A Regional Perspective on Hebrew Fragments: The Case of Moravia

Abstract

A Jewish presence in Moravia can be dated back to the second-half of the twelfth century although the evidence is scarce and disputable prior to the mid-thirteenth century. Jewish communities were dislocated relatively frequently during the High and Late Middle Ages, and much of the European Jewish population was considerably more mobile than their Christian neighbors. Since the majority of the reused Hebrew fragments that have been found in Moravia can be dated to the late fourteenth or fifteenth century, an attempt to interpret this evidence in the context of a regional history is not out of place. The Moravian fragments share certain traits with the Sopron material, thus a number of the explanations proposed by Szende may be valid for Moravian cases as well. The presence of rabbis and yeshivot has been documented in Brno, Olomouc and Znojmo from the late fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries. Keywords: Hebrew fragments; Jewish communities; Moravia; Olomouc; rabbis; Znojmo