, the only definite Galitzianers in the WIRTH group are the Tenenbaums and Harris Drucker (from Stanislow/Stanislau in Galicia). A number of families originated from areas close to Galicia in Podolia and Ukraine, but strictly speaking those three are the only “true” Galitzianers. Fred Spertus’ family origins are on the Galicia/Podolia border, just over the border into Podolia. In the Litvak group, Issroff, Lourie, Glazer, Fishler and Tobin (originally Tobovitch from near Vilna) are definite Litvaks.[2]

Galicia, which does not exist today, was a geo-political region of Eastern Europe composed of contemporary southeastern Poland and northwestern Ukraine, running northwards from the Carpathian Mountains through the Vistula Valley to the San River.[3] Galicia, initially a province on the northern slope of the Carpathian Mountains with Krakow and L’viv as important cities, became part of Hungary in the 12th century, then part of the Kingdom of Poland from the 14th through the 18th centuries. Galicia was termed “Little” or “Lesser” Poland until 1772, thereafter becoming part of Austria. Between 1580 and 1764, Galicia formed one of the “four lands” within the Va’ad arba artzot (the Jewish Council of the Four Lands), the governing body of Polish Jewry. Poland was first partitioned by Austria, Prussia and Russia in 1772; thereafter, large areas passed to the control of the Hapsburg kings. After the third partition of Poland in 1795, Austria acquired additional land north and northwest from the initial acquisition. Galicia became a separate province or administrative unit after 1803. After World War I, it reverted to Poland’s jurisdiction. In 1939, with the outbreak of World War II and the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviets occupied eastern Galicia, and the Nazis took over western Galicia. The Soviet area was incorporated into Ukraine, a Soviet Socialist Republic within the USSR. In June 1941, when the Germans attacked the USSR, the Nazis annexed the Ukraine and the Einsatzgrüppen commenced its extermination of the resident Jews. With the defeat of the Germans, Ukraine again fell under Soviet rule until independence in 1991. Moldova, between Romania and the Ukraine, became a separate state. Miriam Weiner comprehensively explains the historical and geographic changes.[4]

A Litvak is broadly defined as one whose ancestors were in Lithuania, Courland (a former guberniya [province] now in Latvia) and the Vilna and Grodno provinces of contemporary Belarus. From a Yiddish cultural perspective, however, some other areas, such as Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia), Grodna province (now Hrodna, Belarus) and Chernigov (now in the Ukraine), also are considered to be Litvak regions.[5] A number of good outlines of Lithuanian history and geography offer additional detail.[6]

Growing up in South Africa as one of Litvak descent, I knew few Galitzianers. If there were more, they likely were reluctant to admit it for fear of being belittled by the Litvaks! The historic divisions between these groups were deep rooted. I recall many older Litvaks speaking in deprecatory terms about Galitzianers, and no doubt, many Galitzianers in other parts of the world did the same. Recently, an elderly Litvak (in Israel) delivered the ultimate insult (in his terms) to a friend of mine when he termed her a Litvak who behaves like a Galitzianer! This same friend’s mother, when she started genealogy, remarked that she hoped no Galitzianer relatives would be discovered!

When addressing the question “What is a Litvak,”[7] Stuart and Nancy Schoenberg write “…sources identify a number of mundane characteristics contrasting Litvaks from other Ashkenazic Jews including Yiddish dialect differences, culinary tastes and varying methods of food preparation.” The Schoenbergs cite outward manifestations of a divergence of customs from within the larger Ashkenazic Jewish community—such as the Litvak practice of reciting Friday night kiddush sitting, and they point out that “when a Litvak prays he stands rock still and only moves his lips.” In a more general sense, Litvaks are characterized as being more rational, dogmatic and authoritarian than other branches of Ashkenazic Jewry.”[8] A culinary difference frequently cited is the way gefilte fish is prepared: Galitzianers make it sweet; Litvaks do not.

In the publication, Worlds Apart, the Re-Migration of South African Jews, Tatz, Arnold and Heller[9] include a detailed chapter on “The Meaning of Litvak.” They note that culturally and religiously, anyone living in Lithuania, Latvia and surrounding areas who were Mitnagdim (doubters), as opposed to Hasidism, were identified as Litvaks. Among the many questions posed and answered in their survey of South African Jewish migration to Australia and New Zealand is: “Do all Lithuanian Jews have an irrepressible entrepreneurial drive?”

