Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague

Yesterday I visited the old Jewish Quarter in Prague and toured the Jewish Museum, which spans multiple sites in the area. We toured the Pinkas Synagogue (built in the 16th century, now a Holocaust memorial) and the Spanish Synagogue (built in the 19th century, Moorish influenced interior, houses documents relating to the history of Jews in Prague as well as a large part of the local Jewish community’s collection of silver relics).

The highlight of the tour was the Old Jewish Cemetery, the oldest extant Jewish cemetery in Europe. Jewish burial tradition forbids destroying Jewish graves or removing tombstones, so over the years that the cemetery was in use, new layers of soil were added periodically in order to allow more burials. This resulted in a massive jumble of tombstones, many leaning against each other or lined up like dominoes.

Click on the photograph below for a small slideshow of images from the cemetery.

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