Home > FJN News & Features > Travel & Leisure > The Jewish Quarter in Prague: Now a Museum

 

The Jewish Quarter in Prague: Now a Museum

Click here to recommend
this article to a friend
By Dan Levitt - Special to the Florida Jewish News

The Old Jewish Quarter neighborhood in Prague, known as Josefov in Czech, is the most interesting and best-preserved Jewish site in Europe. It is well worth the long travel time to Eastern Europe to visit the profoundly moving Museum that tells the story of a once thriving community.

Please support our advertisers

The Museum is a product of the Holocaust. As the Nazi’s decimated Jewish communities in Europe, Prague’s Jews were encouraged to collect and archive their treasures. While, the archivists were eventually killed in concentration camps, their work survives. Scattered over a three-block area is a collection of seven attractions that make up the Jewish Museum.

The Old Jewish Quarter, also known as the Jewish Ghetto, developed over the centuries as more and more people were crowded into the neighbourhood, due to Jews being banned from living anywhere else. Jews in Prague faced the constant change of the professions they were allowed to practice and were restricted on their movements.

Unlike other tourist attractions in Europe or Jewish sites, the Old Jewish Quarter in Prague is now a shell of its former self. Walking through the former Jewish Ghetto visitors get a glimpse into a lost civilization – a world that once was. What once was a thriving community is no more. This feeling is even more poignant when watching the throngs of tourists who visit the site daily. Groups of European visitors walk through the narrow cobblestone streets like they were touring an ancient archeological site.

The people who lived in the Ghetto are long gone – most of whom, were victims of the Nazi’s, sent one hour north to Terezin and then to concentration camps further east. Now, tourists walk the streets of the former Ghetto from exhibit to exhibit to learn about ancient traditions of a lost civilization. However, the traditions that tourist learn about in the Museum are today practiced in Prague by several thousand faithful and still practiced in thriving Jewish communities around the world. Despite, the Old Jewish Quarter now being a touristy ghost town, there is plenty of security to protect both the Jewish sites and tourists.

A single entry fee gives access to the ceremonial hall and five synagogues which comprise the Museum plus the cemetery, that later being the most evocative experience. Dating back to the 15th century, the cemetery, with its tightly packed tombstones is surrounded by high walls. Walking on marked paths, visitors file past the almost 12,000 graves crowded together sharing the tighly compacted space now overgrown with grass. The Jewish community only had a limited amount of space to bury its dead, so the cemetery actually consists of several layers of graves place on top of one another. The most famous person buried in the cementary is Rabbi Loew, who died in 1609 who according to Jewish legend, created a golem, an artifical human made of clay, to protect the Jews of Prague from anti-semitic attacks. The end of the day is the best time to soak up the cemetery’s atmosphere when most of the tourists have moved on.

The Pinkus Synagogue, located near the entrance to the Old Jewish Cemetery is now a memorial dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Nazis. The names of the 77,297 murdered Jews from the Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia are inscribed on the walls. Visitors stand in awe, staring at the mesmerizing walls of this thought provocative monument in the background the somber voice of a Cantor reads the victims names and Psalms are sung.

On the second floor of the synagogue, is a display of drawings created by the children incarcerated in the Ghetto and concentration camp at Terezin. The art exhibit is extremely moving given the horrific circumstances under which the young artist’s painted. The drawings were painted in the most inhumane of living conditions with a scarcity of art supplies in the concentration camp. Looking at the display of expressive realism drawings, tears were roll down the cheeks of the visitors.

Josefov is on the must see list of travelers from all backgrounds. People of all nationalities walk through the streets in organized tours or on their own carrying their Best of Europe guidebooks going from synagogue to synagogue to learn about a culture that once thrived. In the Klausen Synagogue, completed in 1694 after a terrible fire in the Ghetto, houses exhibits on Jewish customs and holidays as well as the lifecycle. On the day of our visit, an Itilian tour group crowded around a display case which focused on birth rituals. A tourist, with puzzled facial expressions, asked their tour guide about Jewish circumcision.

After visiting the Jewish Museum visitors walk past touristy postcard stands and souvenir shops selling everything from t-shirts to traditional Czech memorabilia including marionettes – some even dressed as rabbis. Just imagine the sites and sounds of this former marketplace, once catering to the residents of the Jewish community. Unfortunately, too few Jews are left in Prague today to have kept the shopkeepers busy.

After visiting the Old Jewish Quarter a much-recommended stop is the oldest Kosher restaurant in Prague dating back to 1997. The King Solomon restaurant is nestled appropriately in the heart of the city’s Old Jewish Quarter, hiding behind an unassuming entrance. Once on the other side, an interior designed in the style of an ancient temple awaits, with cozy alcoves, perfect for intimate conversation. The restaurant serves up a wide array of the best kosher recipes from Eastern Europe along with excellent kosher wines from the Czech Republic. While the menu is pricey compared to the beer halls of Prague, however, the beef goulash is delicious and well worth the experience of dining and eating food not available at home.

After dinner a stroll into Prague’s old town square allows time for reflection on the Jewish Museum truly a living testimony to the history of the Prague Jews, spanning many centuries.

Dan Levitt recently returned from Eastern Europe and is a freelance travel writer living in Vancouver, B.C.

Posted by FJN Staff on 08/10 at 05:24 PM • Hits: 132



Reader Comments

Next entry: Is it Neat or is it a Mess?
Previous entry: Rabbi Feinstein Speaks

<< Back to main