The Jews of Bohemia, Later Called Czechoslovakia

 Nadene Goldfoot                                        

Bohemia doesn't exist today.  Once it was a country.    Today, Bohemians are people with an unconventional lifestyle, originally practiced by 19th–20th century European and American artists and writers. 

Bohemia was a duchy of Great Moravia, later an independent principality, a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently a part of the Habsburg monarchy and the Austrian Empire. After World War I and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state, the whole of Bohemia became a part of Czechoslovakia, defying claims of the German-speaking inhabitants that regions with German-speaking majority should be included in the Republic of German-Austria. Between 1938 and 1945, these border regions were joined to Nazi Germany as the Sudetenland.

                Prague's Old Town Square:  Prague is a political, cultural, and economic hub of central Europe, with a rich history  and Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architectures. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and residence of several Holy Roman Emperors, most notably Charles IV (r. 1346–1378).

Jews are known to have lived in Bohemia since the 10th century.  Prague was probably the oldest settlement.  They engaged in trade. They were forced to live in ghettos.  Ghettos had started in 1517 in Venice, but the idea of the segregation of the Jews was implicit in earlier church legislation and goes back to the Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215.  

                   King Ottokar II of Bohemia Ottokar was the second son of King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia (reigned 1230–1253). Through his mother, Kunigunde, daughter of Philip of Swabia, he was related to the Holy Roman Emperors of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, which became extinct in the male line upon the execution of King Conradin of Sicily in 1268.

During the period of Crusaders, from 1096 onward, the Jews suffered severe persecutions and many were forcibly baptized. Those who reverted to Judaism and attempted to leave were robbed on their departure (1098). Their position improved by the 13th century under Ottokar II, but deteriorated by the 14th century under Charles IV.  A number of decrees directed against the Jews and their  economic position were issued during the 15th and 16th centuries.

There are probably descendants of those persecuted and baptized Jews living in Bohemian centers elsewhere, like in North Dakota in pioneer days.  With DNA testing today, it wouldn't even show up as we don't know the haplogroups of the Bohemian Jews, but a common grouping might take place. 

In 1512, Gershon ben Solomon Cohen established a Hebrew printing shop in Prague, however, from 1562, all Hebrew books were subject to censorship. 

 There was a large and self-contained Jewish quarter (Judenstadt).  its ancient synagogues many of which still stand, its world-renowed scholars, and its Hebrew printing-press, its highly-developed autonomous institution, its craft-guilds, etc. all in Prague.   

Entrance of Bohdan Khmelnytsky to Kyiv, Mykola Ivasyuk

Khmelnytsky was a Ukrainian military commander and Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, which was then under the suzerainty of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates (1648–1654) that resulted in the creation of an independent Ukrainian Cossack state.

 During the uprising the Cossacks led a massacre of thousands of Jewish people during 1648–1649 as one of the more traumatic events in the history of the Jews in Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism. 

  Jews were expelled  on several occasions, even from Prague, by now one of the greatest European Jewish centers.  many Jews fled to Czechoslovakia from Eastern Europe at the time of the the Chmielnicki pogroms of 1648.  Ghetto regulations continued to be enforced and even the number of marriages was restricted by law. 

The Jews, exiled from 1745 to 1748, were only allowed to return after promising to pay exorbitant taxes.  By 1848, the Jewes of Prague were granted full equality, and 4 years later, the ghetto was abolished.  

Maria Theresa, German Maria Theresia, (born May 13, 1717, Vienna—died November 29, 1780, Vienna), archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and Bohemia (1740–80), wife and empress of the Holy Roman emperor Francis I (reigned 1745–65), and mother of the Holy Roman emperor Joseph II (reigned 1765–90). 

Jews taking snuff in Prague, painting by Mírohorský, 1885

Maria Theresa decreed in 1744 a general expulsion of he Jews which was enforced to some extent the next year.  from 1781 to 1919, the history of the Jews merged with that of Austria.  

After WWI, Jews had full rights of citizens.  Czechoslovak republic was the 1st country to recognize Jewish nationality and numbered 357,000 in 1935.  

