Lost Wooden Synagogue of Zabłudów

A detailed model of the Zabłudów Synagogue is now on display at YIVO, in the John and Gwen Smart gallery. The model is a project of Handshouse Studio, a Massachusetts-based art organization well-known for its monumental recreation of the roof and ceiling of the Gwozdziec  Synagogue for Polin, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. The Zabłudów Synagogue model was donated to YIVO by Irene Pletka, a member of YIVO’s board of directors, who is also an active supporter of the Polish museum.

The Zabłudów Synagogue, built ca. 1637, is considered to be one of the oldest wooden synagogues to have survived into the modern period. Poland and Lithuania were once the home of hundreds of synagogues of this type, ranging from simple constructions to elaborate and majestic buildings such as the one in Zabłudów. Only a few examples of this distinctive Jewish architecture still survive today in Eastern Europe. The Zabłudów Synagogue was destroyed by the Nazis in 1941.

The wooden model now at YIVO was created in a Handshouse Studio workshop by students in 2004 after painstaking research.
 

Read more about the Zabłudów Synagogue project