At the Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, on the 21st of July, 2015, Professor Daniel J. Lasker delivered the lecture „When Eastern European Karaites Were Still Jewish – Karaite Jewish Life in Lithuania and Eastern Europe“.

Professor Daniel J. Lasker	Professor Lasker is talking about the history of Karaite faith
The lecture begins: Head of the Tolerance Center Ieva Šadzevičienė presents Professor Lasker

Questions – answers time

Daniel J. Lasker is the Norbert Blechner Professor of Jewish Values in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer Sheva, Israel. His areas of interest are medieval Jewish philosophy, the Jewish-Christian debate, Karaism, and selected issues in Jewish theology and law. Professor discussed the history of Karaism, how Karaites came to be in Lithuania, their intellectual accomplishments, their place as part of the Jewish people, and the eventual break between Karaites and Jews which began in the nineteenth century and was completed by World War II. He compared the Karaites of Eastern Europe and Lithuania with Egyptian Karaites who are now mostly in the State of Israel.

At the lecture
Ambassador of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany Ms. Jutta Schmitz and the Ambassador of the Royal Kingdom of Spain to Lithuania Emilio Fernandez-Castano Y Diaz-Caneja also attended the lecture

Lecture was included into The 2015 Summer Program in Yiddish Language and Literature, organized by Vilnius Yiddish Institute.