Repeating again, the 1989 revolution led to full freedom for the Jewish community of 12,000 in 1990.  As of 2021, there were approximately 2,300 Jews living in the Czech Republic.

Resource:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/bohemia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemia

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Czech_lands

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-Theresa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohdan_Khmelnytsky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmelnytsky_Uprising

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottokar_II_of_Bohemia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague

https://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-from-the-teeth-of-14th-century-ashkenazi-jews-in-germany-already-included-genetic-variations-common-in-modern-jews-194780

Madeline Albright, Former US Secretary of State and Czechoslovakian Jews

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

"Madeline Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelová in 1937 in the Smíchov district of Prague, Czechoslovakia^] She is the daughter of Josef Korbel, a Czech diplomat, and Anna Korbel (née Spieglová). At the time of her birth, Czechoslovakia had been independent for less than 20 years, having gained independence from Austria-Hungary after World War I. Her father was a supporter of the early Czech democrats, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Beneš. Marie Jana had a younger sister Katherine and a younger brother John (these versions of their names are Anglicized).                       

When Marie Jana was born, her father was serving as a press-attaché at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade. The signing of the Munich Agreement in September 1938, and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia by Adolf Hitler's troops forced the family into exile because of their links with Beneš", according to the press.  I'd say that it was because they were Jewish.  Benes was  president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938 and again from 1945 to 1948. He also led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile 1939 to 1945, during World War II.                                   

    

Albright with Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and Yasser Arafat at the Wye River Memorandum, 1998

                                              

"In 1941, Josef and Anna converted from Judaism to Catholicism. Marie Jana and her siblings were raised in the Roman Catholic faith. In 1997, Albright said her parents never told her or her two siblings about their Jewish ancestry and heritage."  Her grandparents had died in the Holocaust.  Many people find that hard to believe. No one criticizes Albright and her parents, refugees twice-over (first from Nazism, then from Communism), for how they chose to put their lives back together. But there is lively debate over Albright’s insistence that her Jewish roots are “a major surprise.”                                        

Doubters point, first, to circumstantial evidence. How could someone as intelligent and well-versed in European history as Albright (her Ph.D. work focused on contemporary Central European politics) not have deduced her family’s ancestry from what we know she knew?

I'd think that after all that she could have found out in February 1997, she would react very much, being afraid to admit that she was born Jewish.  Here she was, living her conscious life as a Catholic, and just couldn't conceive of anything else.  She could not admit it more than she did;  that she hadn't known.                                              

"What's interesting is how other people have reacted, say some people in New Mexico, who after taking DNA tests, have found they were related to Jews who had escaped the Spanish Inquisition of 1492.  Then in 2001, after watching a program on genealogy, Sanchez sent for a DNA kit that could help track a person’s background through genetic footprinting. He soon got a call from Bennett Greenspan, owner of the Houston-based testing company, FTDNA.  “He said, ‘Did you know you were Jewish?’ ” Sanchez, 53, recalled. “He told me I was a Cohanim, a member of the priestly class descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses.”                                                

For Crypto-Jews of New Mexico, art is a window into secret life

A recent genetic survey in the Journal of Human Genetics revealed new DNA evidence that Spanish Americans of the Southwest likely had Jews in their family trees

With the revelation that Sanchez was almost certainly one of New Mexico’s hidden or crypto-Jews, his family traditions made sense to him."  Sanchez had also been raised Catholic, and his family had probably been Catholic since 1493.  He did something about it.  In his case, he investigated and discovered he was part of a group referred to as Crypto Jews.  He investigated his roots.  "We always thought there was a Jewish background in our family, but we didn’t know for sure,” he said. “When I found out, it was like coming home for me.

