Jewish Prague

Old Jewish Cemetery

Prague is one of the oldest Jewish Centres in Central Europe and the Jewish Community has a history going back over one thousand years. Most of the Jewish sites of Prague are in the Josefov, The Jewish Quarter. When this was redeveloped in the 1890’s it had deteriorated into an insanitary slum with only 20% of the population being still Jewish as rising prosperity and legal changes had allowed successful Jewish families to move to other parts of Prague. It was still the cultural centre of the community containing the Jewish Town Hall, Synagogues and old buildings and the Old Jewish Cemetery although burials were now held at the New Cemetery. For most of its history Prague had been a multiethnic city with important Czech, German, and (mostly Czech- and/ or German-speaking) Jewish populations. From 1939, when the country was occupied by Nazi Germany, and during World War II, most Jews either fled the city or were killed in the Holocaust.


Map of Jewish Prague

The 17th century is considered the Golden Age of Jewish Prague. The Jewish community of Prague numbered some 15,000 people (approx. 30 per cent of the entire population), making it the largest Ashkenazic community in the world and the second largest Jewish community in Europe after Thessaloniki. In the years 1597 to 1609, the Maharal (Judah Loew ben Bezalel) served as Prague's Chief Rabbi. He is considered the greatest of Jewish scholars in Prague's history, his tomb in the Old Jewish Cemetery eventually becoming a pilgrimage site.


Tomb of Judah Loew ben Bezalel - Rabbi Loew

The expulsion of Jews from Prague by Maria Theresa of Austria in 1745 based on their alleged collaboration with the Prussian army was a severe blow to the flourishing Jewish community. The Queen allowed the Jews to return to the city in 1748. In 1848 the gates of the Prague ghetto were opened. The former Jewish quarter, renamed Josefov in 1850, was demolished during the "ghetto clearance" at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.

In 1850, the former Jewish quarter in Prague was incorporated into the city and was named Josefstadt (Joseph's city) in honour of Emperor Joseph II of the Austrian Empire which ruled over what is now the Czech Republic in the 18th century. Joseph II was an enlightened monarch who gave the Jews in Prague their civil rights in 1781 when he issued the Toleration Edict. This edict rescinded the old law that required the Jews to wear distinctive caps or the yellow Star of David on their clothing, a law which had been in effect since the 11th century.


Josefov

The edict also allowed the Jews to attend public schools with Christians for the first time and to engage in occupations that had previously been forbidden. With permission from the authorities, the Jews could now live outside the walled ghetto, the area which is now called by the Czech name Josefov. The gates in the ghetto wall were removed by order of the Toleration Edict and the curfew was rescinded. The purpose of the edict was to create a strong centralized state in which all the people would be integrated into a single political and economic system, instead of having the Jews as a minority group in a separate state within a state.



Ironically, Joseph II was also the monarch who, in 1780, ordered the construction of a military garrison at Theresienstadt, 60 kilometres northwest of Prague. From November 1941 until the war ended on May 8, 1945, the Nazis used Theresienstadt (now called Terezin) as a walled ghetto where the Jews once again had to wear the yellow star. Theresienstadt was also used as a transit centre from where the Nazis transported 86,934 Jews to the death camps as part of their Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

Jews had first settled in Prague in the 10th century, near the Prague castle which is just across the Vltava River from Josefov. At the time of the First Crusade in 1096, the first recorded pogrom took place in Prague when Jews were systematically killed by the Crusaders. This violence may have been what prompted the Jews to move to the present Josefov quarter of Prague, near the Old Town, in the 12th century. In the 13th century, the Pope decreed that the Jews should be segregated from the Christians and a wall was built around the Jewish quarter.


St. Nicholas Church, Mala Strana - Statue of Cyrus the Great of Persia delivering the Jews from Bondage

The Jews participated in the revolutionary activity throughout Europe in 1848 which finally brought equal rights for the Jews; the walls of the ghetto were torn down, allowing the Jews to live anywhere in the city of Prague. This caused a number of violent anti-Semitic protests by the Czechs in Prague. With the granting of equal rights to the Jews, there was also pressure put on them to assimilate, instead of maintaining their separate culture. To assimilate or not to assimilate: that was The Jewish Question. In the 19th century, The Jewish Question was widely discussed; even Karl Marx wrote a dissertation on the subject.