In terms of Yiddish, Professor Dovid Katz, Professor of Judaic Studies and research director of the Yiddish Research Institute in Vilnius, states[10] “…it is not unusual for an internal division into dialect groupings based on language, folklore and other cultural factors to become a matter of fame, humor or even notoriety.” “The Northern Litvak became known as a ‘reydn sábesdik’—saying sábes instead of shábes for Sabbath.” The Litvak merged the s and sh sounds (giving the impression of saying s instead of sh, or even merging the two sounds). Referring to other major differences, Katz notes that the Litvak system of stressed vowels has been the standard for Ashkenazic Hebrew, Aramaic and spoken Yiddish. He notes variations in vowel quality between the Litvish and Poylish (Polish) Yiddish, defining the latter as originating roughly from an area of the kingdom of Poland before the Polish-Lithuanian Union of 1549, i.e. also including Ukraine (Podolia, Volhynia and Bessarabia), Moldova, Galicia, Romania and some parts of Hungary. “These backbone countries were used to name an entire dialect, and the names stuck in Yiddish in the same free spirit in which stateless languages often name their internal geographic concepts.” However, a major exception is the use of the southern vowel oy (equivalent to Litvish ey) as a standard e.g. in tóyre (Torah). Katz expands on the differences between two parts of the southern dialect, Polish and Ukrainian, and notes these are closer to each other than to the northern or northeastern Litvak Yiddish. He lists all the main differences in pronunciation and gives the example of how use of the northern bóbe instead of the very southern bábe (grandmother) can aid in determining the origin of a family.

Katz notes that the most inclusive word for all southerners is Galitsýaner. But the traditional Galicia lands are split between two southern dialects of Ukrainian (Southeastern) and Polish (Mideastern) Yiddish. The dichotomy between Litvaks and Galitsýaners became embodied in the folklore stereotypes of vaudeville.

It is beyond the scope of this article to deal in any depth with the rabbinic differences. Suffice to say that by the 17th century, Lithuanian Jewry (especially in Vilna and Grodno) probably equaled Krakow and Lublin as centers of rabbinic study. The (Polish) pilpul method of study was challenged by the Vilna Gaon (Elijah ben Solomon or Eliyahu ben Shlomo-Zalman) who, deriving much from the original theoretical principles from Reb Moshe Rivkes, used a more rational and intellectual approach to the study of the Talmud. He rejected the casuistic (relating to the use of ethical principles to resolve moral problems) pilpul methods and applied logical reasoning to critical evaluation of texts. He was opposed to Hasidism (yet was knowledgeable about mystical Kabbalah), and issued a herem (a ban equivalent to excommunication) on all Hasidim in Vilna, forming the movement of Mitnagdim (Enlightenment).

Emanating from these analytical methods, Litvaks were purported to be skeptical, overly intellectual, emotionally a bit detached with well-developed senses of irony and satiric humor, sharp tempered and often very poor in financial terms. The Litvak has a deep respect for education and learning; the Vilna Gaon promoted western European educational values. The Galitzianers, in contrast, were more religious, warmer emotionally and wealthier in economic terms, and had a better sense of humor.

Dina Porat[11] writes “…the Litvak, namely the Lithuanian Jew: rather more logical than emotional; a bit more suspicious of others; very independent in his thoughts and deeds; exceptionally sharp and intense in his study of the Torah; quite proud of his uniqueness, as compared with the type of Jew created in other countries. In short a Mitnaged—an adamant opposer of Hasidism, not only as a trend in Jewish thought, but as an expression of a group practicing together the over-emotional external ceremonies, giving less scope for forms of individualism.”

Leo Rosten,[12] in his imitable style, has these wonderful descriptions of Galitzianers: “…Galicia, heavily populated by Jews (in the early twentieth century, they comprised over ten per cent of the population) was a seat of Talmudic learning; it had several important yeshivas which produced prominent rabbis and scholars. The Jewish population of Galicia benefited from Emperor Joseph II’s decree of 1780, making education compulsory for his subjects.

