(JTA) On a visit to the city of Slonim in Belarus, Ilona Reeves fell in love with a 380-year-old dilapidated building that used to house one of the area’s largest and oldest synagogues.
Reeves, a 40-year-old author who lives in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, is a Christian, like virtually everyone who lives in the country. And the synagogue hadn’t been operational since before the Holocaust, when three quarters of Slonim residents were Jewish. Virtually all were murdered by the Nazis.
Still, Reeves looked at the structure, which had fallen into disrepair after years of use as shops, and saw something she wanted to save.
The wise man, his eyes are in his head.”
How do you measure a day? We learned in the first Tractate of this Daf Yomi journey that it is from sundown to sundown, and the most sanctified day of the week is Shabbat. We are asked to consider today why we recite kiddush at night when the verse in Exodus (20:7) says “remember the day of Shabbat to sanctify it.”
The voice of the Gemara reminds us that the
“essential mitzva of kiddush is to sanctify the day at night.” So, why all the energy to determine if what was really meant was that the kiddush should be recited during Shabbat day? It seems like there is some hair-splitting in the kiddush discussion, which has been going on for days.
The interior of the Great Synagogue of Slonim, Belarus, pictured in 2007. (Wikimedia Commons via JTA)
JTA On a visit to the city of Slonim in Belarus, Ilona Reeves fell in love with a 380-year-old dilapidated building that used to house one of the area’s largest and oldest synagogues.
Reeves, a 40-year-old author who lives in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, is a Christian, like virtually everyone who lives in the country. And the synagogue hadn’t been operational since before the Holocaust, when three quarters of Slonim residents were Jewish. Virtually all were murdered by the Nazis.
Still, Reeves looked at the structure, which had fallen into disrepair after years of use as shops, and saw something she wanted to save.
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On a visit to the city of Slonim in Belarus, Ilona Reeves fell in love with a 380-year-old dilapidated building that used to house one of the area’s largest and oldest synagogues.
Reeves, a 40-year-old author who lives in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, is a Christian, like virtually everyone who lives in the country. And the synagogue hadn’t been operational since before the Holocaust, when three quarters of Slonim residents were Jewish. Virtually all were murdered by the Nazis.
Still, Reeves looked at the structure, which had fallen into disrepair after years of use as shops, and saw something she wanted to save.