History
According to Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, the wooden synagogue style developed in the century between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, a period of peace and prosperity for the Polish-Lithuanian Jewish community. In addition to Poland and Lithuania, wooden synagogues are found in modern Belarus and the Ukraine.
Wood was abundant and inexpensive in the heavily forested commonwealth, but a large part of the motivation for building in wood rather than masonry was the great difficulty of obtaining government permission to erect masonry synagogues. The wooden synagogues, which featured multi-layered high roofs, multi-beamed domes, galleries, wooden balconies and arches were built to high standards of craftsmanship.
Read more about this topic: Wooden Synagogues
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