Vilna Shul: Last Synagogue Standing (episode 257)

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to hub history, where we go far beyond the freedom trail. To share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 2 57 the VIlna Shul,
Hi, I’m jake this week co host american Nikki is coming out of retirement for an interview with Dalit Horn for an interview with Dalit Horn.
For an interview with Dalit Horn For an interview with Dalit Horn, executive director of the VIlna Shul the west end and the north slope of Beacon Hill have gone through extreme transformations over time.
At the turn of the 20th century, these neighboring communities welcome Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, though very few signs of those vibrant communities remain today.

[0:53] As the last of the purpose built immigrant synagogue still standing in downtown boston, the VIlna Shul is a unique building with a rich history of immigration community and the evolving american identity.

[1:08] But before we talk about the VIlna Shul I just want to pause and thank some recent sponsors, Rose Douglas, terry and scott.
All recently made generous contributions to underwrite the show on paypal.

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[2:18] Now, let’s welcome. Nikki back to the show.

Nikki:
[2:21] Hi everyone, I’m excited to be back on the show for this interview,
because I have been fascinated by the VIlna Shul since visiting a few months ago,
and I hope that those of you who are local will also be inspired to visit for yourselves before I welcome Dalit to the show, I want to give a brief context for the neighborhood and the origins of both the congregation and the building.

[2:46] Located at 18 phillips street.
The VIlna Shul sits in what we consider the north slope of Beacon Hill. Today, regular listeners of hub history will know that Beacon Hill and the West End are neighborhoods that have experienced extreme transformation over time.
But the story of Boston’s Jewish community actually begins in the south end where a largely German and Polish community of Jewish immigrants formed in the 1840s.

[3:15] As europe and Russia fell into war and political unrest just before the turn of the 20th century, jewish immigrants and refugees arrived in boston and came to live in the north end and the west end,
Boston’s Jewish population exploded.
In 1,884,000, Jews lived in the city, but by 1910 65,000 called Boston home,
the majority of these jews were of eastern european descent, culturally different from boston’s first jewish community.
These jews often settled in the north end, which became home to nearly as many jews as Italians,
as they did in europe North end jews took up small businesses and peddled their wares for income,
but as they left the crowded area for better living spaces and expanded into the West end, the north end became the italian dominant neighborhood that it is today.

[4:14] By the time jewish immigrant numbers were on the rise, african americans were moving out of Beacon Hill in the west end, sometimes selling their buildings to the growing jewish population.
The congregation that built in 1919, building that now houses the Vilna-shul was Lithuanian or Litvack in Yiddish and first met in people’s homes. In 1893.
After 13 years in 1906, the VIlna Shul congregation bought the vacated second African meeting house, more popularly known as the 12th baptist Church and converted it to a synagogue.
This was five or so years after the nearby first african meeting house on Joy Street was sold to another jewish congregation after only 10 years.
In 1916, the city of boston took the VIlna Shul converted church synagogue building by eminent domain to enlarge the phillips school.
While the displaced VIlna Shul congregation was meeting in the Anderson hotel at the nearby corner of Philips and Anderson street.
The property at 18 Phillip street with three tenement buildings came on the market.

[5:26] The VIlna Shul congregation bought the property in 1918, demolished the three tenement buildings and built the building that stands today in 1919,
the congregation brought their ark furniture, Torah scrolls and other movable from the old building In a reflection of the intertwined history between the African American and Jewish communities on Beacon Hill.
The Vilnius Pews came from the 12th Baptist Church with that background and a preview of just one of the many unique elements of the VIlna Shul I’m excited to welcome Dalit horn to the show.
Prior to joining the VIlna Shul Dalit served as the Vice president of strategic partnerships and impact at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
Dalit served as assistant director at A J C S Belfer Center for american pluralism.
She lives in Brooklyn Massachusetts with her husband and two sons.

