Jewish Prague

Today after Czech class, Emily, Rachel, and I went on a tour of Prague's Jewish quarter, which is just off Old Town Square. It was interesting to see, because Prague has a rich and storied Jewish history, which was all but wiped out during World War II (the Terezin ghetto is not far from the city) so now, aside from the surviving synagogues and the old Jewish cemetary, the area looked like 5th Avenue in Manhattan, with it's Louis Vuitton, Hugo Boss, and Lacoste shops, among others, albeit it looked like a 5th Avenue with fairy tale-like buildings. It was an interesting dichotomy.

Our tour guide was a walking encyclopedia of the Jewish history of Prague and Eastern Europe, which was kind of fascinating in itself, but the synagogues and cemetary we visited were incredible. The first one we visited, the Maisel Synagogue, was built in 1590, and was an interesting mix of Renaissance, Baroque, and somewhat Gothic architecture, from all the times int was renovated and destroyed, and there was an exhibit detailing the eary history of the Bohemian and Moravian Jewish ghettos. The Klausen Synagogue, also from the 1500s, was interesting to see as well, as was the Pinkas Synagogue, which was turned into a Holocaust memorial, with all of the names of Czech Holocaust victims written on the walls. There were at least 80,000 names, and they covered the walls of the synagogue. It was extremely moving, and it reminded me of back when Dad and I did the readings in the middle of the night for the Yom Ha'Shoah ceremonies at the temple.

The most fascinating part of the tour, and one of the spookiest, was the Old Jewish Cemetary, which was built in the 15th century. There are at least 12 layers of people buried there from the 1400s-1700s, one right on top of the other, and there are at least 12,000 tombstones, and that's not even one from everyone there. It was a little spooky to be there, just thinking about how many people had been buried there, including some prominent Jewish figures from that time period.





This last one isn't in the cemetary, but it's a picture of the Old Jewish Town Hall. You can't really see it here, but on the other side of that clock is a Hebrew one, which moves in a counter-clockwise direction to follow the Hebrew letters.