Late night shopping for lunch supplies and early morning departure meant we didn't manage to find everything we needed for our picnic in Slovakia. Among other things we were short 60 cups. How do you express the need to purchase supplies to a Hungarian bus driver without distracting him from his task? Two words: Google Translate! After much deliberations, we decided the most succinct English statement to translate would be along the lines of "when we go to toilets, we need plastic cups." We wrote it on a piece of paper, and Shalmi our Israeli guide, and former director of Holocaust education at Yad Vashem, showed it to the driver. His response: "He's smiling... he's laughing... he's reaching into his pocket..." Whatever he did, we couldn't respond anyway. We arrived at a gas station in Slovakia for a break, where the cashier agreed to sell me 60 plastic cups for a whopping 6 Euro, when the twix bars cost about 60 Euro cents. When we returned to the bus, the driver went up to a student, handed her a stack of plastic cups and said "toilet?" A day of endless possibilities was in store.
Pictures from Prague
Aside from this adventure, Shalmi shared some insight with us into Jewish life in the area. Slovakia was the border of Hasidism and assimilation. Eastward were the religious communities of Hasidic and Lithuanian dynasties, and westward were the emancipated secular Jews. He couldn't really say why neither practice crossed Moravia, but he noted the insular Jewish tendencies in Eastern Europe. As an example, he discussed wine. Wine production in Jewish law is highly controlled, probably in order to regulate the social element of wine drinking. Kosher wine cannot be touched by non-Jews. In Prague, the Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew, the chief Rabbi, is told to have canceled a wedding when he realized that a non-Jew was just pouring his wine. Meanwhile, Rabbi Moshe Iserless, one of the leading minds in Poland, was more lenient about wine laws, not because he didn't agree with them, but because Polish Jews didn't associate with non-Jews.
As we passed by wind turbines, Shalmi introduced the Maharal's role in Prague, saying he arrived in his 60's, and didn't become Chief Rabbi until his 90's, because the Jewish community there was liberal and didn't want such a stringent authority, especially one who was independently wealthy. Rabbi Loew, however, was an extraordinary pedagogue, who brought about a revised approach to study, by which students who were learning Talmud and discussions about the law before studying the Hebrew Bible, and the foundations of these topics, would now do so in order. He found that beforehand, students could recite pages of disputes and opinions, but without critically analyzing what they just read.
As we entered the Czech Republic (there was no need to stop as we entered Slovakia, or the Czech Republic, so our passports show no confirmation of our ever even being in these countries), Shalmi shared the famous story of the Golem. Apparently, the fascination about this character stems from a story that's relatively recent. According to Shalmi, the story most people know was written by Yehudah Rosenberg, from Edmonton, in 1909. Why did he pick Prague for such a story? Because Prague was recovering from a period of Pogroms and blood libels. The city could use a hero.
In Shalmi's abridged account of the narrative, the scene is set on Passover. A family is sitting around a Seder table when they hear a noise from outside. They find a sack stained with blood, and inside a child they recognize as not from their community. Fearing a pogrom under accusations of a blood libel (using the blood of Christian children to make matzah), the community goes to its Rabbi, the Maharal, for help. He gathers his son and another student, and together they gather at the banks of the Vltava River. There they create a dummy out of mud, circle it seven times while reciting a tractate from the Talmud that discusses the golem, or lifeless being. Afterward, the Maharal scratches three Hebrew letters on the forehead of the figure that spell אמת, truth. The Golem rises, a living creature but incapable of speech. The Maharal orders it to chase out the instigators of the Pogrom.
