I am told Litvacs means true Lithuanians. As a child my wife Barbara often heard stories of the old country before her grandparents endured the hard voyage from Europe to New York. Her great grandfather was a baker in a Jewish village lying on the border of Lithuania and Russia. This part of the world is known as West European Russia. The Eastern border of these countries is Russia and throughout history the exact locations of borders were constantly in dispute, so the little village was sometimes in Russia, other years it was in Poland, and still during other times the village was part of Lithuania. It depended on who happened to be winning the local wars during and before the time of Napoleon and the Czars.
In those days the countries had kings, and other royalty who were in power. Most of the poor people were required to work for almost nothing. Barbara's family lived in a town like the one in the play Fiddler On The Roof. Her great-grandfather Hyman Alexander was the baker, and he was an excellent baker. The wonderful aroma of the baking bread could be smelled from far across the fields away from his house. Challa, pronounced [halla] is a favorite Jewish loaf of bread that is very long and twisty shaped. They don't slice it with a knife. They tear off pieces and love to eat it while it is warm from the oven. The crust is shiny and hard and the bread inside is soft and sweat tasting. Because they don't cut the bread it is called "breaking bread" when you eat some of it, and the bread is often used with wine or other foods in religious ceremonies.
A pogrom is the word used to describe "harassing the Jews by beatings, barn burnings, etc." Since Jews were not Christians they were not allowed to be regular citizens, couldn't own land, were not allowed to have certain jobs and were made fun of by the non-Jews. The Christians could not understand why the Jews stayed Jews instead of joining the gang and being Christians like everyone else. Anyway, they didn't trust or like the Jews and even encouraged the young Christian men to ride their horses over to the Jewish village to have a pogrom and kill a few Jews and burn barns and take their food. The Russian army had horsemen known as Cossacks who were known throughout the world as great fighters on horseback. They had learned to ride from the Mongolians in south Russia and the men carried sabers and spears. The Mongolians were fierce fighters. They were great horse riders.
Every now and then a group of Cossacks rode close to the Litvac village of the Jews. The captain of the Cossacks might say, "Men, it's about time we teach those Jews a lesson. It's a good day for a pogrom. Let's go take our exercise."
Hearing the horses hooves as the Cossacks charged, the baker quickly put fresh loaves of challa on the fences and window sills. The Jews knew better than to fight back. They knew from experience that the Christians would kill them easily because Jews were not allowed to keep weapons. The Cossacks speared the bread off the fences and retired to enjoy eating it leaving the baker's family alone. Other families lost goats, sheep, chickens and sometimes even human life in the raids.
Eventually Barbara's grandfather made the unpleasant trip riding steerage on a ship with many other sea-sick refugees to the United States. At first he was not able to understand English. At first he was not treated much better in New York than he had been treated in Poland. He saved money and paid passage fares to bring his wife and parents to America. Eventually he had his own grocery store and raised a fine family of children who became well educated by attending grade school and by reading at home in Binghamton, New York. The new Americans loved knowledge and remained faithful to their religion but were not as strict as their parents had been about preserving the old ways. The hard life as a Litvac had kept the people hard and in need for their religion. Gentle American life softened the immigrants. Some of the children even married outside the Jewish faith. Everyone loved America.