Disir
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An international team of archaeologists has unearthed the remains of ritual baths at the Great Synagogue in Vilna, which had been burned and ransacked by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and was finally pulled down once and for all by the Russians in 1965 as they set out to eradicate all memory of the Jews in Lithuania.
How long Jews lived in Lithuania is hard to know. The earliest records note their presence from the 8th century C.E., though they could have arrived centuries before, as Jews scattered through the diaspora after the disastrous Bar Kokhba Revolt in ancient Israel. In any case, like numerous other European nations, Lithuania had a checkered relationship with the Jews, sometimes embracing them with warmth, at other times expelling the whole population, for instance in the year 1495. They were allowed back in after eight years, but relations between the Lithuanian powers that be and the Jewish population had soured, and would remain strained (and worse).
The vast Great Synagogue of Vilna itself was completed in 1633, over a century after the Jews were let back into Lithuania. It was built on the site of an older synagogue, which in turn had been built on the remains of an even older Jewish prayer house.
First the Lithuanian authorities of this early modern period had to let the Jews build a house of worship from stone. Since it was so large and grand, yet was forbidden by law to pass the height of churches in the city, much of the Grand Synagogue was built below ground. Seen from the street, the synagogue seemed three stories tall but inside it stretched the equivalent of five stories, all grandly decorated, according to records.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany occupied Lithuania.
read more: Great Synagogue of Vilna's Jewish ritual baths, destroyed in Holocaust, found by archaeologists
That is cool-what was found.
How long Jews lived in Lithuania is hard to know. The earliest records note their presence from the 8th century C.E., though they could have arrived centuries before, as Jews scattered through the diaspora after the disastrous Bar Kokhba Revolt in ancient Israel. In any case, like numerous other European nations, Lithuania had a checkered relationship with the Jews, sometimes embracing them with warmth, at other times expelling the whole population, for instance in the year 1495. They were allowed back in after eight years, but relations between the Lithuanian powers that be and the Jewish population had soured, and would remain strained (and worse).
The vast Great Synagogue of Vilna itself was completed in 1633, over a century after the Jews were let back into Lithuania. It was built on the site of an older synagogue, which in turn had been built on the remains of an even older Jewish prayer house.
First the Lithuanian authorities of this early modern period had to let the Jews build a house of worship from stone. Since it was so large and grand, yet was forbidden by law to pass the height of churches in the city, much of the Grand Synagogue was built below ground. Seen from the street, the synagogue seemed three stories tall but inside it stretched the equivalent of five stories, all grandly decorated, according to records.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany occupied Lithuania.
read more: Great Synagogue of Vilna's Jewish ritual baths, destroyed in Holocaust, found by archaeologists
That is cool-what was found.
