Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks are Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: (present-day Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the northeastern Suwałki region of Poland). The term is sometimes used, especially in Israel, to cover all Orthodox Jews who follow a "Lithuanian" (Ashkenazic and non-Hasidic) style of life and learning, whatever their ethnic background.

Lithuania was historically home to a large and influential Jewish community that was almost entirely eliminated during the Holocaust: see Holocaust in Lithuania. Before World War II there were over 110 synagogues and 10 yeshivas in Vilnius alone. Before World War II, the Lithuanian Jewish population was some 160,000, about 7% of the total population. Vilnius (then Wilno in the Second Polish Republic) had a Jewish community of nearly 100,000, about 45% of the city's total. About 4,000 Jews were counted in Lithuania during the 2005 census. There are still strong communities of Jews of Lithuanian descent around the world, especially in Israel, the United States, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Brazil and Australia.

The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים‎‎ ISO 259-3 Yhudim Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and an ethnoreligious group, originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation.Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos is equal to those born into it, have been absorbed into the Jewish people throughout the millennia.

In Jewish tradition, Jewish ancestry is traced to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the second millennium BCE. The modern State of Israel defines itself as a Jewish state in its Basic Laws, and Israel's Law of Return states: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh." Israel is the only country where Jews are a majority of the population. Jews achieved political autonomy twice before in ancient history. The first of these periods lasted from 1350 to 586 BCE, and encompassed the periods of the Judges, the United Monarchy, and the Divided Monarchy of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, ending with the destruction of the First Temple. The second was the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, most Jews have lived in diaspora. A minority in every country in which they live (except Israel), they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that has fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.

Leonidas Donskis, Ph.D., (born on August 13, 1962) is a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), a philosopher, political theorist, historian of ideas, social analyst, and political commentator.

As a public figure in Lithuania, he acted as a defender of human rights and civil liberties. In 2004, Donskis has been awarded by the European Commission the title of the Ambassador for Tolerance and Diversity in Lithuania. A center-right politician, he has always been opposed to all extreme or exclusionary attitudes and forms of violent politics, and, instead, has been leaning to liberalism with its advocacy of individual reason and conscience, ability to coexist with democratic programs of other non-exclusive ideologies, and moderation.

Leonidas Donskis was born in Klaipėda, Lithuania. He graduated from Lithuanian State Conservatoire (now Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater), majoring in philology and theater, and then pursued his graduate studies in philosophy at the University of Vilnius, Lithuania. Having received his first doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vilnius, he later earned his second doctorate in social and moral philosophy from the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Roger Cohen (born August 2, 1955) is a British-born journalist and author. He is a columnist for The New York Times and International Herald Tribune. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in fifteen different countries.

Roger Cohen was born in London to a Jewish family. His father, Sydney Cohen, a doctor, emigrated from South Africa to England in the 1950s. In the late 1960s, Roger studied at Westminster School, one of Britain's top private schools. He won a scholarship and would have entered College, the scholar's house, but was told a Jew could not attend College or hold his particular scholarship. Instead, he received a different scholarship.

In 1973, Cohen and his friends traveled throughout the Middle East, including Iran and Afghanistan. He drove a Volkswagen Kombi named 'Pigpen' after the late keyboard playing frontman of the Grateful Dead. He attended Balliol College, Oxford University. Cohen graduated with M.A. degrees in History and in French in 1977. He then left that year for Paris to teach English and to write for Paris Metro. He started working for Reuters and the agency transferred him to Brussels.

Šarūnas Liekis is a Lithuanian historian and political scientist. He is currently Professor of Politics at the Mykolas Romeris University (since 2000) and Director and Professor at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University (from 2001). He is an expert on inter-ethnic relations and conflicts.

Liekis studied at Vilnius University 1987–1993 (earning an MA), at the University of Oxford 1991–1992 (earning a Diploma), at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1995–1996, at Brandeis University 1993–1998 (earning a PhD), and earned the Habilitation at Vilnius University in 2005.

He worked as a diplomat 1992–1993, as a research and teaching assistant at Brandeis University 1993–1997, as Director of Programs at the Open Society Fund Lithuania 1997–2001, as Deputy Director of the Center for Stateless Cultures at Vilnius University 1998–2000, as Assistant Professor of History at Vilnius University 1999–2000, and as Miles Lerman Research Fellow of the Center for the Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2001–2002.