Places of Worship

In a city of 2 million people how do you bump into the same monk twice? Granted we are staying in the same general area and the first time we met the Padre was in his church but the second time was a good 25 minute walk from the church and across the river. Usually in metropolitan areas where there are a lot of churches, and Prague has a lot of churches, you see clergy everywhere. That doesn’t seem to be the case here. It seems as though you have to search for clergy people. Even inside the churches you don’t find any clergy people standing around doing clergy type things. What you do find are ushers.

Places of worship are treated more like museums. The buildings are beautifully decorated. There are altars that reach 30, 40, even 60 feet into the air space. These structures are enormous and ornately decorated. The stone work is some of the most intricate I have ever seen. The ceilings are covered with Frescoes and the walls have oil paintings hung on them. Pipe organs are commonplace and the windows are stained glass. The floors are patterned stone work and the list goes on and on. And … there are ushers.

At least most of the churches are open and free to the public. The synagogues are a different story. You must pay an admission fee to enter so we purchased a walking tour and visited three. For 300 Czech Crowns, about $15.00, you get admission to 3 synagogues and a cemetery. None of these synagogues are working places of worship. The first is a very old synagogue that has been converted to a memorial for the Jews that used to live in Prague. In the background recorded Hebrew prayer plays over a stereo system. The walls of the main hall are adorned with the some 80,000 names of the Prague Jews that disappeared during the Holocaust. It is both moving and disturbing. There are no Jews caring for this building. There are no Rabbis, no Cantors, no one, just ushers that have no ability to answer any questions. The second room of the building has display cases of artwork from Jewish children that were held at the ghetto in Terezin http://www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/showdoc.do?docid=4 . Outside is a cemetery on the synagogue grounds. Ropes are set up to guide you around the headstones like you were in a fun house. Granted, some of these headstones are old and they need to be preserved but the ropes are a little tacky. Last room is a small detached chapel. It is a museum containing Jewish religious items. The display cases have minimal descriptions, if any at all, of the contents.

The second and third synagogues were no more than museums of Jewish religious items. While I was in one there were a couple of young women from Italy looking into a case and pointing and laughing. The case had a collection of yads, pointers. The women were laughing at one in particular because it used the thumb to point instead of the pointer finger. In their culture pointing with the thumb is an insult. But what bothered me more than their behavior was that they had no idea what they were looking at. I explained the items to them and then another lady who had been listening started asking other questions.

How strange these items must be to people that have no idea what they are or what they are for. Nearly everyone knows what a bible is but how many people recognize a Torah, Megilah, Yad, or Tzedakah boxes. How does a once vibrant synagogue come to this. At the very least the Czech people realize that these artifacts are important and worth preserving. But you can’t help but wonder why they aren’t cared for by Jews.