Wooden Synagogues

In the mid 1990’s, a team from Hebrew University in Israel went to Eastern Europe in search of Jewish cultural artifacts which might have survived the Holocaust.  In the Balkan states, they were amazed to discover six wooden synagogues still standing, some barely, all unrecognizable as houses of worship from the exterior.

In 1999, filmmakers Carl and Kathy Hersh and Executive Producer Al Barry went to the area to document the buildings before they fell into ruin and look inside for remnants of the storied murals.  While traveling to remote villages and talking to people through an interpreter, they found four more synagogues and heard eyewitness accounts of the round-ups that emptied Lithuania of its pre-war Jewish population.

The Lost Wooden Synagogues of Eastern Europe tells the story of the importance of these synagogues, among the oldest in Europe, which were ingeniously constructed by traveling artisans and colorfully decorated from floor to ceiling with verses from the Torah and religious symbols meant to remind the worshippers of their rituals, the Diaspora, and their faith.

The documentary speaks movingly of the life of Jewish communities centered around the synagogues, the pride of the shetls. Renowned actor Theodore Bikel narrates.

Nobel Prize Winner and author Elie Wiesel said “this film evokes the richness as well as the melancholy of Jewish spirituality in Eastern Europe.”  The Jewish Museum of Miami called the work a “masterpiece.”