Dr. Verdins said that the dramatization of Arajs’s trial is an important step for his fellow Latvians. Latvians have been loath to acknowledge their complicity in the Holocaust.

“They wanted to protect their old, loving fathers and grandfathers who had committed such crimes,” Verdins said. “Latvians cannot whitewash Nazi crimes just because we think that Soviet crimes were even worse,” Verdins said.

Sharon Rappaport-Palgi, Israel’s ambassador to Latvia, said that Latvia is today one of the safest places in Europe for Jews. She has not experienced any overt anti-Semitism during the two years that she and her four children have lived in Latvia.

“In Latvia, I don’t see public manifestations of anti-Semitism. Latvian society would not be accepting of that,” Palgi said.

In October 2022, the Israeli embassy in Riga teamed up with the Latvian Ministry of Education to organize a two day conference on Holocaust education for 100 Latvian school teachers. Palgi said that she hopes that Holocaust education will become a standard part of the Latvian curriculum.

Despite Latvia’s welcoming atmosphere, the Peitav-Shul struggles to attract young people to its congregation. Latvia is now part of the European Union, and Latvian youth can easily seek employment in other E.U. countries. Jewish youth who want to practice Orthodox Judaism tend to emigrate to Israel or the United States, where it is easier to be observant.

The restrictions that Orthodox Judaism places on congregants make it difficult to to work and socialize in Latvia. Orthodox Jews cannot work on the Sabbath and on other holy days. There are very few Kosher restaurants in Riga. One of Peitav-Shul’s congregants is a designer with a very strong resume, but she said that stores are reluctant to hire her because she cannot work on Shabbat.

Johannes Proempeler, 23, a German medical student who studies medicine in Riga, attends Peitav-Shul every day. Proempeler represents a small but growing trend among European youth to find meaning and community in rigorous religious practice. Proempeler grew up in a Catholic home, but he became engaged with Judaism as a teenager, even though there was no synagogue in his hometown.

Proempeler is in the process of converting to Judaism. He says that he is prepared to pay the professional price that being observant entails, because Judaism is a “whole way of life” that traces its origins back to Mount Sinai.

“The world around us changes, but Torah does not,” Proempeler said.

For Rabbi Krumers, the sacrifices that Orthodoxy demands of his congregants are worth making because they enable believers to remain deeply connected to the Almighty.

“In Torah, you have this chain of generations of Jewish thought and philosophy and understanding which stretches all the way back, which we believe will never be torn or stopped. Other civilizations have survived since antiquity, but you do not find the continuity that you find in Judaism,” Krumers said.

The Peitav-Shul is not, however, evangelical in the Christian sense.

“The Almighty by no means requires people to become Jewish. If a non-Jew observes some basic things about living a decent life, then according to the Torah, he is considered to be a righteous person, but if he undergoes conversion to Judaism, he has to observe all the laws of Torah,” Krumers said. “If he turns on a light during Shabbat or cooks something for himself or writes something down, then automatically he is making a grave transgression. It is very hard for a person, especially nowadays, to accept the idea that from now until his death, whether he can find a job or not, he will commit to obeying the law.”