Sounds of Silence -- Traces of Jewish Life in Lithuania

This ten-day exhibition opened on 17 December 2009 under the auspices of Beit Hatfutsot located on the campus of Tel Aviv University:

Sounds of Silence -- Traces of Jewish Life in Lithuania
http://www.bh.org.il/on-line-exhibition-intro.aspx?67883

See also this essay on the subject:

The Sounds of Silence of Jewish Lithuania by Dovid Katz

This essay mentions two of my favorites in the same sentence -- L.L. Zamenhof, and the great philosopher of the Jewish Enlightenment, Salomon Maimon (much more confrontational than Moses Mendelssohn but highly respected by Immanuel Kant, the latter's anti-Semitic proclivities notwithstanding):

Then there were the modern realms of Jewish civilization, where Lithuanian Jewry also took a lead. The scope was breathtaking. It included the revival of the modern Hebrew language, and its first contemporary-grade literature. And modern Yiddish scholarship and research as a new field of humanistic inquiry. And a unique branch of Jewish socialism that stressed the development of Yiddish as a national Jewish language in the context of autonomy for minorities. The Litvak’s love of learning and education became proverbial. One result was a long line of original, maverick creators, among them the philosopher Solomon Maimon, the inventor of Esperanto Ludwig Leyzer Zamenhof, the artists Marc Chagall and Chaim Soutine. For centuries, the compact and exalted culture of Lithuanian Jewry never failed to impress. In his 1899 Journey through Lithuania (in Hebrew), Nahum Slouschz comments: “We are in the Jewish country, perhaps the only Jewish country in the world.”

Who knew? And here is a sample of Maimon's chutzpah I translated into Esperanto:

Pri Proponita Konvertiĝo al Kristanismo: El la Aŭtobiografio de Salomon Maimon