NY-Prague/Budapest-DC

We began our day early in the Jewish Quarter with a visit to the Klausen, Old-New and then the Spanish Synagogues. Although all three were within blocks of each other, they were very different and very interesting. Next, we were off on an adventure to see the school where Lee attended classes in the spring off 2020 during his college semester abroad in Prague. Our next stop was the famous Kafka monument and tribute … one of a kind. Our adventure continued when we went for a tour of Pilsner Beer.

Jews were in this area from the 9th and 10th century and by the 12th century there were large Jewish settlements in the royal areas. In the 13th century the Old-New Synagogue built, but by the 14th and 15th century Jews were expelled from Morovia and Bohemia for the first time. Fast forward to 1867 when the Medieval Jewish ghetto was the hub of Jewish life with hundred of homes. Jews were considered equal in the Community in the Old Town until the ghetto became rundown and then in 1897 it was destroyed and rebuilt into new streets and neo-Baroque buildings. Most of previous quarter had been eliminated in the process including 3 Synagogues and 10 other Houses of Worship. What remained was only the 6 Synagogues we visited and the Jewish Town Hall. In the writings of Kafka, he talks about walking through this changing neighborhood mostly half built in his time, but finally at a time when persecution had changed seemingly forever against Jews. Who knew what was about to happen in the 1930’s with Nazi control and then later communist control until 1989!

The Jewish Townhall is the center of the Jewish self-government of the Jewish Community of Prague and the seat of the Chief Rabbinate of Prague supporting and providing education for the youth of Prague.
In our visit to the Klausen Synagogue we saw artifacts of the Jewish Community and history of Jews in the region. A very interesting exhibit on The Golden Age of the Jews of al-Andalus' is here (I have 9 pages of notes but too much to post here, call if your interested) about the daily life of Jews in medieval Europe. Between the 10th and 13th centuries, the Iberian Peninsula experienced an exceptional growth in culture and economic prosperity and religious tolerance. This led to the philosophical and poetic works by Jewish authors we still read and admire (such as Shlomo in Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi, and Maimonides).

The exhibit traces the Jews on the Iberian Peninsula from the Almohads (12th century) with valuable items from the Cairo Geniza, a collection of 400,000 documents about life of medieval Jewish communities (Geniza means treasury, and is a place for storing sacred Jewish texts that can no longer be read, because they are too old or have fallen out of use). The Geniza of Cairo Synagogues included items of everyday life: shopping lists, marriage contracts, divorce deeds, children's school exercises, Arabic stories, Muslim philosophy, medical books, magical amulets, business letters, and accounts from across the Islamic world..

Maimonides (1138-1204), is the most important figure of Andalusi and medieval Judaism, where he learned the principles of Judaism from his father, Maimon, judge of the Jews of Cordoba. After the Almohad invasion, the family moved to Fez (Morocco). The poetry of the Jews of al-Andalus is among the richest in the history of Hebrew culture in particular and of Iberian culture in general. The Hebrew language and its poetry had always had religious associations. However, the Jews of al-Andalus used Arabic poetry techniques making Hebrew an important part of the culture. In al-Andalus, Hebrew was reserved for poetry, while prose was written in Judeo-Arabic.

The Old-New Synagogue Gothic medieval built in 1270 is the centerpiece of the Jewish Community and other additions until 1732 after several fires and floods. According to many accounts, the stone of the Temple in Jerusalem were brought here by angels and excavated here and were to be the base of this Synagogue until the time when a 3rd Temple is built in Jerusalem. The name OldNew or alt-neu-schul (German and Yiddish) means “on-condition” of the 3rd Temple. It suffered from pogroms in the14th and 15th centuries and as a refuse for Jews that were caught and sometimes killed there. Ironically it survived the Nazi era because this was to be the museum of the “Extinct Jewish Race”. The money box at the entrance, used to collect “special” taxes from Jews, was from the 17th century. Interestingly, the “awkward” ceiling has 5 ribbed vaulting because although the architects of the time were experts at building 4 ribbed ceilings, there was concern that it looked like a cross.

The Golem- 15th century Rabbi Lev came from the Vitava river clay, the parchment inserted in the Golem had the name of God and gave it its power. Many stories exist regarding the Golem and all are interesting. where the Golem when the prayer was not removed on Shabbat and the Golem created havoc and had to be turned back to clay and stored in the attic for protection. This artificial being of miracles is about protecting Karel Capek wrote R.U.R. about the Golem and created a Robot. The Golem legend is widely considered the inspiration for Frankenstein.Read more