Timeline of Jewish history in Lithuania and Belarus

It has been theorized that Jews immigrated to the grand duchy in different waves, the first from the east (Babylonia, the Byzantine Empire, the Caucasus, and Judea and Samaria) and later from Germany in the west.

In 1323, Grand Duke Gediminas of Lithuania wrote a letter sent to many cities throughout the Holy Roman Empire saying that despite his country's paganism, Lithuania was tolerant to Christianity, and that he in fact wanted to convert.

He then went on to invite "knights, squires, merchants, doctors, smiths, wheelwrights, cobblers, skinners, millers," and others to come live in Lithuania where they could practice their crafts without compromising their religion.

[1] Russian Jewish historian Abraham Harkavy speculated that the Lithuania's first Jews had emigrated in the tenth century from Khazaria.

[2] This idea is based on the story of the Khazar Correspondence which states that the king of Khazaria and thousands of his subject converted to Judaism, transforming the nation into a Jewish kingdom which lasted for centuries, only to be destroyed in the tenth century at the hands of the Byzantine and Kievan Rus' forces in the tenth century.