                                                 

With NATO officers during NATO Ceremony of Accession of New Members, 1999

Her ancestry could have gone back as far as the 10th century to Bohemia.  Prague was probably the oldest settlement.  During the Crusading Period from 1096 onward, they suffered severe persecutions and many were forcibly baptized.  By the 13th century, Jews positions had improved, but only for one century.  By the 14th under Charles IV, it deteriorated.  Decrees were written up against Jews through the 15th and 16th centuries and then Jews were expelled many times, even from Prague.                                      

Madeleine Albright at the World Economic Forum

Many Jews then fled to Czechoslovakia from Eastern Europe at the time of the Chmielnicki pogroms of 1648, but ghetto regulations continued to be enforced and even the number of marriages was restricted by law.  Maria Theresa decreed in 1744 a general expulsion of the Jews which was enforced to some extent the next year.

From 1781 to 1919, the history of the Jews merged with that of Austria.  After WWI, Jews enjoyed full rights under the Czechoslovak republic which was the 1st country  to recognize Jewish nationality.  The Jewish community numbered 357,000 in 1935, the time when Nazis were becoming powerful in Germany. It included:   

RUTHENIA-part of Hungary--105,000 Jews

SLOVAKIA- 150,000

BOHEMIA, and MORAVIA-  80,000

GERMANY-  40,000 Jewish refugees

Madeline was born in 1937.  

After the German occupation in March 1939, the Jews suffered severely:  there was large-scale emigration and those remaining behind were systematically annihilated during 1942-1945 in the gas chambers or shot in mass groups.  42,000 remained alive at the end of WWII, and of these, 24,000 emigrated to Israel from 1945 to 1953.  It was in 1941 that the family converted to Catholicism.  She was 4 years old then.  

Jews were prominent in the post-war regime, but the SLANSKY trial of 1952 had an anti-Semitic element and so the number of leading Jews dwindled.  The American Joint Distribution Committee was banned in 1950 and the Zionist Organization closed in 1951.  By 1953, a Council of Jewish Communities was set up:  all communal activities had to conform with the government requirements.  A more liberal attitude to Jews was manifested by the Dubcek regime in 1968 but the Russian invasion of that year brought anti-Semitic undertones and many Jews left the country. The Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia (117,551 according to the 1930 census) was virtually annihilated. Many Jews emigrated after 1939; approximately 78,000 were killed. By 1945, some 14,000 Jews remained alive in the Czech lands. 

                                                                 

Living quarters in Theresienstadt

Living quarters in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, between 1941 and 1945.  (Horrible, but better than the death camps) 

• YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York

Approximately 144,000 Jews were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Theresienstadt was a hybrid concentration camp and ghetto established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town Terezín, located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

• Theresienstadt served as a holding pen for Jews in the above-mentioned groups. It was expected that that poor conditions there would hasten the deaths of many deportees, until the SS and police could deport the survivors to killing centers in the East.

The 1989 revolution led to full freedom for the Jewish community.  By 1990, the Jewish population of Czechoslovakia was 12,000.  Against the wishes of many of its 15 million citizens, Czechoslovakia in January 1993,  split into two countries: Slovakia and the Czech Republic.                               

I just saw Madeline Albright at the funeral of Colin Powell (April 5, 1937-October 18, 2021)  on TV's ABC this morning.  Her speech was magnificent, especially the ending.  https://www.wmtw.com/article/colin-powell-funeral-service/38171982#.  His funeral had to be postponed for 2 weeks and 4 days.  He died of COVID after complications.  He had been fully vaccinated.  Our immune system can be compromised.   

Update:  Madeline's husband, Joseph Albright,  attended Williams College. He met Madeleine Jana Korbel when she spent a summer working at the Denver Post. They married in 1959 after Madeleine's graduation from Wellesley College. They had three children: twin girls, Anne and Alice (born 1961), and youngest daughter Katie. The couple divorced in 1982. He remarried.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Korbel  father of Madeline; most interesting.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Bene%C5%A1

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/18/politics/colin-powell-dies/index.html

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1997/02/did-she-know.html

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-dec-05-na-heritage5-story.html

Book: DNA & Genealogy by Colleen Fitzpatrick & Andrew Yeiser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A1nsk%C3%BD_trial

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Today is the day we have been remembering the Holocaust when about 6 million Jews were killed on purpose because they were Jews.  Those responsible for wanting to wipe out a people, whether they thought we were a race or a religion or both were the German National Socialist (NAZI) regime led by Adolf Hitler.  

Extermination of the Jews was an essential part of the gospel of Nazism and inherent in the core of its creed.  The Aryan decree issued on April 11, 1933 happened a year before I was born, so it's something that could have involved me.  This decree defined non-Aryan's as any person having a non-Aryan, particularly Jewish parent or grandparent.  My family were definitely non-Aryans:  Jews.

By September 15, 1935, when I was 1 year old, the NUREMBERG  LAWS were adopted byi the Reichstag.  These were racial laws.  They coordinated and regularized Nazi anti-Jewish action.  They were reinforced by persecutory decrees, economic and social discrimination, and incarceration in CONCENTRATION CAMPS without legal proceedings or protection.  

My uncle by marriage, Werner Oster, whose father had been a German soldier in WWI, born in Westerburg, Hildesheim, Niedersachsen, Germany in October 1916,  was about 22 when he was thrown in one during 1938-39 which was the Dachau Concentration Camp before they became gas chambers for walking a cow down a path to the slaughter house.  His father was a sausage-maker.  His family took all their money to get him out of the country and he just made it by March 15, 1939 and on March 22 getting his passport to use  on the SS Washington before Jews were not allowed to leave.  

The German occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945) began with the German annexation of Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the March 1939 invasion of the Czech lands and creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended  to all parts of the former Czechoslovakia.

Werner made it to New York and then our great Uncle Max, who didn't know him, became someone that took all the responsibility of his being in the states and spoke for him, his sponsor.  He got him a job with my father, a newbie in his new business of being a wholesale butcher.  Werner married my father's sister Ann and tried to get his parents and 16 year old red-headed sister out, but it was too late. He was one of the last to get out.  Later on this affected Werner terribly who carried a guilt complex for being a survivor of the Holocaust.  All were affected in some way.  

Although the war began with Nazi Germany's attack on Poland in September 1939, the United States did not enter the war until after the Japanese bombed the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.

My paternal grandparents came from Telsiai, Lithuania.  Kovno, Kaunas, Lithuania was close by.  Before WWII, there were about 25,000 Jews in Kovno which was 25% of their total population.  In 1941, they were herded into a ghetto by the Nazis and 10,000 killed in a single day on October 28, 1941.  The survivors were joined by 7,000 deportees from Germany and Lithuania but nearly all were exterminated by 1944.  The Jewish population in Kovno in 1988 was 5,500.  Why they were there and not in Israel is beyond my comprehension except that maybe they were too old and too poor to make the move.  It was a miracle that our grandparents had made the move in the early 1900s to Oregon.  

Update: 4/8/2021 11:20pm

Resource

Family history

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia                  

Paths Jews Followed to Prague

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

The Arch of Titus in Rome
Forcing Jewish slaves to carry the loot Romans took out of the Temple
before burning it down

70 CE was  a momentous date for Jews.  That's when the Romans, who had been occupying Jerusalem since 40 BCE, decided to burn the city along with the Jewish 2nd Temple and turn it into a Roman Temple site.  It had been that "in 37 BCE, Herod, a son-in-law of Hyrcanus II, was appointed King of Judea by the Romans." Judah had been without their own kingly dynasty since their last king, Zedekiah, who ruled from 597-586 BCE.  

After 632 when Mohammed died, a mosque was built over the Roman Temple built in the very center of the Temple area in Jerusalem, called the Mosque of Omar  by Calph Omar, which was a temporary structure.  Then in about 738,  It was rebuilt by the Caliph Abd al-Malik also known as (Dome of the Rock) to replace the temporary structure set up by Caliph Omar.  The 2 mosques were built about a century apart on Mt. Moriah.  Today this is called the Temple Mount area and Moshe Dayan, Israeli general, gave the Jordanians rule over the mount due to the Muslim temples being there.  The problem remains that they sit over the site of our first Temple built by King Solomon and the 2nd Temple rebuilt by the Israeli returnees from Babylonian exile.  The temples were centers of Jewish learning and the Jewish religion, the first monotheistic religion in the world.  

