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2008-11-17
Vilnius seminar series continues

VILNIUS UNIVERSITY

Vilnius Yiddish Institute

Vilnius Seminar Series on the Eastern European Jewish Heritage

Sponsored by the Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund (www.jhf.nl)

Date: November 13, 2008

Speaker: Dr. Eglë Bendikaitë [The Lithuanian Institute of History; Vilnius Yiddish Institute]

Lecture: Shimshon Rosenbaum: Intermediary between Cultures and Worlds

Shimshon Rosenbaum (1859–1934) grew up in a traditional Orthodox Lithuanian Jewish environment in Pinsk (nowadays Belarus). As a lawyer and politician, he has started in Minsk. With this city is connected bigger part of his life and career, but the decade spent in Lithuania represented a qualitatively new stage in his life. Shortly after his arrival in Vilnius in 1915, Rosenbaum became spokesman for the local Zionist movement and was soon a recognised public figure. He served first as deputy foreign minister and then as minister for Jewish affairs. A moderate Zionist, he maintained contacts with Jews around the world and tried to modernise East European Jewry. He campaigned throughout his life for Jewish rights. Disappointed by growing antisemitism in Europe, he immigrated to Palestine in 1924. There, he remained active on behalf of Lithuania as that country’s general consul in Tel Aviv. Shimshon Rosenbaum died in Tel Aviv in 1934.