Our Deluxe Kosher Tours trip to the Baltics — Latvia and Lithuania — is less than a month away, and I want to share the exciting itinerary with you:

Sunday, August 1 In Transit
Depart from the US to Vilna, Lithuania

Monday, August 2 Vilna
Your carefully selected DELUXE KOSHER TOURS escort will welcome you at the airport, and escort you to the deluxe Radisson SAS Astoria Hotel in Vilnius (Vilna). Spend the remainder of the day exploring the vibrant and exciting city.

Vilna is studded with architectural gems, and exotic side streets are a joy to explore. In the evening, rejoin the group for a welcome dinner.

Tuesday, August 3 Vilna
After breakfast, visit the Vilna Yiddish Institute at its location on the Old Campus of Vilnius University. Learn about Lithuanian Jewish history and culture through an encounter with Sarunas Liekis and Dovid Katz. Take in Eastern European Jewish art by one of the local leading artists.

After a delicious kosher lunch, you will embark on a walk through the Jewish Quarter of Vilna, guided by Ms. Roza Bieliauskiene, the former collection curator of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum.

Spend your evening visiting the beautiful Choral Synagogue of Vilna, and come face to face with history in a moving visit with Vilna’s local Jewish community. Dinner will follow.

Wednesday, August 4 Vilna-Yoneshik-Zhager-Riga
After breakfast, depart for Latvia. On the way, DELUXE KOSHER TOURS will offer you a rare opportunity to experience authentic shtetl life by visiting the shtetls of Zhager and Yoneshik.

Upon arrival in Riga, you will have the opportunity to savor local color and cuisine at one of Riga’s charming kosher restaurants.

Thursday, August 5 Riga
Visit with Riga’s Jewish community for a chance to share and learn about the Jewish experience in Latvia. Afterward, learn more at the Jewish Museum and Documentation Center, tracing the history and contributions of Latvia’s Jews to the present day.

After lunch, you will take an excursion outside the city limits to the Jewish cemetery there, followed by a pilgrimage to the Holocaust Memorial. Here, Nazis along with their Latvian henchmen executed thousands of innocent Jews, whose identities are shrouded in mystery to this day. The impressive monument to their memory was only erected in 2001.

We will return to the city and the former Jewish ghetto, which retains traces of its pre-war existence. Along the way we will invoke the lives of many great (and near great) who made Riga a vibrant center of Jewish Life and culture, including the remains of the Chorale Synagogue —a monument to the power of Jewish faith.

Later in the afternoon, spend time in the elegant and beautiful “Art Nouveau” district, once home to many of Latvia’s most famous artists, writers, and scholars.

Riga’s collection of buildings in this nineteenth-century style are among the finest and best-preserved in the world. One of these was the world-famous Jewish philosopher, and Zionist leader, Sir Isaiah Berlin. We will hear about how his family fortune led to an unlikely encounter between three of the greatest rabbinic minds of the day.

At the end of the day, we will dine with members of Latvia’s Jewish community.

Friday, August 6 Riga-Daugavpils (Dvinsk)-Vilna
After breakfast, DELUXE KOSHER TOURS will take you on a new adventure as you head to Daugavpils — the immortal city of Dvinsk, famous for its tradition of Litvak and Chabad cooperation, and for the residence of the giants of pre-war Europe: R. Joseph Rosen (Rogachover) and R. Meir Simcha Ha-Kohen (the Or Sameach). You will meet local Jews and learn the power and tragedy of their experiences under German and Soviet oppression.

After a local lunch in Daugapils, you will return to Vilna, checking in once more at the Radisson SAS Astorija in Vilna. After services, we will be treated to a Shabbat dinner at the Lubavitch Center.

Saturday, August 7 Vilna
Spend Shabbat with members of the Vilna Jewish community. Tefillot and meals will be enjoyed with the community. An enriching Shabbat program (including a walking tour) is planned for the day.

Sunday, August 8 Vilna
After breakfast, DELUXE KOSHER Tours offers you the chance to take a tour through the Holocaust Museum (also known as the Green House) guided by the Deputy Director of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum himself. Afterward, you will be treated to a walking tour of the winding streets of Vilna’s wartime ghetto.

After lunch you will be given the opportunity to go to the Vilnius Yiddish Institute to participate in a discussion about various topics in twentieth-century Jewish history. You will speak not only with prominent Lithuanian and Jewish intellectuals, but also with government officials, all of whom will be open to questions.

Learn more, too, about the friendship and cooperation between both groups, and spend part of the evening in the Jewish Museum’s Tolerance Center — once a Jewish theater — to listen to Vilna Ghetto songs performed by Dr. Maria Krupoves-Berg before a delicious dinner.

Monday, August 9 Vilna-Kaunas-Vilna
Leave Vilna in the morning to visit Kaunas — the legendary Jewish community of Kovno — after whose immortal rabbi the R. Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary was named. Kovno was Lithuania’s provisional inter-war capitol and is its second-largest city.

You will spend the morning visiting notable sites of Jewish interest, including the site of the immortal Mussar Yeshiva, Slobodka. After a post-lunch visit to the Kaunas Synagogue, you will be given the chance to spend time with members of its Jewish community. We will then pay our respects to the infamous Ninth Fort, where so many lost their lives. In the evening, return to Vilna.

Tuesday, August 10 In Transit
Say goodbye to your fellow travelers and companions in this moving experience as you return to the airport for your flight home, enriched by all you have discovered.

Reserve a place now on this extraordinary trip.

Tweet This