“The Galitzianer and the Litvak were often at odds, each claiming superiority over, and looking with a certain disdain upon the other. The respective chauvinists viewed a marriage between a Litvak and a Galitzianer as almost exogamous, and wedding guests were fond of predicting that no good could come of such a strange misalliance. My parents spoke with a certain prissiness about both Galitzianers and Litvaks. We were Poylish (Polish)—and were regarded, in turn, as infra dig (beneath one’s dignity) by such Galitzianers and Litvaks who put on airs.

“Russian Jews, especially of the intelligentsia, looked down with cool impartiality upon all the rest. Among Galitzianers, a Deutsch or German Jew was regarded as modernized, probably unreligious and certainly one who wore no beard, payess (sidelocks) or hat. As for German Jews—! A self-appointed elite they clearly disliked, snubbed or despised non-German ]ehudim; they were (if one must generalize) heartily disliked—and envied—by the poorer, less assimilated, much more religious kin to their east.”

And of a Litvak: Pronounced LiT-vok, to rhyme with “bit lock.”

1. A Jew from Lithuania, or neighboring regions.
2. An erudite but pedantic type— thin, dry, humorless.
3. A learned but skeptical sort. A Litvak is sometimes called a tsaylem kop (a tsaylem is a cross, but in this case the phrase means ‘death’s head’) because of the reputation for learning plus skepticism (in the eyes of the Hasidim) enjoyed by Jews from Lithuania.
4. A shrewd, clever fellow.
5. (Derogatorily, by Galitzianer Jews) A sharp trader, a corner cutting type, and one whose piety is shallow.

In some circles, Litvak is used not only to describe, but to deride. “What can you expect from a Litvak?” and “He’s as clever as a Litvak.”

Talia Bloch, a journalist writing in The Forward, has a sub-headline, “Litvaks and Galitzianers, Lay Down Your Arms; Science Finds Unity in the Jewish Gene Pool.”^[13] Bloch emphasizes that the distinctions Jews have created among themselves may be falling away with scientific advances “…Jews—genetically speaking, at least—may have more in common than anyone previously suspected.”

Seldin, a geneticist at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, and his colleagues looked at population structure in a diverse group of Europeans and European Americans. They showed a consistent, reproducible distinction between “Northern” and “Southern” European population groups. Those with southern European ancestry (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek) comprise 85 percent of the “Southern” population; most Northern, Western, Eastern and Central Europeans are 90 percent represented in the “Northern” population group.[14]

Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewish origin were also represented as 85 percent in the “Southern” population, showing a later Mediterranean origin. Seldin et al. also notes, “…Specifically, these methods may allow scientists to uncover disease-associated genetic variations that might be hidden unless differences related to European ancestry are considered.”

Harry Ostrer, MD, has a major Jewish genetic demography DNA project in progress, the Jewish HapMap Project, aiming at understanding the patterns of Jewish migration that formed the historical communities and the resultant pattern of genetic variation. These communities no longer exist, but by studying the DNA of their descendants, their genetic structure can be discerned. In genetic terms, this is the male-specific Y chromosome patrilineal line and the mitochondrial mt-DNA to understand the matrilineal line.[15] Other relevant papers do not specifically deal with the Galitzianer-Litvak divide.[16]

The deep “schism” between Galitzianers and Litvaks derives predominantly from folklore, Yiddish dialects and modalities of religious practices, but in terms of genetic marker studies is unlikely to exist. Obviously, it would be preferable to see larger genetic marker studies of similar groups and no doubt these will be done in the future. No genetic characteristics are specific to Litvaks. Similar characteristics occur to the same extent in Galitzianers. The close matching of Herb Huebscher’s and my own Y-DNA (and the more general admixture of Galitzianers and Litvaks in the 43 WIRTH families studied) emphasizes this point.

Notes

[1]. Huebscher, Herb, in a personal e-mail communication September 4, 2007, pointed out that in the exact 12 marker match between him and me, the value of 23 at marker no. 2, DYS 390 is specific to himself, my son and myself. All others in the WIRTH group have a value of 22 there. In his case this is a personal mutation that only he has among all his relatives. The value of 23 represents the modal value for the Issroff family at that marker, whereas the Hubscher family modal value at that marker is 22. At 25 markers, we are one point apart because at marker 18 his family has a “family mutation” value of 25 as opposed to the modal 26, which I have. A number of WIRTH families have the 25 value; i.e., they are on the same branch of the phylogenetic tree. In terms of Haplogroup and sub-Haplogroup, we are in J2 and the J2a1b1 clade (previously termed J2f1), respectively.

