OPINION  | THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE SAGA | TEXTBOOK CASE OF RESTITUTION GONE AWRY | STOLEN ELECTION SAGA | THE LJC |   THE AJC | THE GWF |  USCPAHA

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On the agenda:

(1) Have the more than one million Orthodox Jews worldwide who consider themselves “Lithuanian” (Litvish) been consulted and respected? Do their future pilgrimages and tourism merit consideration?

(2) Is the sacred site of the Great Vilna Synagogue per se the right place for a new secular community HQ, Yivo, gourmet food projects, and more? What would Yivo’s founders think? What would the synagogue’s centuries of worshippers think? The Gaon of Vilna’s famed place, proudly in the sanctuary, would now be in the cellar, a ruin to be gazed down on from the secular pleasures in the ultramodernist upper floors.

(3) Is it conceptual, architectural and historic justice to rebuild (on the Great Synagogue’s still extant — and now archaeologically revealed — main-sanctuary-level ruins that can be restored) a modernist building in the spirit of avant garde West European buildings in the spirit of the swinging 2020s? Would this be happening to a major sacred Christian shrine recently unearthed adn excavated?

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Documents from the saga:

(1) The 2022 founding memorandum in English and in Lithuanian. Were the signed “Jewish representatives” authorized by leaders of Orthodox Litvish Jewry internationally to represent the traditional Jewish view about the future of one of the most sacred religious sites in Lithuania (and all of Eastern Europe)? What do the living Jews of Lithuania think of the line proclaiming as fact that the “Jewish community in Vilnius and Lithuania declined significantly and is now dying out altogether.” Defending History was on the case from day one.  Is this the project’s considered academic research or barely concealable wish? Is this the message to the living Jews of Lithuania and their frequent visitors from every part of the globe?

(2) The “Good Will Foundation” (GWF) announced the decision on its website during a so-called “Litvak congress” in Vilnius that excluded most bona fide Litvak voices, local as well as international.

(3) Dec. 2025 reception at the American Embassy  in Vilnius celebrating a fait accompli in the absence of any consultation with Orthodox Jewry makes clear that it will house the (utterly secular) official state-restitution-fueled Lithuanian Jewish Community (which has excluded the majority of Lithuania’s Jews since the “stolen election saga” of 2017) and a prestigious Yivo exhibit. But would Yivo’s ultra-secularist founders and prewar leaders have wanted to symbolically “take over” the Great Synagogue for secular endeavors at which academics and visitors would gaze down at some ruins in the basement? Or would they have said: “The right place for the new Yivo structure is outside the Great Synagogue grounds that are so sacred to religious Jewry?” The Good Will Foundation version of the report makes clear that the new building is moreover “expected to become a major attraction for Jews, cultural figures, and gourmets from around the world.” Is there going to be gourmet restaurant there too?

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Images from the saga:

Some images from the architectural plans for the new building follow (more online). Do they reflect sympathetic reconstruction of the spirit of the half-millennium old Vilner Shulheyf (the Great Vilna Synagogue Square)? Is this the same treatment afforded to Vilnius’s other great medieval squares and spaces?

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