Jews were taken captive and marched to Rome as shown by the ARCH OF TITUS  in Rome that depicts the event.  The Jews are forced to carry the loot the Romans have taken out of the Temple.  

They were used as prisoners in building in Rome and even in their army.  Eventually they worked their way to France and Germany.  These are the Jews who eventually became those called the Ashkenazi Jews, those who had been in Germany.  

Others had escaped from Jerusalem and had gone to the Iberian Peninsula, known about in past trading routes.  Before 1492, problems arose with the spread of Christianity and it's first formal presentation with Catholicism.  By 1492, Jews were expulsed from Spain if they didn't convert to Christianity.  They moved to Portugal and Central Italy,  then later to Western Europe in their  commercial cities.  The Ottoman Empire with Islam was more tolerant towards Jews though they had intolerant writing about them in their Koran, and they were treated as 2nd class people there, only occasionally attacked for being Jewish.  Istanbul and Salonica became Jewish centers.
                                                       

The Jews in Rome thus wound up in Northern Italy, and from there spread out to Bohemia, Moravia and Poland.  Prague, Bohemia/Czechoslovakia, Cracow, Poland which is near the Czech Republic  and Lublin, Poland became Jewish centers after such German centers in Worms and Mainz, Germany in the 1000s.  

.  The area of Prague  became the seat of the dukes, and later kings of Bohemia.  Prague contained an important slave market.  Jews had come to Prague in the 10th century as traders.    Prague was an important seat for trading where merchants from all of Europe settled, including many Jews, as recalled in 965 by the Hispano-Jewish merchant and traveller Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub.  Under Holy Roman Emperor Otto II the area became a bishopric in 973. Jews fought against the attacks of the Crusaders there in 1096.  They suffered from severe persecution and many were forcibly baptized by the Christians.  Things got a little better by the 12th century.  
                                                   

Until Prague was elevated to archbishopric in 1344, it was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Mainz, Rhineland (Germany).  The Old New Synagogue of 1270 still stands.   Today of course,  Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic.  It used to be called Czechoslovakia. Many Jews had fled to Czechoslovakia from eastern Europe at the time of the Chmielnicki pogroms of 1648 in Poland when 744 Jewish communities were wiped out, but ghetto regulations continued to be enforced and even the number of marriages were restricted by law.  Maria Theresa decreed in 1744 the general expulsion of Jews. Jews were then fully exiled from 1745 to 1748, and were only allowed to return after promising to pay exorbitant taxes.  They had to continue to live in ghettos.  By 1848, the Jews of Prague were granted full equality and 4 years later in 1852 the ghetto was abolished.  

This is when Jews became interested in the German culture and less about the Czech culture.  Then the geography changed, because in 1938, 15,000 Jews from the Sudenten district (The Sudetenland is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans) ceded to Germany and sought refuge in Prague.  Anti-Semitism was running rampant in Germany by then.  A month later, the liquidation of the Prague Jewish community began.  There were 65,000 Jews in Prague in 1942 with about 25,000 being refugees and all were exterminated by 1945.  

What amazes me is that there was a small Jewish community there with 1,400 Jews , subservient to the Communist regime who had taken over until the 1989 revolution.  Since 1989, Jews have been living without malice, probably up until now since it's spreading all over the world again.  Tourists have been coming and viewing the magnificently preserved synagogues and cemeteries, rare finds in Europe as the 2nd World War destroyed so many.  

