The Old-New Synagogue

This guide to the Old-New Synagogue in Prague opens in nineteen twenty, when journalist Egon Erwin Kisch climbs a rickety ladder toward a sealed attic twelve meters above the street. It traces back to the late fifteen hundreds and Rabbi Judah Loew, said to have shaped a creature from river clay to guard the ghetto, brought it to life with a word under its tongue, and carried its body up into that attic when the word was removed. The staircase up to the attic was torn out afterward, and the space has stayed sealed ever since.