Object of the month
2013
MEMORIAL DOCUMENT OF THE JERUSALEM SYNAGOGUE
Memorial document of the Jerusalem Synagogue, Czech part, whole
During a survey of the Jerusalem (Jubilee) Synagogue on 7 January 2003, representatives of the Prague Jewish Community and the Jewish Museum discovered a...
2013
Ezekiel Landau, Noda bi-Yehuda (Famous in Judea)
This month marks the 300th anniversary of one of the greatest rabbinic authorities of the eighteenth century, Rabbi Ezekiel Landau (1713–1793). He was born on the 18th of Heshvan 5474 (7 November 1713) in Opatov, Galicia. In 1744, after...
2013
The Diary of Ruth Brösslerová
Thirteen-year-old Ruth Brösslerová came to the ghetto Terezín with her parents and younger brother on 28 January 1942, arriving on Transport U from Brno. In her diary she not only provides careful and remarkably observant chronological...
September 2013
Carved and engraved shofar
The shofar is a ritual musical instrument, developed from the ancient pastoral horn. It is made from the horns of certain kinds of permitted animals. In the Diaspora, it is used for festive blowing during the High Holidays
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2013
A gift made after the return from exile
The Jeiteles family's curtain is not an expensive cult object but it was donated at a time when gifts to synagogues in Prague were quite rare. When, after more than three years in exile, the Jews of Prague were allowed to return to their...
2013
Portrait of the Writer and Critic Max Brod
This year marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the most famous Prague native ever, the Jewish German writer Franz Kafka (1883–1924). As is well known, Kafka’s work survived only thanks to the care given it by one of his closest...
2013
Manuscript with a penitential prayer for the Jews of Kroměříž massacred by the Swedish army in June 1643
In addition to various prayers intended for the cantor in the synagogue and a prayer for the welfare of the sovereign, the Emperor Charles VI, or the Archbishop of Olomouc, this manuscript also contains memorial prayers, a prayer for the...
2013
David Gans – Tzemah David
The historian, mathematician and astronomer David ben Solomon Gans was born in 1541 in Lippstadt, Westphalia. He received a religious education at yeshivot in Bonn, Frankfurt and Krakow, where he studied science and history. In 1564 he...
2013
Interior of the Vinohrady Synagogue, Prague
Jindřich Eckert (1833-1905) is considered to be the most important Czech photographer of the nineteenth century. In 1897-1902 he focused mainly on photographing monuments in the rapidly disappearing Prague ghetto. Plans for a large...
2013
The oldest synagogue textile in the collections of the Jewish Museum in Prague
The so-called Perlsticker curtain is not only the oldest synagogue textile in the collections of the Jewish Museum in Prague but is also, perhaps, Europe’s oldest preserved synagogue textile bearing a date. The curtain (or at least part...