The Czechs in a Nutshell

Still, the post-war era proved difficult for the Czech Jewish community, who was diminished to 10,000 members. That figure grew even smaller when the communists launched a rabid anti-Semitic campaign that culminated with the monster process against Rudolf Slánský and 10 other Bolsheviks of Jewish origin in 1952 (see: Horáková, Milada).

After 1967, when the East Bloc countries broke their diplomatic relations with Israel, the Czechoslovak secret police launched Operace Pavouk (Operation Spider) — a campaign to register and, if needed, harass every citizen of Jewish origin. The goal was obvious — either to silence Jews with fear, or press them into emigration. This strategy proved sadly successful. When the Bolsheviks were finally swept from power, the once flourishing Czech Jewish community had dwindled to a group of 1.500 scared and grey-haired people.

Photo © Jaroslav Fišer

In the aftermath of the Velvet Revolution, support, both moral and financial, flooded in to help the Czech Jews. After nearly a decade without a formal leader, Karol Ephraim Sidon, a respected writer and Charter 77 signatory, was named Chief Rabbi of the Czech Republic in 1992. Later, a Yeshiva — a Jewish school — and a Jewish home for the elderly were also established in Prague. Another important step has been taken by Czech authorities, who have returned the Jewish communities most of their pre-war property. Thus, hundreds of buildings, acres of land and religious objects, including Prague’s world-famous Jewish Museum, are securing their rightful owners a financial base, but also the economic responsibility for countless neglected premises.

Yet there has so far not been any Jewish revival in the Czech Republic — for at least two reasons. First, the strong degree of secularisation (see: Religion) also affects the 8,000 — 10,000 Czechs estimated to be of Jewish origin. They simply don’t consider this to be an important issue. And if they do, but happen to live outside Prague, Brno, Karlovy Vary or Plzeň, there is no Jewish community that can receive them.

And second, due to the Czech Jews’ extensive assimilation, there are many mixed marriages. When their children have taken interest in their origin, they have not always been met with open arms by Prague’s Jewish community, which, in religious matters, has been strongly influenced by conservatives hailing from the Mukachevo area of pre-war Czechoslovakia’s most eastern corner (see: Ukrainians). This goes, of course, twice if it’s a Czech goy interested in converting to Judaism.

While American Jews living in Prague in the early 1990s established Bejt (The House), open to followers of both liberal and conservative Judaism, there was a growing dissatisfaction in the city’s Czech-Jewish community with the hard-line approach of Rabbi Sidon and his backers. In the summer of 2004, the subdued grumbling burst out into an open rebellion. The liberals forced Rabbi Sidon to step down as religious head of the Prague community (but he is still Czech Chief Rabbi), which in its turn threw the entire community into a bitter quarrel about the future course.

Luckily, open demonstrations of anti-Semitism appear to be a marginal problem in the Czech Republic (although a psychologist, Petr Bakalář, experienced a commercial success when he published in 2003 a book where racist views were masked as a scientific report), propably because the country’s repulsive skinheads have so far focused their aggression towards members of the Roma minority. The only slightly controversial issue is a lingering debate about the Jews’ influence on Czech culture.

While some intellectuals, such as the playwright Pavel Kohout, claim that modern Czech culture is a product of three mixed elements — the Slavonic Czech, the German-Bohemian and the Jewish (see: Kafka, Franz), several Czech politicians, most notably President Václav Klaus, maintain that multiculturalism is an empty and meaningless term.

Kafka, Franz

Except for beer and ex-president Václav Havel, there is probably nothing a foreigner associates more strongly with Prague and subsequently also the Czech Republic than the writer Franz Kafka. Thousands of tourists walk about in the Czech capital dressed in T-shirts with Kafka’s portrait on their chests, they sip coffee in the Franz Kafka Café or visit the English-speaking Franz Kafka Theatre. Some of them have even read one of the novels this modern tourist attraction wrote.