Silver Yad Recovered from the Great Synagogue of Vilnius

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA—The Brussels Times reports that work conducted by a joint Israeli-Lithuanian team of researchers at the site of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, a seventeenth-century structure looted and burned during World War II by the Nazis, has uncovered a silver Yad, a pointer used to read from a Torah scroll. The Yad was found in front of the synagogue’s Aron Kodesh, or Torah ark, where Torah scrolls were kept. Jon Seligman of the Israel Antiquities Authority said traces of two staircases seen in photographs of the synagogue have also been found. To read about a Torah shield and pointer unearthed in Wieliczka, Poland, go to "Artifact."