A Fragment of the Altar of a Synagogue in Mariampol

Valerii Rybarskii was an architect in Mariampol, then in the Russian Empire (now Marijampolė, Lithuania). In 1889, when the wooden bet midrash that stood in the city’s Khevre poalim kloyz (the workers’ private study house in the courtyard that also housed the city’s Great Synagogue) was on the verge of collapse, he designed a brick building to replace it. It was not uncommon for non-Jewish architects to design Jewish spaces. In 1899, Rybarskii designed the city’s Hakhnasat Orḥim Synagogue. His designs integrated neo-Romanesque, neo-Gothic, and “oriental” elements. Rybarskii also designed churches, incorporating similar architectural characteristics.