[6:25] And this is the point where I have to confess that it’s been a long time since I’ve regularly recorded and when I was speaking with delete, I wasn’t as close to my microphone as perhaps I should have been,
jake did his best to balance the sound, but all of your complaints should be addressed to me.
Dalit Welcome to the show.

[6:48] Hi delete. Welcome to the show.

Dalit:
[6:50] Hi Nikki, It’s so great to be here with you.

Nikki:
[6:52] I am excited to have this conversation um since I visited the VIlna Shul many months ago now.
It feels like it’s been, I have wanted to do this interview with you um and to have it be my like great return to hub history. So I’m excited that we are here and to kick things off.
Can you explain to our listeners what the VIlna Shul is today, you know, both as an organization and as a historic building and structure.

Dalit:
[7:22] Absolutely. So you took the first word from my mouth, which is historic.
The Vilma is a historic synagogue, a living museum and a national landmark that’s located on Beacon Hill and it’s just steps from many of boston’s most iconic tourist sites, things like the,
Freedom Trail, the Underground Railroad, the Museum of African American History, of course, the Old North Church.
And it’s less than a 10 minute walk from the boston commons.
Well, I’m sure we will discuss the VIlna Shul rich history and architectural qualities. I really want just to focus for a moment on what we are and who we serve.
The Vilna is the fulcrum for jewish culture and engagement in downtown boston.
We celebrate jewish culture, heritage and values through arts and entertainment, holiday celebrations and adult learning and through programs like concerts, author talks, film screenings, art exhibits, museum tours.
We are giving voice and meaning to the histories and experiences of boston’s immigrants and newcomers.

Nikki:
[8:21] So in case our listeners don’t know, the VIlna Shul is located on, I would say, really the edge of both the north slope of Beacon Hill and what we call the west end.
Right? It’s it’s kind of right on the cusp of those two neighborhoods, and I think folks associate now the north slope of Beacon Hill as being historically a free black community, but I think people know less about the west end.
So can you give us a little background on the history of the neighborhood?

Dalit:
[8:51] Absolute. The first major wave of Jewish immigration to Boston began in the 1880s and really continued in a pretty concentrated way through the 1920s.
This story is significant to the Boston, Jewish immigrant history, but it’s also not so dissimilar to the history of New York’s lower east side and other places across north America, where jewish immigrants came,
when they were really fleeing programs and persecution and anti Semitism and other forms of discrimination against them in eastern europe and in and in parts of Russia.
And so what we saw was that when the first major wave of jewish immigrants came here to boston, they really established themselves in the west end neighborhood.
This was a neighborhood that had been historically the site where the free blacks had been.

[9:42] And in fact the VIlna Shul established itself as a congregation,
in 18 88 and in 1906, the VIlna Shul to 45 Phillip street, we’re now at 18 Phillip street, but we were at 45 Phillip street, which was previously the 12th baptist church.
And that was not just a story of how the,
illness congregation was coming to a place in its own maturity where it was able to establish itself within a building, but it was also part of a story of the black community and how they were moving to other areas and that they were migrating as well at that same time.
Why partly because there were so many new immigrants moving to town And they were the next population that was really looking to seek opportunities elsewhere.
And then by 1919, the Vilna-shul to,
18 Phillip Street, where we are today in our building and the city of Boston purchased the land of our, of our last location of 45 Philip Street for $20,000 to then establish the Wendell Phillips School.

Nikki:
[10:47] That’s a really interesting history that totally shows the waves of immigration in the neighborhood and the way neighborhoods change over time.
Right? That’s a it’s a very classic tale. As you said, it’s not unique to the west End or the north slope by any means.

Dalit:
[11:05] Yeah, not at all. And and the other part of the story is that the VIlna Shul by the way, is a Yiddish word for synagogue, but the ville and VIlna Shul is a city in now Lithuania.
Vilnius is another name for it and that name came because this was a community that came specifically from Vilnius Lithuania and they established themselves here.
I think it’s fascinating that they chose to use the name of where they came from as the name of their synagogue or their church.
It’s not a very common model, but to broaden it for a moment, people were not just coming to,
this part of town and people were not in the jewish community was not all from Vilnius Lithuania that the community came from many more places and many more people were coming to this area that this, that the VIlna Shul was that.