[2]. Huebscher, Herb. op. cit.

[3]. Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem and NY: Macmillan and Keter Publishing co., 1971. Vol. 7 p. 265

[4]. Weiner, Miriam. Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova. Secaucus: Routes to Roots Foundation, 1999. See <www.rtrfoundation.org/uk1.html> and <www.Routes toroots.com>

[5]. Katz, Dovid. Words on Fire. The Unfinished Story of Yiddish. New York: Basic Books, 2003

[6]. Levin, Dov. The Litvaks: A Short History of the Jews of Lithuania. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2001; Greenbaum, Masha. The Jews of Lithuania: A History of a Remarkable Community, 1316–1945. Jerusalem: Gefen, 1995

[7]. Issroff, Saul. Shemot, Vol 3:3, 1995; also see <www. jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/litvak2.txt>

[8]. Schoenberg, Nancy and Stuart. Lithuanian Jewish Communities. New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1996

[9]. Tatz, Colin; Arnold, Peter; Heller, Gillian. Worlds Apart: The Re-Migration of South African Jews. Sydney: Rosenberg, 2007

[10]. Katz, Dovid. Op.cit.Litvaks and Polish Jews. A North-South Divide pp 145–72,

[11]. Porat, Dina. “The Jewish Shtetl in Lithuania in Rieteve” (Chapter 2). A Jewish Shtetl in Lithuania ed. Alter Levine, revised edition edited by Dr. Dina Porat and Roni Stauber. Cape Town: Kaplan-Kushlick Foundation, 2000.

[12]. Rosten, Leo. The Joys of Yiddish. USA, Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1970.

[13]. Bloch, Tali. “One Big, Happy Family.” The Forward, Wed. Aug. 22, 2007

[14]. Seldin MF, Shigeta R, Villoslada P, Selmi C, Tuomilehto J, et al. (2006) “European Population Substructure: Clustering of Northern and Southern Populations.” PloS Genet 2(9): e143. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.0020143

[15]. Ostrer, H. “A Genetic Profile of Contemporary Jewish Populations.” Nature Reviews Genetics. 2, 891–898 (2001); Ostrer, Harry. Genetic Analysis of Jewish Origins <http://<www.med.nyu.edu/pediatrics/genetics/research/ jewish _origins.html>

    [16]. Ritte U, Neufeld E, Broit M, Shavit D, Motro U. “The differences among Jewish communities–maternal and paternal contributions.” J Mol Evol. 1993 Oct; 37(4):435–40.

Hammer MF, Redd AJ, Wood ET, Bonner MR, Jarjanazi H, Karafet T, Santachiara-Benerecetti S, Oppenheim A, Jobling MA, Jenkins T, Ostrer H, Bonne-Tamir B. “Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Jun 6;97(12):6769-74.

Nebel A, Filon D, Brinkmann B, Majumder PP, Faerman M, Oppenheim A.   “The Y chromosome pool of Jews as part of the genetic landscape of the Middle East.” Am J Hum Genet. 2001 Nov; 69(5):1095-112. Epub 2001 Sep 25.

Behar DM, Garrigan D, Kaplan ME, Mobasher Z, Rosengarten D, Karafet TM, Quintana-Murci L, Ostrer H, Skorecki K, Hammer MF. “Contrasting patterns of Y chromosome variation in Ashkenazi Jewish and host non-Jewish European populations.” Hum Genet. 2004 Mar; 114(4):354–65.

Doron M. Behar, Ene Metspalu, Toomas Kivisild, Alessandro Achilli, Yarin Hadid, Shay Tzur, Luisa Pereira, Antonio Amorim, Lluís Quintana-Murci, Kari Majamaa, Corinna Herrnstadt, Neil Howell, Oleg Balanovsky, Ildus Kutuev, Andrey Pshenichnov, David Gurwitz, Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, Antonio Torroni, Richard Villems, and Karl Skorecki. “The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event.” American Journal of Human Genetics, volume 78 (2006), pages 487–497

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Saul Issroff, a retired dermatologist based in London, was a founding member of the JGS Great Britain. His interests include the Holocaust in Lithuania and Southern African Jewish genealogy.