Archaeologists Uncover the Bimah of Vilna’s Great Synagogue

A team of researchers excavating the destroyed main synagogue in what is now the Lithuanian city of Vilnius (formerly Vilna) have found its bimah—the elevated central platform holding a table on which the Torah is read. Jewish Heritage Europe reports:

Following the discovery, Vilnius’s mayor, Remigijus Šimašius, announced that the school [built on the synagogue’s ruins in the 1950s and] vacated last year will be demolished in the coming years and a commemorative site about the synagogue will be developed and inaugurated by 2023, when Vilnius marks its 700th anniversary.

The Great Synagogue was built in the early 1600s in the Renaissance-baroque style. It became the center of Jewish life in Vilnius, towering over the shulhoyf (“synagogue courtyard”), a teeming complex of alleyways and Jewish community buildings and institutions including twelve [smaller] synagogues, ritual baths, the [offices of the] community council, kosher meat stalls, [and the famed] Strashun library. It was ransacked and torched by the Nazis in World War II, and the postwar Soviet regime tore down the ruins and built the school on the site.

The bimah was built in the 18th century following a destructive fire in 1748. Its construction was financed by a local benefactor, a writer and [rabbinic] judge named Yehudah ben Eliezer. . . . The archaeologists describe the bimah as having been “a two-tier baroque structure built of four Corinthian and eight Tuscan columns, decorated with lions facing the holy ark [where the Torah scrolls were kept].”

Read more at Jewish Heritage Europe

More about: Archaeology, East European Jewry, History & Ideas, Holocaust, Lithuania, Synagogues, Vilna

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy