The International Center for Litvak Photography has just published the e-book Back to Shul — a highly personal text and photo essay by the Center’s director, the British photographer Richard Schofield, that chronicles a 12-day journey documenting synagogue buildings in Lithuania.
The text, written as a sort of diary, can be downloaded as a free PDF or read online — the fully captioned photos can be viewed online. There is also a list of the circa 100 known synagogue buildings in Lithuania, with their location and current status.
The preface states:
Lithuania’s 100 or so surviving former synagogues are among a tiny handful of reminders of the country’s once large and diverse Jewish population, magnificent monuments of stone and wood that not unlike the people that once prayed and studied in them today lie neglected, abandoned and forgotten in towns, villages and cities from Alytus to Zarasai. With the help of little more than a cheap Latvian smartphone and a random cast of kind-hearted friends and strangers, in August 2017 the English documentary photographer and long-term resident of Lithuania Richard Schofield set off on a 12-day journey around the country to document these extraordinary—and extraordinarily tragic—buildings in a small act of personal remembrance as the nation approached the 100th anniversary of the re-establishment of its independence. Part road trip, part photographic essay and part love letter to one former synagogue in particular, Back to Shul is the singularly unorthodox result of an equally unusual journey.
The noted Yiddish scholar David Roskies wrote a Foreword to the book:
His journey through Lithuania tracks the ruins of a civilisation that was created over the course of centuries by proud and productive Jews known as Litvaks. On good days, in a matter of minutes he can locate their former synagogues, study houses, rabbis’ residences, ritual baths, and marketplaces once ringed by Jewish stores and stalls. On bad days, it’s hit or miss. On good days, there are local inhabitants happy to show him the way. On bad days, there is a sea of indifference and ignorance. Then there is the detritus of the 47-year-long Soviet occupation, with its collective farms, state-run bakeries, ecologically ruinous factories and so-called houses of culture. Even as the Soviet Union self-destructed, these edifices and institutions were not built to last. Were that not apocalyptic enough, at every turn Richard sees the tell-tale signs of depopulation. Not only was the Lithuanian landscape ethnically cleansed, of Jews, Poles, Tatars, Karaites and Scots. All able-bodied Lithuanians seem to have voted with their feet and quit the country. Some towns, once bursting with life, Jewish and otherwise, are virtually empty. Thank God for the storks gliding overhead like dinosaurs in Veisiejai, the families of swifts attending to their makeshift nests under the eaves of the platform in Kėdainiai, and the beautiful red brick former synagogue that sports an uninhabited wheel for storks on its roof in Lygumai. At least the sky is still alive.
Click here to download the List of Synagogue Buildings in Lithuania
NOTE:
The most comprehensive and detailed publication on synagogues in Lithuania is unfortunately out of print!
It is the two-volume Catalogue of Synagogues in Lithuania, edited by Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Sergey Kravtsov, Vladimir Levin, Giedrė Mickūnaite and Jurgita Šiauciūnaitė-Verbickienė (Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Arts Press, 2010-2012).
1 comment on ““Back to Shul” – new (free!) online book, a text-and-photo-essay on the surviving synagogue buildings in Lithuania”
A documentary treasure ! …an impressive compilation!
all about …
a historical “ bog” area …
a complementary article :…”Im litauischen Jonava wird die Geschichte der Judenverfolgung durch
die nationalsozialisten aufgearbeitet ,an der Litauer beteiligt waren.“
[ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,Montag,30.Juli 2018.Seite 13].