Jew Cemetery at Prague

15-12-2004

One of the sights that impressed me the most from my recent visit to Prague was the Old Jewish Cemetery. I have been before to some other Jew Cemeteries before, but except for the absence of crosses as main signs, I have not found them so unusual. But this cemetery is definitely shocking, just check the picture:

Photo from Praha Jew Cemetery

At first I thought this probably was set up: all those tombstones placed in such a dissorder. But I was wrong: the cemetery used to be this way, at least since 1787. Acording to the History, what happened was that the jews were not able to buy additional fields to let the cemetery grew, so, as the cemetery was crowded, they added a new layer of earth, lifted up the existing tombstones, and they started burying again. As result, after hundred years, the cemetery is about 2 meters over the surrounding streets (Streets were also lifted up some time on the last century, so now it does not seem so high), and there are all those many tombstones crowding all the place. (And they stopped using it 3 centuries ago, otherwise the cemetery will be for sure even more crowded).

On the top of many of the tombstones, there were usually small stones. The stones were used to hold notes on there. In some places, there were still recent notes, like the one on the picture:

Note hold by a small stone on a Tombstone in the    Jewish cemetery at Prague

I was not able to find out what could be the meaning of those notes. Maybe they are a Jew tradition, and Jew visitors were leaving them as memory to their relatives. (Pretty unlikely, since all stones are old it is probably hard to identify the owners). In one of the notes was showing some text, but I was not able to understand it. Feel free to try to understand what is written in there:

Detailed view of one of the notes over a tombstone.

These little stones are a Jew tradition, as I learned later on: a Rabbi explains the tradition.


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