[11:57] Its peak in that period between the 18 eighties and the 19 twenties, there were over 50 synagogues on the west end, in the west end neighborhood.
Um, and in this area lining the streets, there are,
um somewhere store from somewhere larger buildings like what you see here now at the VIlna Shul if you were to walk by and there are stories of who represented this community, what the characteristics were, how they took care of each other.
There are stories of families and of, of individuals in the community walking in the winter on the main streets here,
with, with blankets in their hands and seeking to give out blankets to uh these new immigrant families and others who were in need.
That when you look now at the VIlna Shul which is in this really beautiful neighborhood on Beacon Hill, it’s a historic neighborhood in many ways it’s really like an affluent neighborhood just in terms of what the building and the architecture really looks like it stands for.
It might confuse you as to what were some of the characteristics of this community, but this really was a new immigrant community, this was a poor community, the people who were living here,
really were coming right off of boats to the States was very little in hand, really fleeing from their home countries, not speaking the language.

[13:15] The Vilna-shul that we are in today was the first stone was placed in 1919.
And so while many of us feel like we’re emerging from the pandemic, it’s also important to remember,
that this building was actually built during the last pandemic that we faced as a community and in this region and just how kind of incredible it is to imagine,
building growing, forming community, connecting as a community during that. Such an acute moment as well.

Nikki:
[13:45] That’s a really fascinating, I think, parallel.
And we’ll talk about this a little later. But the fact that you were in major capital work during this pandemic off of that history of the 1918 pandemic is very poetic, I would say.

Dalit:
[14:02] I agree, it gives me it actually gives me chills and um I find it to also be a source of inspiration.

Nikki:
[14:08] Yeah. Now you mentioned that there were over 50 synagogues at the neighborhood when it was kind of at its peak, and that’s a lot for kind of the small size of the community.
Um how were synagogues established and why might there have been so many?

Dalit:
[14:27] So I don’t have necessarily a scientific answer to this question, but I will, I’ll speculate based on what I know about how congregations form today,
and what I do know about how this congregation and others did form then, but obviously I can’t speak to all 50.
What we know is that these were immigrant populations who were coming from so many different countries.
So while it’s interesting and and makes sense to me that this community would really seek to attract and create connections for people who were from Vilnius Lithuania.
I imagine that there were many congregations that were being formed that really were there to be a soft landing for people from different countries because at a basic level, the languages that they spoke were different from one country to another.
You know, we talk about the jewish community immigrating from eastern europe, Eastern europe is not a country doesn’t share one language.
There were many people who spoke Yiddish at the time, but still there were people who had different um they had different cultural norms, they had different languages and they needed to really find their people in order to survive when they arrived.
The second characteristic is really about religiosity, how people practice their Judaism and their belief system.
I think in that space there was a far less diversity at that moment than there is today within the jewish community.

[15:54] We can choose to talk about that or not later just about how now we know that there are congregations that really distinguished themselves in modern day jewish life here in boston by whether your reform or conservative or an Orthodox congregation.
It’s typically by your religious practice, not by your country of origin as your shared characteristics.

[16:15] I’ll add one more thing which is I think for many people who were moving here they didn’t have,
you know there were no cars, they were living in a neighborhood where um, and many of these people were observant and more traditional in how they practiced their Judaism.
And so I think for many people, one of the other drivers for which congregation they would join or why an additional congregation would even feel the need To establish itself was really about Micro locations.
So people would not necessarily walk 20 or 30 minutes to get to a synagogue.
People, many of the more traditional people in our community,
would need to find a congregation where they could pray up to three times a day um, to create a minion to create a quorum for prayer, you needed 10 people and so to be able to do that morning, afternoon and night.
There’s a convenience element of having it on your block. The second is that I think for um for many people they were also in congregation and in community with people who really truly were their neighbors.
And so I think for many people it was that piece of proximity that drove the need for another congregation.

