Life and career Levinas was born on 12 January 1906, into a middle-class Litvak family in Kaunas, in present-day Lithuania, then Kovno district, at the Western edge of the Russian Empire. Because of the disruptions of World War I, the family moved to Kharkiv in Ukraine in 1916, where they stayed during the Russian revolutions of February and October 1917. In 1920, his family returned to the Republic of Lithuania. Levinas's early education was in secular, Russian-language schools in Kaunas and Kharkiv. Upon his family's return to the Republic of Lithuania, Levinas spent two years at a Jewish gymnasium before departing for France, where he commenced his university education.
Life and career Levinas was born on 12 January 1906, into a middle-class Litvak family in Kaunas, in present-day Lithuania, then Kovno district, at the Western edge of the Russian Empire. Because of the disruptions of World War I the family moved to Kharkiv in Ukraine in 1916, where they stayed during the Russian revolutions of February and October 1917. In 1920, his family returned to the Republic of Lithuania. Levinas's early education was in secular, Russian-language schools in Kaunas and Kharkiv. Upon his family's return to the Republic of Lithuania, Levinas spent two years at a Jewish gymnasium before departing for France, where he commenced his university education.