Obj. ID: 35264
Jewish Architecture  Kloyz in Joniškis, Lithuania

Text from Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Sergey Kravtsov, Vladimir Levin, Giedrė Mickūnaitė and Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė (eds.), Synagogues in Lithuania: A Catalogue. vol. 1 (Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Art Press, 2010), p. 166:

The kloyz was mentioned in 1872, when its parishioners collected 32 silver rubles for the Jewish victims of hunger in Persia.

In 1893 the rabbi of Joniškis, Yehiel Mikhel Wolfsohn (1844–1900) wrote that about 150 houses and the kloyz, situated “ on the highway” (now Vilniaus Street) have been burnt down.

The kloyz at 8 Vilniaus Street was renovated in 1936. It was located southwest of the shulhoyf near the Purvė rivulet. Senior
inhabitants of Joniškis recalled that better-off Jews used to gather there for prayer. Part of the structure, the roof and part of the
northeastern façade, can be seen in an interwar photograph of Joniškis market square.
The photograph of a demonstration on Vilniaus Street from 1959 captured the northeastern and southwestern façades of the
former kloyz. The picture shows a building of the so-called brick style, consisting of a prayer hall and a two-storey section,
covered with a tiled gable roof. The northeastern façade is crowned with a triangular gable containing biforia windows in the middle
part (an allusion to the Tablets of the Law) and small oculi in the corners. A blind round-headed window in the central part of the
façade corresponds to the interior location of the Torah ark; corner lesenes terminate with turrets rising above the cornise. In
1965–66 the kloyz building was demolished and a two-storey shop built on the site.