Between the Lines: Lost Synagogues of Europe

Lost Synagogues of Europe

Part of Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of JTS

Wednesday, November 12, 2025
7: 00 p.m. ET
Online

Join us for a conversation with Andrea Strongwater, author of Lost Synagogues of Europe.

Lost Synagogues of Europe recreates in vivid color paintings and chronicles the life stories of nearly eighty majestic—and destroyed—European synagogues, each one a testament to the approximately 17,000 synagogues decimated during the Third Reich and early takeover of the Communist regimes. After WWII only about 3,300 buildings remained standing, and just 700+ are still in use as synagogues. This exquisite and significant work of historical preservation collects, organizes, and documents their stories.

The book features a foreword by Jewish Theological Seminary Chancellor Emeritus Ismar Schorsch, examining the evolution of the synagogue “from a sacred place to a sacred book.”

About the Author

Andrea Strongwater is an author and artist whose artwork has been shown worldwide, including in the collections of the University Medical Center of Princeton; the Herbert F Johnson Museum in Ithaca, New York; The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York; and the Georges Cziffra Foundation in Senlis, France. Her Jewish art additionally decorates the interior of Or Hadash Synagogue in Atlanta. Images from more than one hundred of her synagogue paintings have been sold as prints, postcards, and notecards at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and the Shoah Memorial in Paris. She is also the illustrator of three children’s books, Princess Ingeborg and the Dragons, I Don’t Know—Adventures of a Forest Playground, and Cuffy’s New York City Adventure. The forerunner to this present volume, the children’s book Where We Once Gathered—Lost Synagogues of Europe, which she wrote and illustrated, won two independent publishers awards.

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