by Yori Yalon and Israel Hayom Staff
Team of Israeli, Lithuanian, and American archaeologists are following a 19th-century plan for the restoration of the synagogue's mikveh facilities that was discovered in the Vilna city archives • Synagogue served famed rabbi, the Vilna Gaon.
The newly excavated mikveh
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Photo credit: Israel Antiquities Authority |
A team of Israeli, Lithuanian and American
archaeologists has unearthed the remains of two mikvehs (ritual baths)
used by congregants at the Great Synagogue in Vilna, today the capital
of Lithuania.
This synagogue, which was at heart of the
Vilna's large Jewish community for hundreds of years, was completely
destroyed in the Holocaust, but evidence of underground spaces
discovered in a study carried out last year led to the excavation of the
site and the exposure of the ritual baths.
The Great Synagogue of Vilna, built in the
17th century in Renaissance-Baroque style, was a large community center
and a center of Torah study. It was at the heart of Lithuanian Jewry and
included 12 synagogues and study halls; mikvehs; the community council
building; kosher meat stalls; the school of famed Rabbi Elijah ben
Solomon Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon, and more.
During the Holocaust, Germans looted and
burned the synagogue complex. Any remains were completely obliterated by
the Soviets after the war, who built a modern school on the site.
Dr. Jon Seligman of the Israel Antiquities
Authority explained that "most of the historical descriptions of the
Great Synagogue in Vilna and the community courtyard relate to the Great
Synagogue and the surrounding prayer halls. Until now, we have found
little information about the bathhouse and mikveh building of the Jewish
community, a community that comprised almost half of the city's
population."
The excavation is following an architectural
plan from the end of the 19th century for the restoration of the ancient
bathhouse that was discovered in the municipal archive of Vilna.
The team led by Seligman, along with Mantas
Daubaras of the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Organization and Professor
Richard Freund of the University of Hartford, discovered the mikvehs in
July. The sections the team found are the recent ones, dating to the
early 20th century. They feature tiled walls and floors, steps leading
to the pool and an auxiliary pool in which water is collected for the
mikveh.
"These discoveries add a new dimension to the
understanding of the daily lives of the Jews of Vilna, and will
certainly provide a new focus for understanding the lost cultural
heritage of the Jewish community of Vilna, the 'Jerusalem of
Lithuania,'" the researchers explained.
Yori Yalon and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=44731
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