{"id":1245,"date":"2016-08-16T16:11:37","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T16:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1245"},"modified":"2016-08-16T16:17:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T16:17:12","slug":"lightness-of-the-vilnius-synagogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1245","title":{"rendered":"Lightness of the Vilnius Synagogue"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Making<\/a>

Making Matzoh in Vilnius’ Choral Synagogue<\/p><\/div>\n

On the\u00a0streets of Vilnius, Lithuania, I was struggling to align yesterday\u2019s crimes with today\u2019s commerce. \u00a0Having fed my imagination with stories and pictures of the Shoah, I was \u201cseeing\u201d the past unfold on the streets.\u00a0 History didn\u2019t fall away in linear fashion – it was layered, as present as the present, and the contradictions were often too much to bear.<\/p>\n

But each time I stepped into a synagogue, what a different feeling!\u00a0 I was expecting that the\u00a0heads and hearts of the Jews would be like mine, reeling, full of outrage or hostility. \u00a0There wasn’t outrage at all. \u00a0 There was warmth.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t help feel it.\u00a0 It was a balm for people coming in from the streets. \u00a0It was unexpectedly light. \u00a0In the sacred space, paradox rested. \u00a0In the people were bits of humor, and the heaviness was mixed with all things human. \u00a0Yes, almost all of the synagogues were\u00a0destroyed during the war and few remain; the vibrant community once the center of European Jewish spiritual life is also gone.\u00a0 There\u2019s no cheer in that.<\/p>\n

Enter the woman at the entrance of the Choral Synagogue.\u00a0 Soft in body, sitting at a table with crocheted keychains and tokens, she buzzed visitors through the security gate. \u00a0But this was the most gentle, good-natured \u201cguard dog\u201d you could ever want. \u00a0She sat before\u00a0a remarkable sanctuary built around a Romanesque plan with arches and domes; the central dome was painted sky blue with cloud patterns.\u00a0 The busy wood patterning, carved throughout, would have made an Andalusian mosque happy.\u00a0Twice a day, people pray there, managing the minyan of required ten men.<\/p>\n

The old man sprily jumped to take us upstairs to the women\u2019s balcony.\u00a0 There was an astounding old machine formerly used to roll matzohs for Passover.\u00a0 There were pictures of rustic wood shack synagogues that made up the hundred Lithuanian prayer spaces.\u00a0 With a brush of his hand, he described what had happened to those synagogues – gone.\u00a0 We had no language in common. Instead there was smile that had not an ounce of superficiality, that had few teeth – but was a human smile, full of all human experience nonetheless.<\/p>\n

\"Synagogue<\/a>

Restored Synagogue in Riga, Latvia<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the\u00a0streets of Vilnius, Lithuania, I was struggling to align yesterday\u2019s crimes with today\u2019s commerce. \u00a0Having fed my imagination with stories and pictures of the Shoah, I was \u201cseeing\u201d the past unfold on the streets.\u00a0 History didn\u2019t fall away in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[492,286,491,493,483],"class_list":["post-1245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-choral-synagogue","tag-holocaust","tag-lithunia","tag-shoah","tag-vilnius"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-k5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1250,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions\/1250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}