Discoveries in their just-completed sixth season of excavations at the site of the destroyed Great Synagogue in Vilnius include full exposure of the Aron Kodesh (Torah Ark) and the Bimah. The team of Israeli, Lithuanian, and north American archaeologists even discovered — just Thursday morning — a delicate silver Yad, a pointer used to read from the Torah, in the soil in front of the Bimah.
The discoveries were announced Thursday in Vilnius by the excavations director Dr. Jon Seligman, of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The Great Synagogue was built in the early 1600s in Renaissance-Baroque style. It became the center of Jewish life in Vilnius (Vilna), towering over the Shulhoyf, a teeming complex of alleyways and other Jewish community buildings and institutions including 12 synagogues, ritual baths, the community council, kosher meat stalls, the Strashun library, and other structures and institutions.
It was ransacked and torched by the Nazis in World War II, and the postwar Soviet regime torn down the ruins and in the 1950s built a school on the site
The archaeologists, sponsored by a number of international institutions, have been excavating at the site each summer since 2016, after first preparing the way with group-penetrating radar scans. In addition to the Ark and the Bimah, major finds have included the discovery of two ritual baths (mikvehs).
Read our article about the 2019 discoveries with more details and links to earlier articles
Access the project’s Facebook page for more pictures and updates
Watch a video — in Hebrew — from the Israel Antiquities Authority in which Seligman describes the discoveries, set against a virtual recreation of the synagogue:
Watch a Jewish News video in English about this season’s discoveries:
5 comments on “Lithuania: Archaeologists announce exciting discoveries at site of destroyed Vilna Great Synagogue, including Bimah, Ark, and silver Yad”
My great grand father, and 3rd great grandfather know as Aron the Levite (Levinson), who wrote comment on the five books of Moses under the name Mate Levi were from Vilna. Unfortunately can not find anything on either of them.
The city of Vilna has all the architectual plans for the whole city. They had to know where the synagogue was decades ago. In addition the Lithuanians created the large and small ghetto in the 1941 and probably used the main synagogue as a waiting area initially while they transferred the Jews from the city proper to the ghetto.
My father was born and grew up in Vilna, Shulhoyf being his back yard. The “two impressive staircases” were there because when they built the synagogue there was a local law that it could not be taller than the neighboring church. Therefore, from the street the synagogue was a three story building but when you entered you had to decend two stories to get to the main santuary. Therefore, from inside it was five stories high plus the height of a large pergola, making it immense from inside but in conformation with the law from the outside.
That’s incredible info. Thank you.
So exciting! Maybe my gggrandfather held the yad,we can dream