Nikki:
[17:29] I think that’s really helpful context to understand, you know, how the I guess the specific kind of like needs and practices of the community of of such a diverse community would then be so plentiful.

Dalit:
[17:43] The other thing that I believe is that these are people who, again, they were both poor, but they were living in an urban area and there weren’t many spaces for large congregations.
So I think while the current VIlna Shul is this pretty large building, our historic sanctuary can fit 300 people and our community room can fit 100.
That I imagine that they were um Many congregations and communities that were other storefronts or in people’s living rooms, because that’s what they could afford and that there wasn’t really a big emphasis on that initial investment to actually build the building.
And so when we talk about these 50 congregations, I think we also have to remember that many of them could have easily fit between, you know, were crammed in between 15 and 40 people.

Nikki:
[18:30] So that’s kind of a good segue, I think, to talk about,
the building itself, and my hope is that after listeners who are local here, you talk about the building and they’ll be very excited to see it and to come in person and experience it.
And it’s maybe a little complicated, I guess, to explain in a building that most people haven’t seen before.
But what is the space like?
And I guess what I really want to hear you talk about is when I came to visit you pointed out some of the things that are,
seemingly pretty unique to the building and unique to a congregation that is maybe on the cusp of beginning to assimilate a little.
So I’m I’m curious to hear you give maybe a little audio tour of the building.

Dalit:
[19:19] Absolutely. Um so first of all, anyone who is listening, who wants to come to the VIlna Shul for tour um should go to our website, VIlna Shul dot org and you will see a list of tours, we have at least one tour a month.
Um but in many, um, but in many of the upcoming months in the fall we have many, many tours almost weekly actually, but there’s always an opportunity to come.
We also offer opportunities for groups. So if you’re listening and you are involved in your church or in your school and you want to bring a group, we do this all,
all the time and something that we love doing and he feels a real responsibility as a steward of both the building, but also someone who’s responsible for sharing a piece of history here in boston.
So the VIlna Shul is really an extraordinary space, extremely unique.
You first walk into the building and from the street,
on Phillip Street, it’s these beautiful iron gates and then there’s this arched entrance way and on it there are these hebrew characters that say when you translate it.
Um the transliteration is VIlna Shul congregation,
which is really fascinating because it’s both not hebrew, it’s not Yiddish, it’s definitely not english and it really signals that there’s this mash up,
going on of these people, both of where they’re from, of where they are today and their aspiration of what they really want to hold onto and the role that memory plays.

[20:41] In shaping their identity and informing the identity for those for years to come.
That again, like I said earlier, This is a community that chose to name itself, the Vilma congregation that the place that they came from was something that they wanted to plaster onto their wall.
And it’s also a community that’s really introducing hebrew and hebrew characters. They didn’t choose to use English or another language from the place that they came from.
And yet we have to remember that the state of Israel was only established in 1948 that this building was being.

[21:14] Published in 1919 and that they’re really trying to integrate,
Hebrew at a moment when Hebrew really wasn’t the main language for any community and yet they were really trying to create a connection to this ancient jewish language of Hebrew for a community that doesn’t speak it.
Um, and it’s not really formally practiced or experienced anywhere.
One thing I really want to highlight that separates the velma from any other car,
congregation that we know of in North America is that hidden beneath the layers of cream colored paint that you see in the historic sanctuary lie these extremely rare examples of 20th century immigrant folk art in the sanctuary.
These are the only religious folk art murals that exist in North America.
These precious murals are multi layer in their design and they avoid,
Broken age of American history when immigrants came to start a new life,
still remembering their traditions in the past 25 years, only two murals have been fully revealed and um what you see on these walls is this combination of this plaster paint and these murals, and there’s four layers of murals from the history of the building.
But what I want to return to is really focusing on this question of what are the characteristics in the building.

[22:31] That really help us to answer the question and really highlight the fact that this was a community that was really struggling with, where do we come from?
Who are we and where are we going?

