In Lodz, there were a number of synagogues great and small, Hasidic shtiblekh, mikvaot, two cemeteries (one of which was the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe), and a kosher slaughterhouse. The city's largest synagogue, completed in 1887, was the Great Synagogue on Kosciuszki Street - "The Synagogue on the Promenade" - a Conservative type congregation funded by a group of magnates headed by Izrael Poznanski. The synagogue was the largest building in the town center, a tremendous detailed Neo-Romanesque and Moorish structure featuring ornate mosaics and several domed towers. Another important synagogue was the Wolczanska Street Shul (completed in 1904), a Litvak congregation. As with many of Lodz's synagogues and Jewish communal buildings, both were methodically destroyed during the Nazi occupation.
While the secular industrialists of the city were few in number and disproportionately powerful, the Hasidim of Lodz were actually far more numerous. Split into various groups, the most established were the Ger and the Alexander Hasidim. These groups were perpetually involved in a struggle over control of the kehilla and local elections. The Ger Hasidim, generally wealthier and more powerful, formed a large part of the Agudat Israel party (a non-Zionist Orthodox party that often supported the government), and retained some of their influence through an alignment with non-religious Jews. The Alexander Hasidim found common interests with the non-Hasidic Jews (often called Litvaks for their association with the cultural enlightenment of Lithuania), who were divided into groups of secular Jews, Misnagdim (religious non-Hasidim), and, later on, Zionists.
In Lodz every variety of Jewish school existed. These included a yeshiva, a religious kheder, and a reformed kheder founded in 1890 for schooling in both religious and secular subjects. There was also a secular Jewish high school (the first Jewish gymnasium in Russia, a project directed in 1912 by the wealthy and progressive Rabbi Markus Braude, which featured classes in Polish and Hebrew), and a Yiddish school founded in 1918, as well as a number of vocational schools.
Arts and letters also flourished in Lodz, which was home to many well-known Jewish artists and bohemians, including pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1881-1982), author Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991), and the Polish-speaking Julian Tuwim (1894-1963), one of Poland's greatest poets. There was a society of avant-garde artists called Yung-yidish and an active Yiddish theater scene in the years leading up to World War II. Several Jewish newspapers were published in the city, including the Yiddish papers Lodzer Togblat and Nayer Folksblat and Republika, (in Polish).
