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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OPINION
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by Dovid Katz
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I have argued that Jewish diaspora history comprises a permanent, central religious spine, a tree trunk if you will, characterized by “secular outbursts” that produce magnificent contributions both to Jewish and to world culture, arts and sciences. The recurring and harmonious patterning is only internally ruined on the rare occasions when secularists, instead of taking pride and feeling joy at the continuity of religious life alongside their own, have turned against it with a venom. The most notorious case might well be the “Yevsektsiya,” the Soviet Union’s early investment in “good Jewish citizens” who would gleefully help destroy the religious Jewish mainstream of Jewish life that boasts thousands of years of uninterrupted survival in the face of monumental intolerance. They would mock the sanctity of synagogues, yeshivas and cemeteries, and revel in replacing them with artefacts of “Soviet modernity” while relegating the sacred, at best, to the cellars of a museum of the distant past. The question before Lithuania, on the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery and the Great Synagogue, are two current reincarnations of that Soviet spirit of state destruction of traditional Jewish life. Only this time, the moving forces are commercial greed and the lust for power, with first-class cover-ups engineered by top specialists in PR. Just find some famous architect abroad with “Litvak blood” and dress it all up as “preservation of the Litvak heritage” and it will all cover for the destruction of Lithuania’s once democratic Jewish community, and there will be yet another toy for the same tiny circle empowered by the government to decide on the spending of tens of millions of euros deriving from estimates, you will remember, of the values of looted prewar religious Jewish properties.
Turning to the fate of the Vilna Great Synagogue, whose remains have been so carefully excavated by top archaeologists in recent years:
(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? Those of non-Litvak Orthodox who would love nowadays to add Vilnius to their primary destinations in Ukraine, Poland and other countries?
(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 by the secularist interests on the modernist 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 exposed or restored) a modernist, secularist edifice? We asked some veteran architects to characterize the spirit of the proposed building (collage below). Replies included: Nordic modernism, Scandinavian spirit, barn-inspired structure, warmed minimalism, critical regionalism. The concept of a shul (synagogue) was not among the associations.
Would this be happening to a major sacred Christian shrine recently unearthed and meticulously excavated, one that had flourished for centuries in the hallowed spirit of Old Vilna churches? It will certainly be balm to those elements who feared something beaming with the warmth and glow of Old Jewish Vilna might be coming back to the Old Town.
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(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 solemn memorandum proclaiming as fact that the “Jewish community in Vilnius and Lithuania declined significantly and is now dying out altogether.” Is this the message to the living Jews of Lithuania and their frequent visitors from every part of the globe? Does this mean that the grand new multimillion euro edifice is actually just a power-and-glory base for the chairperson of the altogether-dying-out community and her (or her successors’) coterie? Will it indeed be built with funds from the “Good Will Foundation” (GWF) that derives its tens of millions from government restitution itself deriving from those religious properties of the annihilated Jewish communities of Lithuania?
“The Jewish community in Vilnius and Lithuania declined significantly and is now dying out altogether.”
—from the founding memorandum of the new multimillion euro “building on top of the Great Synagogue” signed by leaders of the AJC and the LJC and the mayor of Vilnius.
So who exactly needs this building in their reckoning?
(2) Indeed, the GWF announced the decision on its website following another so-called “Litvak congress” in Vilnius that excluded most bona fide Litvak voices, local as well as international. Defending History was on the case from day one.
(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-fuelled Lithuanian Jewish Community (which has excluded the majority of Lithuania’s Jews, and all of the Vilnius Jewish Community since the “stolen election saga” of 2017).
It will also house a prestigious Yivo exhibit. But would Yivo’s ultra-secularist founders and prewar leaders have wanted to arrogantly and triumphantly “muscle in on” and “take over” the Great Synagogue for secular endeavors at which academics and visitors would gaze down at some religious ruins in the basement? Or would they have said: “The right place for the new Yivo structure is in a part of Vilna 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 a gourmet restaurant there too? Anything to add to the pain and humiliation of traditional Lithuanian Jewry?
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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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The two ethical solutions
The two ethical solutions here are both rooted in the understanding that the past, present and future of religious Vilna Jewish culture are here paramount. (Art, secular Yiddish culture, the current “official” Jewish community and Good Will Foundation quango and gourmet food delicacies all deserve their spots in town, but this ain’t it.) The splendid archaeological discoveries are themselves worthy of becoming the permanent public treasure here.
The original bimah and other components that were once on the main floor are now well below ground level. They could be on permanent display protected by glass, with a designated footpath maximizing the profound spiritual experience of these recovered treasures, so long buried under the unsightly former Soviet kindergarten. Then, next door to the Great Synagogue (not on top of it!), one of the old small kloyzn in the adjacent courtyard can be reconstructed for the use of the many thousands of pilgrims who would be coming to pray at the site (and add to Lithuania’s successful tourism).
Incidentally, this solution was the one proposed by the long-term beloved and democratically elected head of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, Dr. Shimen Alperovich (Simonas Alperavičius, 1928-2014) in a 13 September 2013 interview videographed at the convalescent home where he spent the final period of his life. Though physically very frail, he remained mentally sharp and spoke lucidly about the future of the Vilna Great Synagogue. He died just over six months later, on 27 March 2014.
This formula has many parallels in Ukraine and elsewhere.
The second option is to rebuild the Great Synagogue to scale preserving the archaeological finds of the in situ original.
Either way, the attraction of davening (praying) where the Gaon of Vilna prayed would become for world Orthodox Jewry a major stop on pilgrimages to Eastern Europe. There are now between 25o,000 and 400,000 Orthodox Jews coming on pilgrimage journeys each year. Lithuania has the smallest share in this growing sector despite its glorious rabbinic past. Hasidim may not come just to Lithuania, the historic bastion of non-Hasidic Misnagdism, but they would love to add Vilna and Lithuania to their itineraries focused at present on Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.
Do the powers that be want to attract thousands of pilgrims each year and bring untold prestige to Lithuania’s standing, or do they want, once again, not to not miss an opportunity to spit in the faces of traditional world Jewry by desecrating for secular power games a beautiful sacred site that evokes a half millennium of storied Jewish life that is one of the prides and joys of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its successor states?
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