This path-breaking book brings back to life the beautiful wooden synagogue, with its elaborate painted ceiling, erected in the eighteenth century in the town of Gwozdziec (today Hvizdets in Western Ukraine) and destroyed by the Nazis in 1941. It describes how the synagogue was built and movingly depicts its central role in the religious and social life of the town. A reconstruction of this syngagogue is a central feature of the core exhibition of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. The book is essential reading for all interested in the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe.