Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/66

50 artistic industry, of old Bohemian glass, and ceramics, of iron and metals smithwork, embroideries, polished stones and jewelry. After a brief inspection, we proceed to the neighbouring Riverbank-street and enter by it the characteristic but slowly disappearing old Jewish-town. Only a few synagogues and a small number of narrow frightfully neglected but for that all the more picturesque houses in narrow and crooked streets are left, and farther on a small square surrounded by low houses. Out of these rises pretty high, the curious and only one of its kind in Prague, the gothic brickbuilt gable of the moss-covered „Staronová škola“ (Old-new-school) like a gigantic hand of Aaron blessing the whole Ghetto; whose pride and symbol it has been for many ages. It is a sombre and sad building like the history of the Jews themselves during the middle ages; but at the same time very fascinating by the deep impression it must make on all who venerate it for its age (from the middle of the XIIIth. century 1250—1260), and for the original sombre half darkened inside, containing beautiful column-capitals from the transition-time between roman and gothic architecture. A background of equal attraction to this synagogue is the original appearance of the old Jewish Townhall with a bizarre baroque tower and a clock the numbers of which are represented by Hebrew letters and the hands move backward from the right hand to the left. Right to the west from the old synagogue leads a narrow-lane called the „Hahnpass“. It has not exit at the end being closed up by a yellow-painted modern house in the style of the sixties of the last century. A large germanGerman [sic] and Bohemian inscription informs us, that it contains the office of the Jewish Funeral Fraternity. Some of the officials of this institution are always ready to lead us, provide the tickets and take us after a few steps, through the narrow rather neglected looking passage of a private house to a simple glass door, behind which there is one of the mosmost [sic] original sights of Prague: Beth-Chim—„the house of life“: the Old Jewish Cemetery. It is the oldest preserved Jewish Cemetery of Europe, dating as can be proved from the XIIth. century. It is an old garden full of picturesque tombs, covered with very old, even centenarian (sambucus, elder-tree) which give the whole place an indescribable charm.