Prague Jewish Quarter
When we visited the Prague Jewish Quarter, we toured the many historic buildings which make up the Jewish Museum. There were several synagogues and an old meeting house, and a historic cemetery (I will give some details on these places below). However, you won’t see a lot of photos of these places in my blog, for the simple reason that there is no photography allowed in any of those places. An exception was the cemetery, where you could purchase a photography permit – we didn’t get a permit, but when we saw that the booth where you usually buy these permits was closed, we decided it would be ok if we snapped a photo or two.
The one place I did get a good photo was outside of the Spanish Synagogue, which began our tour.
Spanish Synagogue
This building was gorgeous both inside and out, and really the highlight for me of our tour of the area. The interior was ornate, decorated in the Moorish style that is apparent on the outside. And in the balcony, there were numerous display cases that commemorated many great artists and writers and statesman from Czech Jewish culture.
The rest of the Jewish Quarter tour reminded me once again that, for the remaining European Jews, the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust are still a vivid memory. The Pinkas Synagogue, with its walls covered in the names of the people taken from area Jewish communities to the concentration camps, is unremittingly somber, and the mood established while there continued for me throughout the rest of the morning.
I was also reminded that, for Prague’s Jews (and those in communities throughout Europe), ill-treatment didn’t begin in the 20th century. Prague’s Jews were squeezed into a tiny ghetto northeast of the Old Town. When they were allowed to leave the ghetto in the late-nineteenth century, the city condemned the buildings left behind, tore everything down, and rebuilt the neighborhood. As a result, there are many beautiful Art Nouveau office and apartment buildings in the area.
As we left behind the synagogues and cemetery and thought about lunch, there were occasional reminders of what we had just seen, as under our feet, embedded in the sidewalk, were gold tiles listing the names of some of the Jewish people from the neighborhood who were taken away to the concentration camps.
Tiles Commemorating Prague’s Lost Jews
After the strong medicine that was our tour of the neighborhood, I felt like I had earned a good lunch, and so we found our way to the area’s foremost kosher restaurant, King Solomon, where we looked forward to a transcendent meal.
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