Forgotten Jewish mural restored and relocated after decades in attic

Retiree and former Jewish genealogist Carol Clingan was determined to help save a long-lost and abandoned mural in a former synagogue in North Adams, Massachusetts. It took her years, a lot of hard work — and raising $500,000 — but she succeeded, saving the mural and finding a new home for it at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass.

In late 19th-century North Adams, Jewish immigrants from Lithuania had founded a new synagogue in a simple wooden building. The congregation imported an artist from their hometown in Lithuania to paint a mural for them. Advertisement

But by 1920, the congregation moved away from the original building. Over the ensuing decades, the building became an apartment house, and the original mural, hidden in what had become an attic, disappeared from view.

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