structural:scholar_edition, structural:reformatting
Judaism and Karaism

Known as "Yerushalayim D'Lita" (the Jerusalem of Lithuania), Vilnius had been a world centre for Torah study and had a large Jewish population since the 18th century. A major scholar of Judaism and the Kabbalah was Rabbi Eliyahu Kremer, known as the Vilna Gaon, whose writings significantly influence Orthodox Jews. The Vilna Shas, the most widely used version of the Talmud, was published in the city in 1886. Jewish life in Vilnius was destroyed during the Holocaust, and a memorial stone dedicated to victims of Nazi genocide is in the centre of the former Jewish Ghetto on present-day Mėsinių Street. The Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History is dedicated to the history of Lithuanian Jewish life. The site of Vilnius's largest synagogue, built in the early 1630s and destroyed by Nazi Germany during its occupation of Lithuania, was found by ground-penetrating radar in June 2015; excavation was scheduled to begin in 2016.

The Karaites are a Jewish sect who migrated to Lithuania from the Crimea. Small in numbers, they have become more prominent since Lithuanian independence and have restored their kenesas (including the Vilnius Kenesa).