When the wealthy Jews moved out of the former ghetto, it soon became a slum as other poor people moved in. By 1890, the former Jewish quarter had a population of 186,000 people, but only 20% of them were Jewish. In 1893, the city decided to completely demolish the whole Josefstadt quarter, leaving only 6 synagogues, the old Jewish cemetery, the Ceremonial Hall and the Old Jewish Town Hall, which are collectively known as the Jewish Museum.


Jerusalem Synagogue

The first Jewish museum in Prague was founded already in 1906 to preserve valuable artefacts from the Prague synagogues that were liquidated during the reconstruction of the Jewish Town at the beginning of the 20th century. The museum was closed after the Nazi occupation in 1939. In 1942 the Nazis established the Central Jewish Museum, to which were brought artefacts from the destroyed Jewish communities; the Nazis approved the project of the Jewish museum staff to set up a central museum in Prague intending the Josefov to be a museum after the genocide of the “Final Solution” had been effected. During the Communist regime, everything was transferred under pressure to the state which like other Soviet Bloc countries was “ant-Zionist”. After the end of the Communist regime in 1989, in 1994 everything was returned to the Jewish Community of Prague. The Jewish Museum has one of the most extensive collections of Judaic art in the world.




Old-New Synagogue

The curiously named Old-New Synagogue is the oldest extant synagogue in Europe dating from the year 1280 with a legend that the foundation stones were brought by angels from the destroyed Temple of Jerusalem. The Old-New Synagogue, which is not part of the Jewish Museum, is one of three Prague synagogues, together with the High and the Jerusalem Synagogues, in which divine services are still held. The Old-New Synagogue has the traditional layout with floor below street level as a sign of humility and the seats arranged around the outside walls facing the Bimah from which the Torah scrolls are read. The angels are meant to protect the synagogue and the mythical creature the Golem is meant to reside in the attic. Seat one which was the seat of the famous Rabbi Loew is left vacant and bad luck is meant to befall anyone who sits in it. The most recent legend attaching to it concerns the Nazi’s pin up boy, Gauletier Reinhard Heydrich, Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia, who swaggeringly laughed at this superstition as he toured the synagogue and made a point of sitting in Rabbi Loews’s seat. The architect of the “Final Solution” was mortally wounded in an attack by Czech patriots Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik in Prague and died on June 4th 1942. In other signs of its antiquity the women and children attended services in 3 ante-rooms with slits into the main hall through which they could hear but not see the proceedings, the walls have biblical inscriptions, which over the ark reads “I am ever mindful of the Lord’s presence.” (Psalm 16:8)


Maisel Synagogue

The Maisel Synagogue was the home of the birth of liberal Judaism in the 19th Century. There is the exhibition about the history of the Jewish settlements of our country from the 9th-10th centuries, till the year 1781. It was built in 1590-1592 by the Mayor of the Jewish Town Mordechai Maisel.

The Klausen Synagogue is located by the exit from the Old Jewish Cemetery. It takes the name from the German word "Klaus" meaning "small building”, it was the name of original three smaller buildings at the place of which was built the present Klausen Synagogue in 1694. Today it houses an interesting collection showcasing Jewish customs and traditions.




Spanish Synagogue

The Spanish Synagogue was built in the later part of the 19th century in the Spanish-Moorish design. This synagogue fell through hard times but its interior in Moorish style (hence the name) is regarded as one of the most beautiful synagogue interiors. It certainly has a luminous jewel box like quality due to the arabesque richness of the interior. It is immediately identifiable as a reform synagogue due to innovations incorporated from the gentile traditions such as an organ and stained glass windows. There is the historical exhibition about the history of the 19th and the 20th century, i.e. about the enlightenment and emancipation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire till 1918, about the First Republic life till 1938, about the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939-1945) and the post-war decades.


