Ioannina and New York City On The Lower East Side of New York City, The Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue remains...a singular outpost for a tiny group of the Romaniote Jews. The congregation numbers less than 100. And in Ioannina, the Kal Kedosh Yashan Synagogue survives as the only evidence of its once thriving community; there are less than 35 survivors. The Romaniotes in New York and Greece are excited at the prospect of their story being documented for posterity, but also, they are keenly interested in learning more about their own traditions and heritage from each other. Before the Flame Goes Out will serve as a link between these two communities. A literal handful of people exist in each, so the tiny pool of memories, recollections and family connections must be shared between them. It is interesting to note that after the Holocaust, the handful of survivors who returned to Ioannina sent a number of their Torah Scrolls and tiks to the synagogue in New York City. These “treasures of Ioannina” are unique and cherished by the New York community. The Romaniote story is at once a paradigm of American cultural adaptation and assimilation by a distinct ethnic group and a distinctively unique saga in world Jewish history. This process seems now to have advanced to the point where perhaps only a decade remains before the sole practicing Romaniote community in the Western Hemisphere, and one of only a handful in the world, will pass into extinction. Before the Flame Goes Out is a view of a vanishing 2300-year old culture and its ancestral home as seen through two synagogues, a world apart.