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| Former Synagogue now used for a Kaunas Auto Body shop. LEFT SIDE: Women's section was on the upper floor |
I traveled to Lithuania to see where my father's family came from. His parents were part of the enormous influx of Eastern European Jews who migrated to the United States through Ellis Island in the early 1900s. It turns out that my roots were hard to find.
But, by traveling with a guide who is an expert in architecture and sociology, we learned to spot where Jews had lived one hundred years ago. Our guide, Svetlana Shtarkman, pointed out the typical exterior architecture of Lithuanian synagogues: a large meeting hall taking up more than half of the length of the building (right side of the photo above), with the remainder arrayed over two stories with smaller windows (left side of the photo above). This arrangement allows for a high-ceilinged sanctuary plus an upper floor gallery for the women’s section. The women were segregated upstairs behind curtains or screens. Hundreds of synagogues were erected across Lithuania in its cities of Vilnius and Kaunas, and in the dozens of small rural villages called shtetls spread across the country.
Lithuania’s nearly total loss of Jewish residents resulted in scores of synagogue buildings going empty. With no Jews left to worship in them, the structures have been converted to serve other purposes. Some are used as community centers or gathering places. Those often bear a plaque telling their prior history. Others not.
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| Synagogue in Ziczmariai, a former shtetl, undergoing renovation as a community center |
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| Same synagogue, viewed in the courtyard where it was the center of Jewish life when the town was a shtetl |