Czech Jewish Life
Prague has one of the oldest recorded histories of Jews in Central Europe, first mentioned by Ibrahim ibn Yaqub in 965. Since then, the community has never ceased to exist despite pogroms, expulsions, the Holocaust, and persecution by the Communist regime.
Beginning in the 12th century, Prague became a great center of Jewish learning. It eventually became the home of celebrated Talmudists and great rabbinic scholars such as the famous Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, known as the Maharal of Prague. He was the most important Talmudist and Kabbalist of his time.
Before World War II, there were at least 350 synagogues in what is today the Czech Republic. According to the 1930 census, there were 117,551 Jews living there.
View of the Prague Old New Synagogue interior with the "Jewish Flag" at left.
On Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, the Nazis destroyed 50 synagogues along with the majority of their contents in the Sudetenland border region. This area had been turned over to Hitler just five weeks before under the terms of the Munich Pact. Under Nazi occupation of the remainder of what is today the Czech Republic, which began on March 15, 1939 and lasted until the end of the war, the remaining 300 synagogues were abandoned.
Konstantin Von Neurath
The Jewish Museum of Prague was established in 1906 and is one of the oldest Jewish Museums in Europe. Existing in various forms during the Nazi occupation and under the Communist regime, it housed and supported cataloguing of 1800 rescued Torah scrolls (including ours) and thousands and Jewish religious artifacts from destroyed and abandoned synagogues. |
