Obj. ID: 22466
Jewish Architecture  Lukishker Beit Midrash in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania

Lukishker Beit Midrash (Synagogue) or Segalevich’s Kloyz at 12 Tiuremnyi II Lane (today Ankštoji St.).

The beit midrash was built in the Lukishki area, near the prison, by a wealthy timber merchant Shimshon Shasniker (Maze, d. 1853) in 1815.

In 1913 a small fire destroyed the amud and several shtenders in the beit midrash. During WW I there were ca. 170 regular worshippers, but in 1921 the list of worshippers included only 58 names; Rabbi Ḥaim Segalevich (b. 1844), who was the rabbi of Lukiškės from 1884, was registered at the top of this list. In the late 1939 – early 1940 the beit midrash housed the “Knesset Beit Yitsḥak” Yeshiva – the Slobodka Yeshiva from Kaunas, which was situated in Kamieniec Litewski (today Kamenets in Belarus) in the interwar period, and escaped from Soviet-occupied Poland (later it moved to Raseiniai).

According to the description by Avraham Nisan Yaffe in 1941/42, the beit midrash was a “large and high stone building with a women’s section. The interior [was] richly painted, the ceiling decorated with pictures showing the instruments mentioned in the Hallelujah chapter [Ps. 150], on which the priests played during the time of the Temple. The ceiling above the bimah shows a beautiful picture of the city of Jerusalem. [In 1942] the synagogue shows certain damages, only the bimah, the Torah ark and the electricity are intact. The openings are closed by wooden planks.”

The building is not extant.

From: Vladimir Levin, “Synagogues, Batei Midrash and Kloyzn in Vilnius,” in Synagogues in Lithuania. A Catalogue, ed. Aliza Cohen-Mushlin et al., vol. 2 (Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Arts Press, 2012), p. 330.