The Almshouse
The
remains of a world in which there were enough Jews to require such a
splendid site of charity. Faced with this gorgeous ruin, I find myself
wondering what the difference is for me between this monument to lost
time and, say, the beautiful remnants of Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire.
It feels like a different kind of melancholy, since a thread of
identification, however tenuous, however willed by my imagination,
connects me to the history of this place.