Židikų miestelio kahalas

ENThe systematic material collected in the Mažeikiai Museum was used to systematize the material: memories of the population, photographs, letters. The Šiauliai Aušra Museum houses a photograph of the synagogue and an Aron Hakodesh. The research activities contributes to the preservation of the signs: the first places of remembrance of the Jewish nation were marked in the town on the initiative of the Židikiai head. The Kahal was an integral part of the town in the 16th-20th centuries. The settlement had everything a person needed at the time: various shops near the market square formed in the 17th century, a leather workshop, a tea shop, a tavern, a combing workshop, a mill, the first generator for electricity generation, a bank, medical services... Later, in 1789, a synagogue, mitzvah, yeshiva were built, and a cemetery was established. The, Kahal, according to the 1897 census, reached an impressive number of 914 (73.5% of the inhabitants)! It decreased slightly more in the interwar period, but the economic influence on the town and its surroundings increased. The year 1941 was fateful. After the Holocaust, Yiddish was no longer heard in Židikiai... The Kahal was destroyed, the red brick synagogue and the buildings on the central street of the town burned down after the fire were not rebuilt. [From the publication]