Sandwiched between more traditionalist Polish and Hungarian Jewish communities to its east and more modern-oriented German and Austrian Jewish communities to its west and south, Moravian Jewry is often overlooked in modern Jewish historiography. The situation is not helped by demography—in comparison to the more than 750,000 Jews living in Poland-Lithuania in 1764, for example, Moravian Jewry numbered around 20,000. As Michael Laurence Miller points out in his new monograph, the Moravian chief rabbinate was for short periods of time inhabited by rabbinic celebrities—Judah Low ben Betsalel (“the Maharal” of, well, Prague), Yomtov Lipmann Heller (who stayed on for a year), and Samson Raphael Hirsch (who stayed for five years). But they all moved on. The same may be said of the region's secular luminaries of Jewish origin, such as Freud, Mahler, and Husserl. Yet Miller's dogged efforts to put Moravian Jewry on the map by drawing on an impressive array of archival sources and periodicals cannot be ignored. If we are left wondering at the enormous effort expended resurrecting such peripheral or ephemerally Moravian figures, Miller's rigorous scholarship does reveal Moravia as a major incubator of the rest of Central European Jewry's religious, scholarly, and educational leaders.

As Miller demonstrates, Moravian Jewry was handicapped by unusually high taxes and harsh legislation. Fearing Jewish overpopulation, Moravia's rulers promulgated the notorious Familiant laws in 1726, which allowed only first-born sons of Jewish families to marry (critics of these laws deemed them “Pharaonic”). While the result was often secret “attic weddings” for younger sons, many simply emigrated to Hungarian communities. Yet Moravian Jews managed to support thriving yeshivas in Nikolsburg, Prossnitz, Leipnik, Trebitsch, Triesch, Boskowitz, Hollescau, and Eibenschitz. Just as importantly, the Moravian chief rabbinate enjoyed much authority. Thus, Miller argues, the reigns of chief rabbis Mordecai Benet (1789–1829), Nehemias Trebitsch (1832–42), and Samson Raphael Hirsh (1847–51), while sometimes bitterly contested, decisively shaped the Moravian Jewish modernization process.

The changes were modest under the rather pedestrian Benet and Treibitsch. Benet managed to enable the new network of German-Jewish schools to function in harmony with the region's hallowed yeshivas, while the more reactionary Treibitsch strove unsuccessfully to prevent appointments of reform-minded rabbis to individual communities. But the appearance of Samson Raphael Hirsch, author of the progressively orthodox Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel (1836), breathed new life into Moravian Jewry. Indeed, his appearance breathes new life into Miller's book, which up to this point is rather arid. Hirsch's personality, political skill, and modern orthodox philosophy made him the perfect chief rabbi to lead Moravian Jewry into modernity and, ultimately, emancipation. When his attempts at regulating his Jewish communities' religious and communal affairs met with too much resistance, Hirsch astutely shifted his efforts toward the struggle for civic and political equality. During the Revolution of 1848, he was elected to the Moravian Diet, where he carefully limited his activities to “behind-the-scenes interactions,” (199) lobbying against the Familiant laws and Jewish tax burden. It is unclear how impactful Hirsch's efforts were—the emperor Francis Joseph dissolved the Reichstag and granted Jews emancipation by imperial fiat in 1849 (or seemed to—emancipation would take a few more years to be finalized). But Miller insists that Hirsch should be viewed as “the central figure in the Jews' struggle for civic and political rights” (217). His sudden departure for the Frankfurt rabbinate in 1851 had the effect of “orphaning” Moravian Jewry (313).

Hirsch's abortive Moravian career symbolizes the Sisyphean nature of the region's Jewish communal history. Even emancipation failed to be cathartic for Moravian Jews, who were all too soon caught in the crossfire between the rising Czech and German nationalist movements. Many now simply left for Vienna. Readers must resign themselves to an appreciation for Moravia's “incubator” role. Thanks to Miller's efforts, there is at least that.