This haunting cemetery, with its thousands of ancient tombstones, is a frozen register of the uncounted centuries of life and death in Prague's Jewish community.
The Old Jewish Cemetery is a cemetery unlike any other. Shrouded by trees and enclosed by a tall wall, the thousands of graves gathered here tumble over one another in the grounds of the Pinkas Synagogue. Some are toppling, some stand proud, but all are ancient – the cemetery stopped being used in 1787. It seems the Jews of the Jewish Quarter were as packed tightly together in death, as they were in life.No-one knows for sure how old the cemetery is – the oldest marked tombstone is dated 1439 – but some believe it goes back as far as 1,000 years before that. What is known is that King Ottokar II of Bohemia founded a cemetery here for the Jews, in the 13th century. Because this small plot, halfway between the Old Town Square and the River, wasn't allowed to be extended – and because Jewish custom meant the dead and their tombs must stay in place – the graves have been stacked on top of another. So while there are 12,000 visible tombstones, there may be 100,000 or more graves in the cemetery as a whole.Among the thousands of weathered and tumbling tombstones that are visible, you'll be able to pick out many of the notable Jews of the Quarter. The oldest tombstone in fact belongs to the medieval scholar and poet Avigdor Karo. There are tombs for the Mayor of the Jewish Quarter, Mordechai Maisel, who died in 1601, as well as for David Gans, a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer, and Rabbi David Oppenheim, a famous collector of Hebrew manuscripts and books.But the most famous tomb is that of Judah Loew ben Bezalel, better known as Rabbi Loew, or the Maharal of Prague. He is widely revered as one of the most important Jewish scholars and mystical philosophers – especially in the mysteries of the Kabbalah. He is also known as the Rabbi who breathed life into the Golem, a giant creature who defended the Jews of the Quarter. He died in 1609 and was bought here for burial. His tombstone still stands tall and proud in the cemetery, in stark contrast to the wild forest of stones surrounding him. Perhaps a little of the Golem's defensive magic still lives on.