Resource:  https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-printing/
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/roman-rule-63bce-313ce
https://www.jta.org/1969/04/10/archive/prague-daily-warns-of-mounting-anti-semitism-in-czechoslovakia-asks-ban
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39973195

The Amazing Bohemian and Moravian Jews of Prague, Czechoslovakia

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

                                                                                                      

Czechoslovakia used to be called Bohemia of the Holy Roman Empire. At its height, , it also had parts of present Austria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Sloveniaand and Ukraine.  Jews were known to be living in Bohemia since the 10th century, most likely in Prague.  A former province of Bohemia was called Moravia.  It was later Austria, and finally called Czechoslovakia.  During the Crusaders Period from 1096 on, Jews suffered severe persecutions and many were forcibly baptized.  In 1337 Jews suffered from anti-Semitic massacres and again at the time of the Black Death in 1349.  They were partly expelled in 1421.  The Polish persecuted them from 1648 onward, and after that horror, their numbers increased from immigration of other Jews who had been persecuted in their towns.
                                                                           

 
Jews had settled here in the capital in the 10th century and were traders.  When the Crusaders came along in 1096,

they were able to finally resist their attacks.  During the 14th and 15th centuries, Jews, however, were expulsed from the land, suffered from violence and were discriminated when living there.
                                                                             

13th Century forced clothing upon Jews in Germany

 Things improved during the 16th century which was also the community's Golden Age that lasted until the 18th century.
                                                                       

Karlstejn Castle in Czechoslovakia, on page about Bohemia

In 1512, Gershon ben Solomon Cohen had a Hebrew printing shop in Prague.  Things were good until 1562 when all Hebrew books suffered from censorship.  From the 16th to 18th centuries, Prague's Jewish community was one of the largest and most important communities in Central Europe.  It had a large and self-contained Jewish quarter (Judenstadt).  The ancient synagogues, many of which still stand, were beautiful.  The synagogues, Altneuschul and Pinkasschul, and huge cemetery are still among the sights of the city.   It had world-renowed scholars, the Hebrew printing-press, and highly-developed autonomous institutions as well as a Jewish craft-guild.          
                                                      THE MAHARAL OF PRAGUE
                                                                           

Prague is famous for its "Hoh Rabbi Low and the Golem that he wrote about which as entered into Jewish folklore with the Golem being the basis for the story of SUPERMAN.
                                                                       

The Golem -his development among the Jews was connected with the magical interpretation of SEPHER YETZIRAH and the belief in the creative power of the Holy Names.  Rabbi Low's Golem was a creature fulfilling tasks imposed upon it and also able to bring about destruction and ruin.  Now the word is used in Yiddish for a stupid person.  

                                       

 Rabbi Low was called the Maharal who was born around 1525 and died in Prague.  He was the Chief Rabbi of Prague from 1597, a talmudist, moralist, theologian, mathematician and mystic being into the Kabbalah.  Maharal stands for Moraynu HaReav Judah Loew ben B'zalel, translated as Our teacher, Judah Loew, son of B'zalel.  Der Hohe Rabbi Loewe von Prag, translated as the Holy Rabbi Loew of Prague.

It's generally accepted that he came from Worms, Germany, a center of early Rabbis.  He was a poor student in his Yeshiva who became engaged to a wealthy woman, Perla Shmelkes, daughter of Samuel Shmelkes, and intended to continue his studies with her family's support.  The wealthy family lost their money, however, and his marriage was delayed, so his fiancee wound up running a food shop, a grocery store.  One day a knight passed by and snatched up a loaf of bread from the shop on his spear.  He told her he had not eaten for 3 days and left his cloak with its lining containing gold coins as payment.   He didn't come back for it, so she was able to get married, and Judah spent the rest of his life in relative affluence, a very lucky young man.
                                                                           
He arrived in Prague when he was past 50 and was the Landesrabbiner of Moravia in Mikulov (Vikolsburg) from 1553 to 1573.  He founded a yeshiva in Prague, but left in 1584 to serve as Rabbi in Moravia or alternatively in Posen, and returned in 1588.