[22:43] And so what you see is one wall where you have these hand painted historic murals, you have these biblical scenes of the ancient Israelites, matriarchs and patriarchs.
These are images that totally are driven from people’s imagination, from reading the Torah,
from imagining what might have been the place is the birth or the burial sites of the patriarchs of people like Abraham and I,
Isaac, but these are not really what these places look like, but they’re hand drawn to say these are our ancient Israelites, the patriarchs and the matriarchs.
Then you have also on the wall, what’s been uncovered are these marble wall hangings that show the names of the founders of the Vilna.
And what’s really interesting etched into this marble on the wall is that there’s one wall that shows the names of the men and there’s another wall that shows the names of the women.
Now, often in synagogues, what you would see are the names of the deceased.
You see that we want to remember the people who have passed in our community,
or you see the names of the families who,
might have proven to be major contributors, usually philanthropic lee to a community and here you have a long list again in Hebrew character, which is pretty rare.

[24:09] Of the names of each of the individuals, that kind of attention to the individuals in the community, not just the families, really suggests that everybody involved played a role.
The second thing is that in terms of the design of the sanctuary, while most congregations at that time separated the men from the women, in terms of the seating, the women’s section here is larger than the men’s section.
That’s really unheard of, and most people have never seen such a thing.
And there’s a bunch of theories. The first is that this was an immigrant community where the women had an equal role to the men in terms of participation in synagogue life.
Perhaps that doesn’t happen ritualistically, but in terms of the other ways they were serving the community, it probably did.

[24:58] The second idea might be that the Children sat more with the women, but we still cannot explain why the section would be larger than any other section.
Anyone’s ever seen in a congregation or why the women’s names would be on the wall as the founders unless this was a community where clearly the role of the woman and the role of that part of the population was playing an outsized role.
The last thing I want to focus on is that on the ark, the holy ark where you have the torahs inside you have these beautiful wooden designed panels that have scallop shells on them.
Scallop shells are obviously something that is native to New England massachusetts, to boston, but these are also items that the food inside of them.
The meat is not kosher and to put it on one of the most holy of sites inside of the congregation shows again this really funny tension between who are we?
Are we a community that is like really deeply trying to be locating ourselves with in New England and the natural environment that we now live in.
Are we a community that is from Vilna and we’re never gonna forget that we’re from VIlna Shul What’s on the outside of the building?

[26:14] Are we a community whose forefathers and whose matriarchs and patriarchs are,
the founders, the men and the women who came here between the 1880s and the 1920s,
or our founders Rachel Abraham Isaac Rebecca Leah like who are the people who we need to remember when we think about who we are and where we’re going,
and then the last is that right next to our arc?
You have an american flag, and atop the arc,
you have an american eagle wooden sketch, You know, a wooden carved out american eagle with its wings flexed open, stretched open, overlooking, almost like protecting the arc.
You have all these symbols that are nationalistic in tone. And the question is like, what is the nationality of this community?

Nikki:
[27:04] I love hearing you describe all of these elements because for me, I’m not an architect, right?
I like to look at buildings, but I don’t really know what the style of architecture tells me or you know what should be significant.
So I really like when buildings give these glimpses of the people and like the stories of what happened there.
And and it feels like these elements that while we cannot know what the people of the past were thinking unless they wrote it down, you’ve brought up these really great questions and connections about identity and,
and what the experience was of transitioning from all of these places in europe to becoming a bostonian and to be becoming american.
And at that time, right at that time in our nation’s history as well, it’s just really fascinating like this.
This is a building that when I visited you had told me, you know, nothing majorly historic happened here were not connected to famous people that you would know of.
And yet it really captures the whole community. I mean, I think that’s amazing.

Dalit:
[28:17] Yeah. One of the questions I sometimes get and one of the things I often think about is the extent to which what is our responsibility moving forward,
Like what is the history we’re trying to preserve and what are the connections we’re trying to create for the people who would be attracted to the velma today.

[28:35] Those are questions I often ask. And the Vilma, as I mentioned at the beginning is also a living museum and we’re national landmarks.
So I take the question of historic preservation very seriously.
But I also take the question of like what’s the applied learning and the action?
The, so what now what of our community and our story? I take that very seriously and what I believe is that there’s something,
really powerful about honoring and highlighting the individuals who helped to found this congregation mainly because I think that,
in telling that story, you are also remembering that it required individuals, It required individuals to form a community and that that’s a lesson.
I think that we all need to constantly remember is that community requires each of us.
It’s not actually just about these people and where they are from. But the second thing that I think is incredibly important and it’s not an american jewish story.
It is an american story which is that so many,
people come to this country as newcomers as immigrants and that over the course of generations, they all are wrestling with the questions around their identity of who they.

[29:47] They are and where they come from and they toggle between the multiple hats and the multiple identities that they’re going to choose to.

[29:55] Maintain, there’s not a story here where we’re blending,
you know, some wooden figure of an,
eagle and whatever the national bird was in Lithuania, like there was a decision to put the eagle there, but there was also a decision to put on a wall a picture from biblical tradition and an idea.
And the point here is that when we think about our identities, we actually have to think about like how we can hold the memories and the stories from different parts of who we are. And then the work really is like what are the values that are embedded within these stories?
So that we can really make use of our history. And so moving forward for the VIlna Shul expectation, when we think about our programming, it’s not just programming that’s rooted in arts and entertainment, holiday celebrations and adult learning, that that could be anything.
But we know that the programming that we want to be offering its programming that’s really rooted in jewish history and heritage.
That’s rooted in like what are the jewish values that are relevant to today?
You know, I imagine that more of our author talks more of a our lectures are going to be rooted in topics related to social justice because of the deep connection between the stories of immigrants, the stories of newcomers.
The stories of minority populations and like what we feel a responsibility to lift up and to really curate for the community.
And the last thing I’ll say is when I think of community, I’m really not talking just about the jewish community that the film.

[31:24] Like many museums, has a responsibility to preserve the story and the history of a certain community,
and then also to make that story accessible, welcoming and relevant to,
boston’s jewish community, to the residents of Beacon Hill and to the tourists who are really interested in learning something about a part of american life.

Nikki:
[31:48] So when I think about other spaces in, let’s say here in boston that feel like they have kind of a similar purpose, I also think about the West End House Museum and I think about,
the Museum of African american History, which is very close to you as well and you know, you have that,
that connection through the phillips school, right through the physical building.
So I’m curious to hear how the VIlna Shul works with these other institutions and uh you know, I’ll make the pitch to our listeners that these three institutions are all very close together.
So this is a, this is an easy, right saturday itinerary to get out and learn some local history.

Dalit:
[32:31] We have all identified one another as organizations that should be in the partnership and have historically been in deep partnership.
Just to um, illuminate that next month, the director of the West End Museum is partnering with the Vilma to lead an expanded tour.
Many people at the West End Museum and also boston by foot has come to us to just to add another organization. It’s not the same, but another one.
And said people are coming to us and asking about the history of the jewish community in this region.
How can we share more of that with our communities without reinventing the wheel?
And so what we’re offering is a historic tour that starts at the velma tells the history of the boston, jewish immigrant story are the art and architecture of our building.
And then the director of the West End Museum is gonna lead people through a walking tour of the area to share a broader history of the region.
So that’s one example. And then we also have many cultural programs coming up that we have every intention really asking these organizations how we can partner and collaborate,
not just because both of our populations are target communities would benefit, but also because we believe that the educational opportunities that are available will be stronger if we do this together.

Nikki:
[33:52] So we’ve talked about the history of the building, you know, really up through the 1920s.
Um, obviously we all know today that the West End is really no longer there. Beacon Hill is no longer a Jewish community.
And so can you talk a little bit about what came next for both the congregation, I’ll say, as they named themselves, um, and the building, because I think it’s a really fascinating preservation story.

Dalit:
[34:21] Absolutely. When the jewish community grew and matured,
here on the west end, it began moving westward to the suburbs and new synagogues and schools and other services were established to support this growth in this migration pattern.
I should add that just that’s similar to the story of the jewish migration pattern to um this part of the city, How that is not so dissimilar from other places.
The easy And most familiar example for most people is the lower east side of New York,
that a very similar migration pattern happened after 20 to 50 years of living in this area, that the next generations moved to different parts of the region.
While the Vilna was not the largest congregation, it was also not the smallest.
And while it’s hard to imagine when you look at this large and impressive building on Phillip Street, but what I have to say is that,
it actually went dormant for for several years before local residents and people in the jewish community um really uncovered,
and rediscovered building that as hard as it is to believe the building shut its doors in the mid 19 eighties, while many communities were slowly moving westward, this one did exist.

[35:36] So congregant Mendel Miller held the last service here in the building in the 19 eighties and then closed the door.
And as crazy as it might be, the community really went dormant for 10,
years until some people within the community really started to notice this building outside of the building on the second floor, there is this massive stained glass jewish star there.
So it makes it pretty obvious to many people that this, this is probably a jewish building because of that stained glass Design.
But for a long time there was no one here. And a really large and interesting dispute happened about what is this building, who would be responsible for it?
Who has rights and ownership over it?
What happened it was that in 1995 Richard and Epogen Mince purchased the building and they helped to convert it into a 501 C3.

[36:40] It was then renamed the VIlna Shul boston Center for jewish Heritage.
And at that moment the clock really started and the stewards of the building began an ambitious and extraordinary process of reimagining its purpose planning programs to welcome people into this special space,
and of course of restoring the building so that it was inhabitable, inspiring, and accessible to all the process took a long time.
During that time. There are programs there, our staff, there’s all, there’s a board that’s forming all the things that you would do when you’re actually starting an organization.
But it was actually only in 2019, within 2 to 3 months of the pandemic, causing the building to physically shut its doors.
That we celebrated the centennial of the VIlna Shul,
and we completed at that moment, something that you alluded to a minute ago, we completed at that moment, a really significant phase of capitol renovations,
where the building became a d a accessible, there was climate controlled with a new H. VAC system.
State of the art community room was established. All sorts of things that we joke.
Everything that you you can’t see has already been done.
All the stuff that’s really in the walls has now been renovated and restored and making the building into a more comfortable place for future generations.

Nikki:
[38:06] So it’s interesting to think about a building of this size and prominence, you know, being abandoned in a busy neighborhood like Beacon Hill, was it truly left alone?

Dalit:
[38:19] I think there are two different but parallel stories and experiences that were happening at that time.
I think for some of that, almost 10 year period, it really was dormant.
And then there was a moment where um, segments of the jewish community and um portion of the city’s leadership did notice and realize that this building was unoccupied.
What was its status and really interesting legal questions were being raised.
And then during that period there were legal disputes about who had the right to own it and what should it be and what its intention should be should it be a public garage um that the city can, you know, turn into a public garage.
Um, or should it become a site that,
should be a site to preserve the history and the culture of the jewish community, because by that time it had already been clear that it would be the only immigrant era synagogue remaining on the west end.
And so there was a real question not of this synagogue in the context of so many, but if this clinic dog in the context of so many that are closed that in order to preserve the history of this community, we really have to think about what our obligation is.
And so of course, what ended up happening in the story was that someone in the community thought it converted to a 501 C three and then really helped to launch a really helped to launch a new organization in an old space.

[39:49] Right at that same moment that the building had been bought, had been converted into a non profit organization.
But yet really way before the building had become inhabitable, had a staff had any programs. I mean, really at that exact same moment of this excitement, the awareness that this building had been uncovered.
Young professionals living across boston came by, checked it out, thought it was really intriguing.
And they literally broke into the building, looked inside, saw this historic sanctuary with these incredible skylights and these massive, massive, tie high and tall ceilings.

