Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choral_Synagogue_(Vilnius)
In Vilnius the floor of a synagogue the Nazis and Soviets destroyed lies open again. The few Jews left agree it must be saved and disagree on what to build on it.
Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Isn't it in your eyes as nothing?
Haggai 2:3
For the first time since the building was destroyed, the floor of the Great Synagogue of Vilna lies open to the sky. Archaeologists uncovered the bimah where the Torah was read, terrazzo floors in red and green, the women's gallery, and seating plaques that still carry the names of the people who paid for them. One reads, Gitel Klachek, wife of the late Yechezkel. A plaque of the Ten Commandments. A dish once used for gefilte fish. The building was set partly below ground so it would not rise higher than the city's churches.
The Nazis burned it. The Soviets finished the work and built a school on top. The school came down last year, and the heart of what was once called the Jerusalem of the North returned to the light. Lithuania's Jews now number under three thousand, most of the community murdered. They agree the floor must be saved. They cannot agree what to raise above it. Some want a living synagogue on the old ground. Others want a cultural center, open to all of Lithuania.
Twenty-five centuries ago a smaller remnant stood on a cleared foundation with the same ache. The ones who remembered the first temple wept, because the house going up looked like nothing beside the one they had lost. The prophet did not tell them to enshrine the ruin, and he did not tell them to forget it. He asked them to see the diminished thing plainly, and then to build.
A community that has truly died does not argue about its future. It is mourned, or it is paved over. The fight in Vilnius, prayer or exhibition, is the sound the living make standing on their own ground. A memorial would let them stop. The argument is the sign they have not.