Day 5: A Packed Day

Today is one of those quiet, reflective days. Feeling contemplative.

This morning, we visit Berl to film him on his daily morning walk to the synagogue. At the synagogue, I wait upstairs in the balcony during morning prayers. I don't want to intrude, so I decide to close my eyes and meditate. Everything sounds very melodious; the prayers sound like singing to me. Kinda like at a church, minus the choir or band. Am wondering if being tone deaf poses a problem to practising Judaism?


Filming Berl

After the synagogue, we stop for a quick bite. None of us had breakfast as we left at 7.40am this morning. I have semolina porridge. Reminds me of baby food - quick and easy. Then we head off for a chat with an official at the Genocide Center. Short and sweet; just to hear about what the Department of Investigation does. He tells us that genocide in Lithuania, including the Jewish holocaust, was the result of the Soviet and Nazi occupation. As the entrance to the Genocide Museum is just around the corner, we nick in to have a look. It is a very impressive museum. Lots of details and artefacts on the Soviet occupation. All these are based in the former KGB building. I wonder what it's like to work in a building that previously housed, tortured and executed civilians. I imagine in Asia, this wouldn't go down well at all. I can imagine potential job applicants declining to apply for fear that the place may be haunted or has bad karma attached to it. I wonder whether they cleansed the building before it became an office block? I can't imagine the qi in the place.


Genocide Center, note the names of Lithuanian victims inscribed on the stone wall

Speaking of hauntings and karma and qi... We join Berl again after a lunch break. He wants to show us the Vilna Gaon's mausoleum at the Jewish cemetery at Seskine. He used to come here and tend to the mausoleum, back in the 1970s onwards. He stopped when his eyesight deteriorated. He looks especially sad today when he relates how he had the gate to the mausoleum repaired; he still has the key that opens the lock. The mausoleum houses 7 graves, the Gaon's and his family. I peer inside and see notes left by visitors on the grave. I notice the stones and pebbles and remind myself to find out what is the significance of stones to the Jewish faith. I remember the last scene in Schindler's List when the survivors filed by and left a stone each on his grave.


The Vilna Gaon Mausoleum


Messages left by visitors inside the mausoleum

I decide to choose a stone from among the piles which line the walls of the mausoleum as an exhibit item.


Stones from the Vilna Gaon mausoleum. I picked the largest one on the left.

This a large cemetery and includes a mass grave. I wander about and take photos, practising my photography skills and trying to read the inscription on the headstones. It is quiet, the sun comes in and out from among the trees; I keep adjusting the settings on the camera to compensate. I think of silly things to lighten my mood; including if my sister were here, I imagine she would suggest I bathe in water scented with chrysanthemum petals. To 'cleanse' in the event I pick 'something' up on my way out of the cemetery.

But it's hard to shake. I guess it's just one of 'those' days; there's no escaping it. I suppose this is what ambling through someone else's memories and immersing in the past does to one. It's a day of quiet reflection.