I'm a Rabbi in Lithuania during the late 1800s. Do I speak Lithuanian or Hebrew?

by skitchie
AshkenazeeYankee

None of the above. In Late 19th-century Lithuania, an educated Jew would probably have spoken Yiddish at home and in his community, and also had a good working knowledge of Hebrew as a liturgical language and even a literary language, but not as a conversational language, despite it's use in liturgy and prayer. Post 1880s you might try to use Hebrew in corresponence and conversation if you were of a Zionist political activist, but most of these sorts of people would not also have been rabbis in this period.

Depending on his family background and sources of income, a educated Ashkenazee Jew from the one the bigger cities (say, Vilna) might also possessed some level of conversational fluency in Russian (and/or possibly Polish), especially if they were a tavern owner or grain factor, or other that necessitated lots of conversations with people outside the Jewish communities.

Knowledge of Lithuanian or Latvian was relatively uncommon among Ashkenazee Jews of the region, at at the time Lithuanian was low-prestige language spoken largely in rural areas.

In fact, the area that is today the Republic of Lithuania had an even larger percentage of Polish-speakers in the 19th century than it does today, so most people living in settlements of any size would use Polish or Russian as a trade language.

As background, in the late 1800s, the entirety of modern Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire.