Old Jewish Cemetery Prague

      A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Prague with a group of friends to explore the town and their famous Christmas markets. During our visit, we visited many beautiful historical buildings, museums, and landmarks such as the Astronomical clock tower and the Old Town Square. Yet, the most interesting place we encountered throughout our journey, by far, was the Jewish Cemetery. The Jewish Cemetery was in use from the early 15th century (the oldest preserved tombstone, the one of Avigdor Kara, dates back to 1439) until 1787. Its ancestor was a cemetery called "The Jewish Garden", which was found in archaeological excavations under the Vladislavova street. The numbers of gravestones and numbers of people buried there are uncertain, because there are layers of tombs. However, it has been estimated that there are approximately 12,000 tombstones presently visible, and there may be as many as 100,000 burials in all.
The first time I glanced at the cemetery I felt sad and almost depressed on how disrespected the people buried in the cemetery were. Most graves are either just piled on top of each other or placed extremely close to each other. The tombstones were cracking apart and almost falling down. However, I found out that, according to Jewish tradition, Jews must not destroy Jewish graves and in particular it is not allowed to remove the tombstone. This meant that when the cemetery ran out of space and purchasing extra land was impossible, more layers of soil were placed on the existing graves, the old tombstones taken out and placed upon the new layer of soil. This explains why the tombstones in the cemetery are placed so closely to each other. After learning about this, I started to feel some sort of joy because I thought about how much these people must have adored their Jewish heritage and their loved ones who may have been buried in the graveyard already, that they wanted to spend the rest of eternity buried next to them no matter what the cost. I feel like I should not have been joyful or happy when I looked at the cemetery, but I felt hope that maybe one day, when my life shall end, I will be buried next to my loved ones now matter what.