Dobrý den! We are Keylee Ray and Deb Thomas. We are now on day five of our MayX to Prague and we have learned and seen a lot!

Today, we began the morning with a guest lecture from Dr. Robert Řehák, PhD going over some basic Czech history centered around the Jewish community in the Czech Republic. We learned that, today, the Czech Republic is a primarily Atheist country, with less than 40% of the population claiming to be a believer in religion. The number of religious people in the nation has been drastically decreasing over the past thirty years, losing about a million people every ten years. However, in the country’s history, there have been rich religious traditions, especially the Jewish community.

The first recorded evidence of Jews in Prague was from a Spanish merchant in 970 CE. Throughout their tumultuous history, Czech Jews have been subject to many forms of persecution and isolation. For a long time, they lived in a separate area of the city, the ghetto, and even wore distinctive clothing for a time to set them apart. In 1254, King Přemysl Ottokar II decreed all Jews property of the king. While through our modern day lens, this sounds like slavery, it provided protection for the Jewish people and brought a halt to many violent attacks on Jewish people. Kings succeeding Ottokar II kept this decree in place and the Jews continued to live under the protection of the monarchy.

During the lecture, we also learned a few Jewish legends. The most prominent legend is that of Rabbi Loew and his “artificial man.” The story goes that Rabbi Loew was given a vision in one of his dreams saying that he “should create a man.” After this vision, Rabbi Loew and two of his attendants gathered clay and formed the figure of a large man. They walked around the figure seven times chanting secret combinations of the elements and, on the seventh time, the creature awoke and came to life. The creature was named Golem and served the Jewish community under the direction of Rabbi Loew.

After the lecture, Dr. Řehák led us on a tour of the Jewish Quarter. This used to be the location of the ghetto, but the walls have since come down and the area has been reconstructed. A few locations remain from the original community and we saw many of them today. First, we explored Maisel Synagogue, built by Mordecai Maisel who was a wealthy member of the community. Maisel also built the hospital in the area as well as a few schools.

Next we explored Pinkas Synagogue, which now serves as a memorial to the 80,000 Czech and Moravian Jews that were killed during the Holocaust. The name of each victim is immortalized on the walls of the synagogue. Next to the synagogue is the Old Jewish cemetery which houses the remains of an estimated 12,000 Jews dating back to 1439. The tombstones are very close together because there was very little space in the ghetto, leaving an even smaller area for families to bury their dead. As a result, people were buried on top of other remains in up to ten layers in some places.

The last stop on our tour was the Old New Synagogue, thus named because there was an old synagogue built a little ways down the road from the current location, and a new synagogue was built that encompassed the old. The synagogue dates back to 1270 and has suffered many fires and even flooded in the 1700s, but still stands today as the spiritual heart of the Jewish quarter.

It was a beautiful day in Prague and we learned so much about the Jewish community and tradition through the many historical sites and the insightful information from our guide Dr. Řehák. We had a lot of opportunity to reflect on Czech history and how religion and surrounding community factors into identity. We are excited to continue this reflection in the days ahead! Until next time, ahoj!