WORTH VISITING:
Each big Jewish community in Lithuania usually had not only one or two general beit midrashes or synagogues, where all members of the community gathered during the great holidays, but there were also smaller prayer houses for everyday prayers dedicated to the specific groups – tailors, blacksmiths, butchers, etc. The only extant building of this kind of prayer house in Kaunas is a building of butchers` synagogue. Surprise surprise – it stood on Butchers` (Mėsininkų) street (nowadays – Daukšos str. 27a), where Kaunas Jews came to buy kosher meat.
BRIEF HISTORY:
The Butchers` synagogue was built in the second half of the 19th century and since then it was one of the biggest buildings in the quarter with extraordinary pointed-arc windows. When the synagogue was built this street was on the margins of the city`s Jewish quarter. During the annual consecration of the synagogue, the head Rabbi of Kaunas visited the synagogue and led the worship. Local Jew Bal Bachshoves in his memoirs of 1921 remembers visits to this synagogue of the famous Icchok Spektor – it was an event of both religious and social importance.
CURRENT SITUATION:
Today the Butchers` synagogue building (Daukšos str. 27a) is only a symbolical reminder of the previous prayer house before the Second World War. During the Soviet occupation, it was changed a lot and after Lithuania regained independence, the building was transferred to an artists` workshop of the Kaunas department of Vilnius art academy.
LOOKING AROUND:
Ohel Jakov choral synagogue in Kaunas
Memorial plaque to Emanuel Levin in Kaunas
Chasidic kloiz in Kaunas
New beit midrash building in Kaunas
Tsvi Hirsh Neviazher kloiz in Kaunas
Chiune Sugihara house-museum in Kaunas
A sculpture to Danielius Dolskis in Kaunas
Memorial plaque to Leja Goldberg in Kaunas
Vilijampolė yeshiva in Kaunas
The 9th Fort in Kaunas
