Obj. ID: 8943
Jewish Architecture Wooden Beit Midrash in Rozalimas, Lithuania
The beit midrash is a wooden structure; its exterior clearly shows the interior division of space into a prayer hall and women’s section. The building has preserved its basic original form. The beit midrash is a rectangular log structure on a masonry foundation. Its log walls are reinforced with vertical posts and not protected with side planks. The rectangular structure is elongated on a northwest-southeast axis, and is 16.19 m by 11.62 m and about 7.78 m high above the foundation. The interior space comprises the prayer hall in the southeast, and a group of rooms, including the women’s section above it, in the northwest. The original partition wall between the prayer hall and the rooms on the northwest is still preserved. The prayer hall is rectangular (11.2 m x 10.5 m); it was lit by two pairs of rectangular windows in the southeastern wall and by three more in each of the southwestern and northeastern walls. The Torah ark stood in the middle of the southeastern wall, and the bimah was situated in the center of the prayer hall. All these elements are lost, as well as the original flat ceiling, and the hall is currently split into two floors with a new deck. The ground floor of the northwestern part of the building is currently divided into two chambers. The women’s section was situated in the first floor above it. The women’s section and the prayer hall were spanned with a common flat ceiling. The women’s section was lit by smaller rectangular windows, original location of which can only be surmised due to multiple later reconstructions. Two entrances to the beit midrash were probably originally situated in the northern part of the northeastern and northwestern façades. A new doorway was opened in the northeastern façade and a new gateway inserted in the northwestern one. The beit midrash has a half-hipped roof of a queen-post construction, covered with asbestos sheets. The northwestern and southeastern trapezoid gables are nailed with vertical planks.
After WW II the building served as a storage space; an annex of asbestos sheets was attached to its southwestern side and part of the southwestern wall is bricked over with white silicate bricks.
17 image(s)
sub-set tree:
Cohen-Mushlin, Aliza, Sergey Kravtsov, Vladimir Levin, Giedrė Mickūnaitė, Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė (eds.), Synagogues in Lithuania. A Catalogue, 2 vols. (Vilnius: VIlnius Academy of Art Press, 2010-12)
CJA documentation;
Marija Rupeikienė, "Synagogues of Lithuania," in Lithuanian Synagogues (Exhibition Catalogue) (Vilnius: The Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, 1997) p. 31;
Marija Rupeikienė, Nykstantis kultūros paveldas: Lietuvos sinagogų architektūra (Vilnius, 2003), p. 141;
Pinkas hakehilot: Lita, ed. Dov Levin (Jerusalem, 1996), p. 632;
Marija Rupeikienė, "Medinės Lietuvos sinagogos," in Alfredas Jomantas (ed.), Medinė architektūra Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 2002), p. 77 with ills at the end of the book;
Hamelits, no. 40, 25, October 1881, p. 822