Maisel’s town hall, standing next to the Altneuschul, was one of those buildings and it was now given a fine gabled baroque clock tower, the first thing visiting tourists notice about Jewish Prague. Famously it bears two faces, one with Roman numerals, the hands sweeping in the usual direction, the other bearing Hebrew numbers, running anticlockwise, back to the future. Whatever else they had learned, the Jews of Prague knew it was a good idea to hedge your bets.
