In their enthusiasm for radical makeovers, the city fathers' original plan for urban renewal also called for this building, the Jewish Town Hall, to be demolished.  But, in the end, it wasn't.  Apparently its centrality to the history of the Ghetto -- it had been its administrative center since the 17th century -- prevailed. Or perhaps the city planners were simply taken with the clock on its tower, which runs backwards. It is certainly an unusual feature and one imagines some truly profound reason for it; that, for example, the clock's designers were suggesting that time actually does go backward in some esoteric sense. But instead it resulted from the fact that Hebrew, because it is read from right to left, seems to logically dictate that a clock utilizing Hebraic numerals should also run in a contrary direction. Even so, this was an unusual interpretation. In reality, most Hebraic clocks run clockwise since, like mechanical clocks in general, they duplicate the movement of their predecessor, the sundial, whose shadow (in the northern hemisphere) moves in what we now call a clockwise direction. 

Currently, the Jewish Town Hall is the central office of the Council of Jewish Religious Communities in the Czech Republic.