Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
JEWISH SETTLEMENT IN PRAGUE
Jews probably settled in Prague as early as the tenth century and, initially at least, are
thought to have settled on both sides of the river. In 1096, at the time of the first crusade,
the first recorded pogrom took place, an event that may have hastened the formation of a
closely knit “Jewish town” within Staré Město during the twelfth century. It wasn't until
much later that Jews were actually herded into a
walled ghetto
(and several centuries be-
fore the word “ghetto” was actually first coined in Venice), sealed off from the rest of the
town and subjected to a curfew. Jews were also subject to laws restricting their choice of
profession to moneylending and the rag trade; in addition, some form of visible identifica-
tion,acaporbadge(andeven,atonetime,aruff),remainedamoreorlessconstantfeature
of Jewish life until the Enlightenment.
STATUTA JUDAEORUM
In 1262, Přemysl King Otakar II issued a
Statuta Judaeorum
, which granted the Jews
their own religious and civil self-administration. In effect, however, the Jews were little
more than the personal property of the king, and though Otakar himself appears to have
been genuine in his motives, later rulers used the
Statuta
as a form of blackmail, extorting
money whenever they saw fit. In 1389, during one of the worst
pogroms
, three thousannd
Jews were massacred over Easter, some while sheltering in the Staronová synagoga (Old-
NewSynagogue)-aneventcommemoratedeveryyearthereafteronYomKippur.In1541,
a fire ripped through Hradčany and Malá Strana and a Jew was tortured into “confessing”
thecrime.TheBohemianEstatesimmediatelypersuadedEmperorFerdinandIto
expelthe
Jews
from Prague. In the end, however, a small number of families were allowed to re-
main.
GOLDEN AGE
By contrast, the reign of Rudolf II (1576-1612) was a time of economic and cultural
prosperityforthecommunity,whichisthoughttohavenumbereduptotenthousand,mak-
ing it by far the largest Jewish community in the Diaspora. The Jewish mayor,
Mordecai
Maisel
, Rudolf's minister of finance, became one of the richest men in Bohemia and a
symbol of success for an entire generation; his money bought and built the Jewish quarter
a town hall, a bath house, pavements and several synagogues. This was the “golden age”
of the ghetto: the time of
Rabbi Löw
, the severe and conservative chief rabbi of Prague,
who is now best known as the legendary creator of the Jewish Frankenstein's monster, or
“golem”
- though, in fact, the story of Rabbi Löw and the golem first appeared only in the
nineteenth century.
Amid the violence of the Thirty Years' War, the Jews enjoyed an unusual degree of pro-
tection from the emperor, who was heavily dependent on their financial acumen. In
1648
,
Prague's Jews, along with the city's students, repaid their imperial bosses by repelling the
