In this well-written and engaging book, Rachel Greenblatt travels down the well-trodden path of Jewish historical memory cleared by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi decades ago, exploring the large and well-documented early modern Jewish community of Prague. She encounters there familiar traditional modes of representing the Jewish past, but also innovative practices and expressions, some of which echo local Christian and imperial practices. (For example, although the collection and use of relics in Catholic churches had no direct parallel in synagogues, Greenblatt points out that the Pinkas Synagogue housed a robe, prayer shawl, and banner of Solomon Molkho––a pseudo-messianic figure in the early sixteenth century.)
Greenblatt's study covers the period from 1583, when Emperor Rudolph II moved his court from Vienna to Prague, to the early Haskalah in the mid-eighteenth century. Certain key historical events were carved into Jewish communal memory and Greenblatt returns to them frequently. The massacre of Jews in 1389, for example, became a central reference point in many Jewish historical narratives and local liturgical compositions of the early modern period; it helped to fashion a very particular Prague Jewish identity. The modes of memorialization that Greenblatt explores range from traditional written accounts in historical chronicles, necrologies, memoirs, and piyyutim, to the more concrete manifestations of the past as reflected in objects of material culture, such as parokhot and tombstones. In exploring the shifting contents of memory together with the vehicles of memory transmission, Greenblatt adds nuance and texture to the discussion of community formation.
In Chapter 1, Greenblatt tours the Jewish calendar year, highlighting the various “moments of memory” woven into the fabric of daily Jewish life in Prague. Here as elsewhere she integrates specific historical and religious details with broader introductory material, for readers who are less familiar with Jewish rituals. In the second chapter, Greenblatt lavishes attention on the Jewish cemetery and Jewish gravestones. She points to changes in gravestone design and texts, which she profitably compares with changes in the entries in communal memory books. Here as throughout the book, Greenblatt pays considerable attention to women, noting differences and (perhaps surprisingly to some readers) similarities in memorials for women and men. She shows how memorials to the dead could focus on specific details from real life as well as on qualities perceived as “ideal,” and how they could serve to create a place for the dead in the ongoing life of the community.
In Chapter 3, Greenblatt explores various forms of autobiographical writing —a topic that has received a good deal of treatment within and beyond early modern Jewish history. The autobiographical accounts she discusses served a variety of purposes and were crafted according to different literary traditions and forms. For Greenblatt, they open a window onto a variety of individual and communal concerns and, combined with other sources, allow a more nuanced understanding of internal social and communal structures and responses. Greenblatt presents and discusses several central works authored by prominent rabbis and members of the “secondary intelligentsia” who were trying to ascend the social and intellectual ladders in Prague. Importantly, Greenblatt identifies and includes in her analysis the work of women, among them Beila Perlhefter. While she briefly references non-Jewish autobiographical writings, a fuller comparison with such works might add to the depth of her conclusions.
In Chapter 4, Greenblatt turns to changes in the Prague community that had to do with internal communal dynamics, with the relationship between imperial authorities and the Jews, and with the position of the Jews during a tumultuous political period. “By the latter part of the seventeenth century,” she writes, “the weakening of the Jewish community's leadership bodies would lead to changes in ways historical events were commemorated and in the purpose of such commemorations” (119). In various seliḥot, for example, Jews navigated politics by remaining pro-Habsburg, even as some Jews assisted the Bohemian rebels with what could be seen as anti-Habsburg activities. In this context, Greenblatt argues that Jewish writers consciously shaped liturgical pieces to project an image of Jewish loyalty to the empire.
Communal memory was presented and shaped, among other ways, in historical writings that sought to detail the origins, early events, and central Jewish figures in Prague. In Chapter 5, Greenblatt examines the famous chronicle of David Gans (especially his efforts to locate local and Jewish history within a broader context), liturgical works, and a variety of Yiddish historical songs and tales (which related historical and contemporary events, from fires to invasions, in addition to providing polemical material). In Chapter 6, Greenblatt traces the changes in the forms memory took with the move from oral transmission to printing, and from a sacred to a secular focus. Noting a shift toward the use of the vernacular and the appearance of pamphlet publications, she discusses the increasing, if still minor, participation of women writers and the role of gender in memory.
In the conclusion Greenblatt summarizes the nature and function of memories (and forgetfulness) in early modern Prague. She discusses what kinds of memories were likely to persist (in particular, those woven into daily life, time, and space, or familial memories that were tied to Jewish holidays), and which forms and genres were more ephemeral.
Greenblatt contributes to the robust discussion of Jewish memory and history that has developed over the past several decades. She also adds to our understanding of the complex and multifaceted Jewish community in early modern Prague. But there is room for further development. Although the author makes comparative references to Christian memorials, and points out variations in Jewish memorial practice over time and between social levels, her analysis would have benefited from a closer and more concrete examination of the social tensions within the Jewish community, and a discussion of how such tensions affected memorialization. Similarly, beyond discussion of the changes in Baroque artistic sensibilities and the increasing citation of biblical phrases on Christian gravestones, it would be useful to learn more about other trends in Christian (local and imperial) memorials for the dead, and how they compare with practices among the Jews. Greenblatt makes the provocative observation, for example that “only toward the end of the seventeenth century did inscriptions on ritual textiles begin commonly to refer to donation of an object in memory of one who had died, rather than as a legacy from the deceased” (79). Does this change signal or parallel other social recalibrations inside and beyond the Jewish community and, if so, how should it be explained and what was its impact?
In the end, however, this is a well-researched, nicely written, thoughtful and well-structured volume that expands the discussion of Jews and memory, and contributes significantly to the range of source materials available for the study of Jewish engagement with the past.
