Jessica in Prague

Today was actually educational. After our language classes, we had a guest lecturer talk about the Jewish community in Prague. He did a brief history: one of the oldest communities in Europe, one of the freest (women were allowed some education, no wall was built to seperate Jews from non-Jews, etc.), and one of the biggest. Afterwards, he took us for a tour of three or four Jewish synagogues and a Jewish cemetary. I have pics, but no knowledge of how to add them yet. In order to see one, you have to pay to see them all, about 200kc, or 8 dollars. I got to get in free b/c I was with the tour group!! Two synagogues were boring, but the others were worthwhile. The best is The Pinkas Synagogue, with the cemetary adjacent to it. The Jewish community used it for roughly 300 years?!? But they only had so much space, so they started piling up vertically, about 12 deep in places! It's very sad.

Also there, the community decided to name all roughly 80,000 Czech Jews that perished at Terezin and Auschwitz (both of which I am to go visit, yikes). It's incredibly moving to go into the temple and see thousands and thousands of names on the wall, knowing they all died that way. They are grouped by town, and then by family name. Then we all went grocery shopping, YAY! Just got done eating French Toast, made by the lovely Amaanda. As soon as I can figure out how, I will add pics of my room, my friends, and the Jewish Cemetary.

Oh yeah, The Old-New Synagogue, which we saw, was built in 1270, and is still used for services today, oldest building in the country!!!

This is a picture of the Hebrew clock that runs counterclockwise.