Pinkas Synagogue

Entering the Pinkas Synagogue, one sees this beautiful courtyard and early Renaissance entryway. It is the memorial of holocaust at the present with the names of 78,000 victims all over the walls inside and the exhibition of Children’s Drawings from Terezin Concentration Camp, among the Terezin prisoners there were over 10000 children under the age of 15 at the time of imprisonment, of 8000 that were deported to the East about 242 survived the wartime suffering.


Jewish Ceremonial Hall

The Jewish Ceremonial Hall by the Old Cemetery, Hevrah Kaddishah, currently holds a permanent exhibition of this Burial Society founded in Prague in the 16th century by the Rabbi Loew. The building itself was built in 1911-1912 in pseudo-Romanesque style. The renowned Rabbi Loew (the most prominent person buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery - the great religious teacher and scholar Rabbi Liwa ben Bezalel), called also MAHARAL, was buried in this cemetery in 1609. It is the pilgrimage place of millions of Prague visitors and the Prague citizens as well. He was the great scholar, but every child knows him from the legend about Golem - the artificial monster constructed by him.

In Jewish folklore, a golem (גולם) is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter. In Modern Hebrew the word golem literally means "cocoon," but can also mean "fool," "silly," or even "stupid." The name appears to derive from the word gelem (גלם), which means "raw material."Alternatively, some sources indicate that it is a corruption of the Hebrew go′al 'enu (גואלנו) our redeemer or our avenger. The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th century chief rabbi of Prague. Depending on the version of the legend, under Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Jews in Prague were to be either expelled or killed. To protect the Jewish community, the rabbi constructed the Golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava River, and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. As this golem grew, it became increasingly violent, killing gentiles and spreading fear. A different story tells of a golem falling in love, and when rejected, he became the violent monster as seen in most accounts. Some versions have the golem eventually turning on its creator and perhaps even attacking other Jews.


Golem

The Emperor begged Rabbi Loew to destroy Golem, promising to stop the persecution of the Jews. To deactivate Golem, the rabbi rubbed out the first letter of the word "emet" (truth or reality) from the creature's forehead leaving the Hebrew word "met", meaning death. The Emperor understood that the Golem's body, stored in the attic genizah of the Old New Synagogue, would be restored to life again if needed. Accordingly, the body of Rabbi Loews’s Golem still lies in the synagogue's attic, although some versions of the tale have Golem stolen from the genizah and entombed in a graveyard in Prague's Žižkov district, where now the great Žižkovská tower stands. A recent legend is told of a Nazi agent ascending to the synagogue attic during World War II and trying to stab Golem, but perishing instead. At any rate, the attic is not open to the general public. The existence of a golem is sometimes a mixed blessing. Golems are not intelligent: If commanded to perform a task, they will take the instructions perfectly literally.

In some incarnations of the legend, the Maharal's Golem had superhuman powers to aid it in its tasks. These include invisibility, a heated touch, and the ability to use the Maharal's walking stick to summon spirits from the dead. This last power was often crucial, as the golem could summon dead witnesses to testify in Prague courts.





This Old Jewish Cemetery,in the heart of the Jewish Town was opened perhaps in the 15th century (the oldest tomb on the top layer is from the year 1439) and closed to further burials in 1787. There are twelve layers in which people were buried; thousands of graves are underneath with twelve thousands of tombstones on the surface. The picturesque groups of tombstones from various periods result from the fact that older stones were lifted up several times from the lower layers.




Frank Kafka's statue and family grave in the New Jewish Cemetery

By around 1900 the majority of Jews in Prague used Czech and supported the Czech Nationalist movement but German maintained its position as the lingua franca of the Empire leading to the phenomenon known as Prague German Literature with the “Prague Circle” including Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Felix Weltsch, Oskar Baum and many others. Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a major fiction writer of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia (presently the Czech Republic), then part of the Austro – Hungarian Empire. His unique body of writing - much of which is incomplete and which was mainly published posthumously - is considered to be among the most influential in Western literature. Kafka was born in one of the houses on Prague's Old Town Square, right next to the Church of St. Nicholas. A gallery with a permanent exposition on Kafka's life has been opened in this house. His stories include The Metamorphosis (1912) and In the Penal Colony (1914), while his novels are The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927). The term "Kafkaesque" is widely used to describe concepts, situations, and ideas which are reminiscent of Kafka's works, particularly The Trial and The Metamorphosis. Kafka only ever wrote in German and his works were only translated into Czech after his death.



