The Miracle of Vilna on Planet Shney

 

by Zvi Baranoff 

The greatest, as well as the most diverse, yeshiva ever conceived is located in Vilna on Planet Shney. Also, some of the most monumental Houses of Worship on any planet surround that campus. The numerous shuls represent multiple streams of thought and reflect the incredible diversity of the Yeshiva. The Shtot of Vilna on Planet Shney is named after the City of Vilna (Vilnius) on the Home Planet. 

The ancient City of Vilna situated on Planet Earth was a prominent center of Jewish study, often called "Yerushalayim D'Lita" (the Jerusalem of Lithuania). The Yidden of the original Vilna were dispersed and most were killed during a particularly virulent period of purges, pogroms, expropriation, and extermination. The yeshivas and shuls there were all looted and demolished. 

Adjacent to the most spectacular of those shuls on Planet Shney, there is a grave that is widely known as a holy site of pilgrimage. On the granite headstone are engraved the words Nes Gadol and the image of a dreidl. Interned in the mausoleum is the founder of Vilna, of Blessed memory. 

There is a mechitza that designates the left side of the site for women and the right side for men. The dividing curtain stays in place from dusk until dawn when it is removed to accommodate the many women pilgrims that choose to pray all night or sleep by the grave. Men are barred from the site until the next morning. 

The holy site is illuminated at night only by the moons and the stars. Women doven, swaying and wailing, some throughout the night. They tear at their clothes and throw themselves on the grave. It is widely believed that such outward signs of piety will sway Nes’ intervention in their favor. 

The women that pray at this site come with hopes for assistance in finding a husband, conceiving children, and for fulfillment in their domestic lives. The men generally pray for help with financial schemes, highly speculative investments, and luck at gambling, as well as assistance in the unraveling of complicated emotional entanglements.

On the streets immediately surrounding this holy site, vendors offer inexpensive sustenance such as knishes and lokshen. Nearby there are also several inns that offer sparse low cost lodging particularly for pilgrims. Not much farther, there are a wide array of restaurants that sell more substantial food and hotels that accommodate travelers with preferences that are more refined. The most exquisite option for food, lodging, and entertainment in Vilna, or anywhere on Planet Shney, is the Nes Gadol Hotel and Casino, a towering skyscraper designed to resemble a dreidl. 

On the Home Planet, the gravesites of saintly people were treated as holy places. The graves of great rabbis, sages, and miracle workers became pilgrimage sites for the Yidden and even for some Goyim. The gravesites were often in faraway places that were difficult to reach. Harsh deserts, high mountains, conflicts, international borders, bandits, and other hindrances were faced for the opportunity to pray at such holy sites. 

The holy shrine in Vilna on Planet Shney is the most far-flung of any Jewish pilgrimage site, if you consider what travel it would entail for most Yidden. The overwhelming mass of our people still reside on the Home Planet. Their ancestors were not among those that found transit to Planet Birobidzhan. For nearly three centuries contact between Planet Earth and Planet Birobidzhan had been severed. Even now, booking transportation between the two planets is extremely limited and the travel time is excruciatingly long. But, even on the far away Home Planet of Earth, Yidden are aware of this holy site.

Beyond Planet Earth, most Yidden live on Planet Birobidzhan, the birthplace of the entombed holy man. Travel from Planet Birobidzhan to Planet Shney is a significantly shorter distance but even with our most up-to-date ships, it is still nearly a two year shlep. 

However, from Moskve on Planet Shney, travel to Vilna is not in the least grueling. There is a comfortable high-speed elevated train route between Moskve Tsenter Shtot to Vilna Tsenter Shtot with service six days a week. The train departs in the morning from Moskve and returns in the evening except for Freytag when the train leaves Vilna in the afternoon so as to return before sunset and the beginning of Shabbos. 

The very existence of the Shtot of Vilna arose from a prophetic vision that occurred shortly after Nes arrived on Planet Shney. In an altered state of awareness, Nes saw the valley with the hidden hot spring that enables the tropical foliage and warm weather that is nowhere else on the otherwise harsh world of Planet Shney. Date trees now grow throughout the valley, in addition to the unique native palm trees that grow only in this one microclimate. The hot spring feeds theVilna Mikvah and also the luxurious swimming pool at the Nes Gadol Hotel and Casino. 

Construction of the Yeshiva and several of the Shuls were contracted and financed by Nes. The train route was proposed and financed many decades earlier by Nes. He also established a trust that subsidizes fares in perpetuity. 

Luck and fate, mazel und bashert, define life. Mazel is assuredly determined by the stars that we are born to. Bashert, perhaps transcends mazel. Luck is luck. Fate is fate. The dreidl spins and lands where it will. We rejoice or mourn and then spin the dreidl once more. Perhaps leaving the planet of one's birth and living under other constellations changes luck but leaves destiny unaltered. Without doubt, greatness was Nes’ destiny. His story began far from Vilna, in a shtetl on Planet Birobidzhan.