08.11.2018 – 05.12.2018
A writer and public figure Uriah Katzenelenbogen wrote in 1914, The whole Lithuania, all its cities and towns, is woven with our – Jewish – inns, stores, tailors’ and shoemakers’ workshops, blacksmiths’ and stoneworkers’ shops, and small merchants who would go from village to village: it has grown into our Jewish consciousness.
Is it possible to recreate this kind of Lithuania in one’s mind today? Or such Vilnius as was poetized by Hebrew poet Zalman Shneur in 1920: Vilna, my big grandmother, metropolis of the Jewish people / Jerusalem of the exile, comfort of the ancient nation settled in the north!
But if we can no longer see these images of the past, can we possibly recreate them by means of the extant architecture, art objects, and texts? We could try, yet we must still bear in mind that this depiction will never be exhaustive and realistic. The storytellers aren't here anymore, while the narratives stored in the collections of museums and libraries are fragmented, like ancient mosaics.
The exhibition "Reflections in a Shattered Mirror" introduces the Judaica printed and manuscript heritage preserved at the Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library. The exhibition follows the principle of such a mosaic and makes no attempt to replace the missing parts. The poster of the exhibition features a photograph by an unknown author which captures an ordinary day in the courtyard of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius: a respectable devout man crosses it paying no attention to boys who play carelessly nearby. But the photograph is damaged, as if reminding us that we should not be misled into thinking that we have succeeded in fully revealing the life of the pre-war Lithuanian Jewish community, and that we should not just admire it nostalgically. The exhibition showcases some precious and eloquent fragments of that past, offering us only a glimpse into it.
The exhibition "Reflections in a Shattered Mirror" was prepared by the Judaica Research Centre at the Documentary Heritage Research Department of the National Library.