New synagogue opens in Lithuania

MOSCOW, Sept. 16 (JTA) – A new synagogue has been dedicated in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda. The synagogue includes a small soup kitchen to offer meals to needy Jews twice a week, and a Torah scroll the community received from a British synagogue. The Lithuanian seaport, formerly known as Memel, had a Jewish community before the war of 10,000 that was totally destroyed during the Holocaust. The town is now home to about 300 Jews who have long awaited the opening of a synagogue, according to the community leader Boris Smoliaras. Most of Klaipeda’s current Jewish residents came to the town after the war from other parts of the Soviet Union.