[40:32] And they started to hold services in there and word got out that again in this,
dark and dingy and dirty place, but it was so authentic and real and so as the community started to get organized and established themselves, um, as an organization,
they said to these young professionals who they heard were doing this, they said, if you really want to be here so badly, We’ll just give you keys.
Why do you keep trying to break into the building?
And so that began a partnership between a program that really was formed in the late 90s called have aura on the hill.
Have aura means friends in hebrew.
And so it was a new service and a Friday night experience. And in the early two thousand’s, this program was getting hundreds of people once a month on Fridays.
Um, and we’re actually rebooting the program since Covid and the construction in the building,
we’re rebooting that program in september it still continues today, but it’s a really funny story of the leadership um the stewards of the building saying, just take the keys, stop going through the side entrance because we know you figured out how to do that.

Nikki:
[41:40] It’s just funny. Like, it’s still it’s still a story of community, right? Like that’s what it comes back to. And I love the anecdote of like, well, we’ll just give you the key that it’s okay, like you can come in, we’ll just give you the key.

Dalit:
[41:53] We’re not doing anything on friday night. If you’re not here, we haven’t figured that out yet.
This is great if you want to do it. And then there’s also really funny stories um, of how they wouldn’t just take the keys, but they also ended up bringing in cleaning supplies and they would clean up after themselves.
And they really saw this as their jewish home for jewish practice, which is pretty beautiful.
And you can imagine these are people in their twenties and thirties, small apartments living downtown just moved to boston.
I mean the ownership that they felt, the sense of empowerment that they felt as stewards of both their own experience, jewish li but also the pride and connection they had to this place.
Many people talk about the stories of their families who were immigrants and the power of being in this place and making it come alive again and meaning is really beautiful.

Nikki:
[42:39] So I think that’s a really good segue to bring it back to a reminder to our listeners that you can visit the Vilna today, right? You can take a tour.
And I understand, you know, you also have a community of supporters and and people who engage with the Vilna today. So, so what does that look like?

Dalit:
[42:59] Correct? Yes. Everyone um listening can totally take a tour of the velma and also our programs are really open to all.
I will say that the vast majority of our programs are really reflecting the kinds of arts and cultural activity that you might think is more relevant inside of an urban setting.
So what I mean by that is that our Programs are really designed to engage two primary populations,
young professionals, those who are immediately post college through families with young Children and boomers, adults who are ages 55-75.
Well, these populations might seem quite different at first glance.
They are both at stages in life where their goals, their interests and their availability are highly complementary.
Both populations are interested in cultivating new relationships.
Both populations have the time and interest in nurturing their intellectual, cultural,
and recreational hobbies, and they’re also stages on their journeys as jews when they’re actually asking questions about how they can deepen or expand,
their jewish knowledge or their personal identity, of which either their jewish history or their jewish identity or their jewish knowledge is really connected to that.

Nikki:
[44:14] Well Dalit, thank you so much for joining today.
I am excited to hopefully introduce more people to the VIlna Shul and I hope folks do take up both of our encouragements to come visit you. So thank you.

Dalit:
[44:29] It was such a pleasure to be here with you today. Thank you to.

Nikki:
[44:33] To learn more about the VIlna Shul and the origins of boston’s jewish community.
Check out this week’s show at hub history dot com slash 257.
We’ll have links to the VIlna Shul website and calendar of events, the West End Museum and a suggested reading list for those who want to learn more and just a note about upcoming events.
I recorded this interview with Dalit several weeks ago, so if she references events is taking place next month, that actually means this month,
the VIlna Shul has a packed fall program schedule and I encourage you to check it out.
If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast at hub history dot com,
where hub history on twitter, facebook and instagram or you can go to hub history dot com and click on the contact us link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on apple podcasts, please consider writing a brief review and if you do drop us a line and we’ll send you a hub history sticker as a token of appreciation.

Music

Nikki:
[45:42] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.