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Wooden Synagogues

By Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka

Published by Arkady, Warsaw 1959

In the book Wooden Synagogues, the author compiles a large amount of information about the synagogue in Pogrebishche, taken from all sorts of older sources. Many of these sources are not in English, so the book is valuable in this regard. The author explains that the synagogue may belong to a stylistic group which she refers to as the Bialystok-Grodno group. The synagogues in this group all had similar features and come from roughly the same period, the 1670-1690. They had a main hall with a high multi-tier hipped roof, annexes for women and vestibules. The roof was designed to give the main hall a monumental effect. She writes, however, that although the synagogue in Pogrebishche seems to have many of these features, it is unknown how the main hall was crowned.

In the back is an appendex with an entry about Pogrebishche. She quotes an auther named Gloger, who claims a wood synagogue existed on the same site before the massacre of 1648. It was rebuilt in 1690 and remodelled in 1730, standing until World War II. The main hall was square with two corner pavilions and two annexes for women on each side. The main hall was two steps lower than the vestibule. The roof was two tiered with coved cornices protruding.

References to Pogrebishche can be found on pages 37, 43 and 205.

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Copyright © 2007 Joshua Skarf