Choral Taharat Ha-Kodesh – is the only synagogue still in use in Vilnius. Since its foundation in 1903, this synagogue stood out from the other more traditional ones. It was the first public synagogue that was not restricted to a single group, and summoned a relatively small, but gradually growing and modernising Jewish community of maskilim. This community first assembled in the 1820s, in a house in Vokiečių street rented by the influential and educated Katsenelenbogen family. Due to the active and continuous resistance of those Jews who adhered to a traditional lifestyle, this house was not opened to public prayer until 1847. The establishment of the new synagogue suggests that a circle of the followers of the haskalah ideas had formed; a community able to secure the religious and cultural space, and to constitute an opposition to the predominant conservative part of the Jewish society – misnagdim. Later on, the prayer houses migrated from one place to another. In 1877, architect Mieczysław Strebejko developed a project for an impressive synagogue. Regrettably, it did not materialize,. and a subsequent attempt failed in 1901. Nevertheless, community had already purchased a plot in the place of the present synagogue, at 39 Pylimo Street. There, during April of 1902, a foundational stone was laid, and after little more than a year the new synagogue became operational. It was built according to a plan by Daniel Rosenhaus (killed in Paneriai in 1941), who in turn simplified the unrealized 1901 plan of Alexey Polozov. The overall construction took more time and the North Eastern façade was only completed in 1914.