The Theresienstadt "camp-ghetto" existed for three and a half years in the Austro-Hungarian fortress now called Terezin, between November 24, 1941 and May 9, 1945. Neither a “ghetto” as such nor strictly a concentration camp, Theresienstadt served as a “settlement,” an assembly camp, nor a concentration camp, and thus had recognisable features of both ghettos and concentration camps. In its function as a tool of deception, Theresienstadt was a unique facility. Theresienstadt served an important propaganda function for the Nazis who made a notorious propaganda film showing the “happy Jews” resettled there in a “spa town”. The publicly stated purpose for the deportation of the Jews from Germany was their "resettlement to the east," where they would be compelled to perform forced labour. Since it seemed implausible that elderly Jews could be used for forced labour, the Nazis used the Theresienstadt ghetto to hide the nature of the deportations. In Nazi propaganda, Theresienstadt was cynically described as a "spa town" where elderly German Jews could "retire" in safety. The deportations to Theresienstadt were, however, part of the Nazi strategy of deception. The ghetto was in reality a collection centre for deportations to ghettos and killing centres in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.

Despite the terrible living conditions and the constant threat of deportation, Theresienstadt had a highly developed cultural life. Outstanding Jewish artists, mainly from Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany, created drawings and paintings, some of them clandestine depictions of the ghetto's harsh reality. Writers, professors, musicians, and actors gave lectures, concerts, and theatre performances. The ghetto maintained a lending library of 60,000 volumes.


German Railways and the Shoah

Fifteen thousand children passed through Theresienstadt. Although forbidden to do so, they attended school. They painted pictures, wrote poetry, and otherwise tried to maintain a vestige of normalcy. Approximately 90 percent of these children perished in death camps. Of the approximately 140,000 Jews transferred to Theresienstadt, nearly 90,000 were deported to points further east and almost certain death. Roughly 33,000 died in Theresienstadt itself.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/04/auschwitz-birkenau.html


Plaque commemorating Czechoslovakia's support for the State of Israel

Like many of the former great Jewish Centres of Europe which the racist Nazi State attempted to destroy Prague is imbued with the pathos of what has been lost of the unique Czech, Germanic and Jewish culture which thrived at the cusp of the 20th century and never more so in the confident years of Czech independence from 1918 to 1938. This last great peak of Jewish culture in Prague is marked by the names of many poets, writers, philosophers and artists who enriched modern Czech, German and Hebrew literature and culture. But for a thousand years before this was a place which nurtured some of the greatest Rabbis, Scholars, Merchants and artists and was a prominent centre of Jewish culture. What has been lost can never be regained but with the fall of communism there is a new engagement by the Czech people with the great Jewish tradition of Prague. Property and the collections have been given back to the Jewish Community of Prague, thousands come to pay their respects to this heritage and incantations of Shemah Yisroel are still recited by the cantors to congregations mindful of the Talmudic saying of Rabbi Eliezer of Prague “Know before whom you are standing .....”

Perhaps like all of life’s journeys the one of Jewish Prague is best undertaken with hope for the future mindful of the promise in Kaddish, the Jewish prayer recited in mourning;

“in the world which will be renewed”

“בְּעָלְמָא דְהוּא עָתִיד לְאִתְחַדָּתָא”




In researching this article I’ve referred to Arno Parik, “Jewish Prague” published by The Jewish Museum in Prague, 2002, and the following websites;

Jewish Prague

http://www.jewishprague.info

Kosher Prague

http://www.kosherprague.com

Jewish Museum

http://www.jewishmuseum.cz

Terezin Concentration Camp / Theresienstadt

http://www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/showdoc.do?docid=164

Franz Kafka Museum

http://www.kafkamuseum.cz/ShowPage.aspx?tabId=-1


The "backward moving" Hebrew Clock on the Jewish Town Hall