Synagogues constitute a substantial part of Lithuania’s sacred built heritage. Until World War II there were about one thousand Jewish prayer houses in cities and towns of Lithuania, while today only about one hundred buildings are extant, many of them abandoned and in varied degree of preservation. The need for cataloguing the surviving synagogues in their present state, researching and reviewing their history and architecture, arose from the desire to preserve these buildings at least in written and visual form if not as structures of wood and brick.

 

This publication offers a catalogue of the extant synagogue buildings identified by a team of Israeli and Lithuanian scholars. It also includes short overviews of the history of the Jewish communities and information about vanished synagogues.