Baltics Experience

Take a Jewish Vilnius walking tour with a local tour guide.

Example guide:

The Vilnius Ghetto
It has been estimated that of the 265,000 Jews living in Lithuania in June 1941, 254,000 or 95%
were murdered during the German occupation. No other Jewish community in Nazi-occupied
Europe was so comprehensively destroyed.

The Choral Synagogue
This synagogue was called Taharat Hakodesh until the Choral Synagogue became more popular. The synagogue was Orthodox in nature, but its rituals were
accompanied by choral singing (along the lines of synagogues of Germany, where the reform
movement of Judaism began to take shape).

The Vilna Gaon Monument
Elijah Ben Solomon, better known as the Vilna Gaon (April 23, 1720 – October 9, 1797), was the
foremost intellectual leader of non-Hasidic Jewry in eighteenth-century Europe. Among Jews, he
is often referred to as the The Gra—from the Hebrew acronym Gaon Rabbi Eliyahu. There is a
statue of the Vilna Gaon and a street named after him in the central city of Vilnius, the place of
both his birth and his death.

Depart for the Shalom Aleichem Jewish School –interactive activities with students. followed by lunch and a visit to the Jewish kindergarten.

Return to the hotel for a discussion on the Yiddish Language and Lithuanian Jewish Culture