the sights of the place. On the face of this
clock the numbers are marked by Hebrew letters and the hands of this
clock move from right to left. The fact that the Jews had a Town Hall to
themselves in ancient Prague is significant; it stood for the
semi-autonomous constitution of the Jewish community which was subject
to the sovereign as a corporate body with its own municipal institutions
and responsibilities. This peculiar segregation of the Jewish community
as an _imperium in imperio_, apart in matters of local administration as
in matters of religion, from their fellow-citizens, must have done a
great deal towards forming the character of its members, and the result
has been of advantage to the city of Prague in times of stress.

Close by the Jewish Town Hall stands another yet more ancient landmark
of cultural history, the "Staronova [vS]kola", or Old New School. Close
by the side of that broad thoroughfare the Mikulas[vs]ka T[vr]ida, with
the electric trams clanging along it, stands this strange temple. Dr.
Je[vr]abek, in his excellent booklet on _Beautiful Old Prague_ likens
this ancient building to a gigantic hand of Aaron held up in blessing
over the Ghetto; I think you will agree with me that this is a very
happy simile. Built in the severe style of transition from Romanesque to
Gothic, of massive stone walls heavily buttressed, with steep red-tiled
sloping roof, blackened with age and the grime of the walled-in Ghetto,
this temple served not only as a place of worship for the sons of
Israel, but also as a casket for the remains of a yet older one said to
date back to the sixth century and probably the oldest temple on the
Continent of Europe. The present fane itself is of venerable age and
aspect; its building fell into the reign of King Wenceslaus I and
Ottokar II, and took ten years, from 1250 to 1260. Men only are allowed
to worship in the inner temple, dingy and dark; whatever light
penetrates through the narrow windows calls forth reluctant glints from
the many brass candelabra, work of long centuries ago. Women may look on
from an outer court through glazed openings that look like
gun-embrasures.

The Jews required strong defences in the dark days of the Middle Ages;
their Ghetto was shut off from the rest of the city by heavy iron gates,
but even these proved of no avail when once the mob got loose and
undertook a raid. On several occasions organized massacres took toll of
the "Children of the Ghetto