We decided to sleep in this morning to recuperate from the lingering effects of jet lag. By the time Andy got back from his run and we were done with breakfast, it was after 11:00 before we headed out the door.
Today’s goal - the Jewish quarter. We are purposely doing this on our own and not on a tour so we can see everything and not be raced through anything.
I had found a self guiding walking tour that looked good at first. Once we arrived in the Old Town Square (see the photo of the Astronomical Clock that is still being renovated),
we began to realize that something was wrong with the guide and its map. They didn’t match at all!
Eventually we gave up on it and headed directly to the Jewish Quarter as identified on more reliable maps.
We sort of stumbled across the first synagogue- the Maisel Synagogue. We bought a package ticket to all 6 synagogues plus an audio guide. We finally felt like we were on the right track.
In this photo, that's Andy on the right in the yellow shirt.
Here’s a link to some info about the Maisel Synagogue. It’s most famous rabbi is Rabbi Lowe, who is reportedly the person who created the Golem that protected the Jewish community.
Maisel Synagogue in Prague
This is a panorama of the inside the sanctuary:
We had lunch in the King Solomon Restaurant- one of the few kosher restaurants in Prague. The menu was in Yiddish and English.
After lunch we went to the Pinkas Synagogue, which is the Holocaust Memorial. Normally I don’t go into those, but I decided to brave it. So glad I did.
The walls of the sanctuary has the names of all 80k people murdered during the Holocaust.
The bima is bare and the Torah reading table looks abandoned and sad. The second floor had an exhibition of the children in the Terezin concentration camp. I did not go up there. I knew my limitations.
Next we went out to the cemetery. Dating back to the 1400s and restricted in size by assorted ruling regimes, people had to be buried in layers. The headstones are also stacked or lean against each other. The great Rabbi Lowe is buried here - there is a tradition for people to leave notes and wishes in the cracks and crevices in his headstone. Some headstones are in great shape, some not so much. Some are seriously huge (mini-mausoleums) and some are tiny. So many life stories!
Continuing on, we saw an add-on exhibit - the mikvah that was discovered during the renovation of the synagogue 20+ years ago. We paid an extra $5 and this nice young man, whose name totally escapes me, took us on a min-tour of the old mikvah. Well worth the $5 - he told us that the entrance fee goes 100% to the maintenance of the new Mikva has, built in 1997.
This is the original mikvah - you can see the bottom is wet from the natural ground waters. The water table is now too low to fill the mikvah.
This is the original entrance to the original mikvah, which shows that there definitely was a connection between the Pinkas synagogue and the mikvah.
Next we moved on to the Klausen synagogue - a museum of Jewish ritual artifacts.
I was decidedly uncomfortable in this museum, listening to tour guides talk about my culture and religion as if we were extinct. But some of the items were interesting - very old prayer books, original hand painted Purim scrolls, etc. This is a High Holiday prayer book:
We had to return the audio guide to the Maisel synagogue by 5:30, but we will pick it up again tomorrow.
Coming back to the hotel, we decided to try Uber. Though we had to wait about 10 minutes, the “surge” price was $5 (plus $1 tip). Vladimir our driver wasn’t very chatty; we're guessing his English was not great. We’ve decided that we’ll do this more often to save our walking energy for when we need it.
After a day of walking, we decided to have dinner at the hotel.
Tomorrow: Finish off the Jewish Quarter, maybe some part of the castle, and our first meet up with the rest of the group.
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