On February 23, 1592, Emperor Rudolf II invited him to an audience to the Hradshin because he wanted to learn about mysticism from the Maharal who was said could perform cabbalistic wonders.  By February 16, 1594, his colleague and friend the astronomer Tycho Brahe, arranged for him to speak with the emperor again, possibly on the subject of alchemy.  At that meeting, the Maharal was named Chief Rabbi of Posen.
                                                                         

The Golem came about at the Altneuschul Synagogue in Prague to serve the Jewish community that was under much stress and anti-Semitism.  According the the legend, he took dust and brought the Golem to life by insertion of G-d's name under its tongue and it obeyed Judah's commands, helping Jews survive these anti-Jewish measures and blood libel accusations.  It also served as the shabbos goy.  Finally, it had to be destroyed and returned to dust because it ran amok on a Friday afternoon during Kabbalat Shabbat when Judah forgot to remove the divine name.  The remains of the Golem  were sealed up in the attic of the Altneu synagogue in Prague.

 This legend was also connected to Rabbi Elijah of Prague UNTIL  the late 18th century.  Elijah Ben Judah of Chelm, Baal Shem was born in 1514 and died in 1583.  He also was a Rabbi and Kabbalist, known for his miracle cures by means of charms and amulets.  According to tradition, he was the creator of the Golem.

Since 1917, the end of WWI, the Maharal's statue has stood at the entrance of the City Hall of Prague.  His 1st work, Tikkun Ho'alom, was published in 1995 in English translation.
                                                               

A descendant of the Maharal is Rabbi Yaakov Bachrach.   According to Rabbi Yaakov Bachrach, he was the grandson of the Gaon Y. Yehuda Bachrach, and his genealogy went back to the Chavas Yoir and presumably the Maharal and onto Rashi and then to King David.  The history is that Bezalel Hazaken had a son, Yehuda Loew (Liwa) ben Bezalel.  Yehuda Loew died in 1440 in Worms, or possibly in 18 Heshvan(Hebrew calendar) in 1439 in Prague.  Yehuda Lev Hazaken is the son of Isaac, son of Bezalel Hazaken.  Yehuda was the head of a yeshiva (religious school)  in Worms, Germany-Rhineland.  The name, Liwa, which frequently appeared in the Worms area, is generally pronounced "Liwa" although originally it either stood for the German, "Loewe" which meant LION, the heraldic sign of the tribe of Yehudah "Judah", or for the German-Jewish "Loew."  Yehuda had a son, Bezalel ben Yehuda LOEW.    Bezalel LOEW had a son, Haim or Chaim LOEW-BEER ben Bezalel LOEB.  Haim LOEW-BEER b: c1450 -1480 in Isenheim, Alsace, France and died in 1522 in Prague or on November 24, 1565 in Worms, Germany.  Haim married Vogelin Feigele and they had 4 sons: The genealogy goes on to meet up with the Maharal.
                                                                         

All this wonderful history to bring honor to Prague, yet the Jews were exiled from the city in 1745 to 1748 and were only allowed to return after promising to pay exorbitant taxes.  In 1848, they were granted full equality.  Four years later their ghetto was abolished.  The Jews then began taking a large share in German cultural life with only smaller groups showing interest in Czech culture.  Under the Czechoslovak Republic between WWI and WWII, the Prague community did well.  Jews achieved prominence in all walks of life.
                                                                         

Jews rounded up in front of this picturesque home in Boskovice, Czechoslovakia by Nazis. 

After 1938 in September, however, 15,000 Jews from the Sudeten district ceded to Germany had to seek refuge in Prague.  A month later, the Nazi regime was formed in the country, and the liquidation of the Prague Jewish community began.  There were 65,000 Jews in Prague in 1942.  About 25,000 of them were refugees, but these were exterminated by 1945.
                                                                             

2015 Immigration Problems

The remaining or returning Jews numbering 1,400 in 1990 became subservient to the Communist regime until the 1989 Czech revolution, after which it became very active.  Since 1989, the magnificently preserved Jewish synagogues and cemetery have again drawn a large number of Jewish visitors from around the world.

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.loebtree.com/maharal.html
 http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/01/fatahs-jamal-al-jamal-dies-in-prague-in.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/12/an-italian-writer-compares-israel-with.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/12/prominent-americans-finding-jewish.html
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/07/superman-guess-who-created-him-and-why.html
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/07/jewish-history-in-slovakia.html