So the Jews were saved, but what do you do with such a thing? The Maharal turned the Golem into a servant for the community. He made sure to inform his wife that the Golem was for everyone, and not for any one person. Of course, there was this time that the Maharal's wife went out shopping for Passover, and told the Golem to collect barrels of water from the well to bring back in the house. As you can expect, when she came back, Fantasia happened and the house was flooded, because the Golem wasn't told to stop. A more interesting and less sexist story, though, concerns the Maharal on a Friday night. People are praying in the Altneu Shul for Shabbat, when someone bursts in shouting that the Golem had gone berserk. The Maharal suddenly remembered he had forgotten to take off the first letter from the Golem's forehead, as he always does on Shabbat. אמת without א spells מת, or dead. The Maharal chased down the Golem and took care of him. As a result, he missed the first psalm recited on Shabbat, in the middle of Kabbalat Shabbat. There is a custom or minhag at the Altneu Shul that the congregation recites one of the psalms twice in a row. (This is really fascinating, because now you either assume the story of the Golem is older than 1909 Edmonton OR the story attempts to match up a pre-existing tradition. There is of course a third option that this custom is relatively young.) The Maharal, being as wise as he is, decides he can no longer handle such a responsibility. Walking in reverse7 times around the Golem, he recites the same tractate, and the Golem slowly disintegrates into dirt. The remains of the figure are said to be stores in the attic of the Altneu Shul, under threat of death to those who enter. There are rumors that at one time two Nazis climbed up to the attic, and died.
Sorry, there's still more to share before actually entering Prague. How about some general Jewish history? 1897, around the same time as the Dreyfus Affair, a different event, known as the Hilsner Affair, took place in Bohemia. A Jew was accused of rape and slaughter of a young girl. Hilsner was taken to trial and found guilty, with a sentence of life in prison. After the trial, some people thought the trial was a sham, so they approached an accomplished professor of law at the Prague University, named Thomas Masaryk. The professor investigated, and published an article with his conclusion that the trial was not valid. A retrial followed where Hilsner was again found guilty, but this time a lesser sentence of 10 years was issued. Again Masaryk demanded a retrial. Unfortunately, the increased participation of a non-Jew in a Jewish affair brought about negative attitudes from the public. Masaryk's students left his classes, and he was forced to retire from university. Years later, in 1914, Masaryk recovered his popularity when he visited the United States to improve public relations and promote a Czech state (until this point Bohemia was under leadership of the Austrian Emperor Hapsburg). Interestingly, Masaryk was very successful in the Jewish America communities because of his involvement in the Hilsner affair. Specifically the Jews in Pittsburgh were helpful in financing him. As a consequence of these meetings, as well as the World War, Bohemia was perhaps the biggest winner because they got their own independent country, Czechoslovakia. Masaryk became the first president and threatened to resign unless the constitution included a clause promoting equality among the Jewish people. As I wrote earlier, the Golem story was written because Prague was the site of lots of anti-Semitism. Masaryk helped prevent further violence, and even visited Tel Aviv in the 1920's. From 1919, Czechoslovakia is the shining light of Europe; a liberal democracy surrounded by bitter losers of a war and rising fascism. Furthermore, because Czech's and Slovaks had somewhat separate identities that now were tied nationally, the only real Czechoslovakians were...you guessed it... the Jews. Why? They tried to assimilate at first into German culture, but were rejected by the Germans, and then rejected by the Czech because of their German influences. In order to further integrate, these Bohemian Jews decided to apply themselves culturally. They became accomplished writers, poets, composers and musicians. When the Czech Jews were rounded up and sent to the Terezin Ghetto, this cultural continuity distinguished them from other Jewish ghettos. While sitting and waiting for freedom, they played instruments, performed plays, painted and wrote. Of the 120,000 Jews in Bohemia and Moravia, about 35,000 survived. When the Russians took over after the War, a bunch went to Israel, but a bunch also joined the Communists. At one point, the secretary of the Communist party was Jewish. So of course, when that regime fell, the Jews were again scapegoated. Following the Velvet Revolution, you would assume that there wouldn't be any Jews left. Slowly, families with Jewish backgrounds came out of the closet, after hiding their identities and intermarrying throughout the century.
Today, there might be 3,000 Jews left in the Czech Republic, but a much larger number with an affinity to Judaism. Society, as we're told is filled with half Jews, quarter Jews, sympathizers, to the point of filling Synagogues on High Holidays. There is a fascination and lack of information concerning Judaism in general public. Recently, someone put up posters with a Hannukiah around Prague, with a tag line "if you know what this is, come and celebrate with us at this address." The ads brought thousands.
Oy, what a mouthful. This about covered the 6-7 hours bus ride, with a break outside of Bratislava, Slovakia for lunch. Now let's actually talk about the visit to Prague!
No comments:
Post a Comment