Language of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands by Hillel J. s> Kieval (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 553 Franceor Englandwhere a convergence of the two had occurredat leastthree centuriesearlier?And to takeHungarian 'exceptionalism'stillfurther how do we react to a situation wherein the language of a substantialpart of the populationhadbeforethenineteenthcenturyneverstabilizedorwasotherwise written in an altogether unfriendlyorthography(as with the case of Slovaks, Ruthenes and Romanians)? Finally, let us take p. ii of the text wherein T6th equates literacywith the knowledge of Latin, and suggests on this basis that only 20 per cent of Hungarian schoolteachers were professionally competent. How does this proportion compare to England where, in the I66os, Mikl6s Bethlen found not a single Oxford professorconversantin Latin?In conclusion, Hungary in the early modern period was probably as literate in Latin as any of its West European counterparts,and possibly more so. It had simply not by this time grounded the vernacularin a written or prose traditioncapable of making it seem worthwhileto readand writeHungarian.This taskwould belong instead to the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies MARTYN RADY University College London Kieval,HillelJ. Language of Community: TheJewishExperience intheCzech Lands. University of CaliforniaPress,Berkeley,Los Angeles, CA, and London, 2000. xiii + 311 pp.Maps.Notes.Bibliography. Index.$45.00: /28.50. HILLEL J. KIEVAL has already produced one outstanding study of modern Czech-Jewish relations in the Makingof CzechJewry(New Yorkand Oxford, I988). This new offeringstands as both a companion volume and additional commentary, being a series of neatly crafted, albeit interrelated essays on various aspects of the Czech Jewish experience primarilyfrom the period of the Josephine reforms through to the potentially twilight aftermath of the Prague Spring. Where is the historical epicentre of Jewish life in the Czech lands?Kieval himselfacknowledgesthat in some ways the most engaging and exciting period precedes his direct area of interestcoming as it did under 'the tolerantand culturallyiconoclasticatmosphere'(p. I5)ofRudolph II'sPrague court and in which at least twoJewish figures,David Gans and RabbiJudah Low ben Bezalel (theMaharal),took on a prominence in humanistcirclesfar beyond the confines of their Prague community. In fact, Kieval skilfully weaves the latter'slegacy into his primaryfocus on Czech-Jewishrelationsin themoderneraby demonstratinghow both communitiesconstructedmythical narratives of the Maharal's supposed creation of the 'Golem' in order to advance their own understandings of belonging and 'other' in a rapidly changing environment. If Kieval, in so doing, confirms that this period was considerably more fraught for Czech Jewry than at the earlierjuncture he also provides convincing groundsfor arguingthat its interlinkedstrugglesfor modernityand nationalidentityalso representedits climacteric. The essential tension lay in the lack of synchronicity between Jewish integrationinto an imperial andhence German-led modernizingproject beginning in the I 78os and the subsequentemergence of Czech nationalisma 554 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 generation or more later. Already assimilatedJews therebyfound themselves peculiarly marooned on the German 'side' of the cultural divide when the language issue really began hotting up. Thus, however much Jewish intellectuals in particular attempted to go the extra mile by thoroughly identifyingthemselveswith the Czech cause, the standardnational rejoinder consistently asserted that they were really covert if not overt agents of Germanism. Efforts to 'convert' German-language Jewish schools in the provinces to Czech became the staple agenda of organizations such as the Associationof Czech AcademicJews from I876. But suchwillingnessto make common cause was often only grudgingly acknowledged on the Czech side where it was not rebuffed altogether. Kieval cogently charts an earlier generationofJewish gymnasium-educatedintelligenty eagerforYoungBohemia 's embrace on the road to disenchantment. By fin-de-siecle the barrage of patronizing insults from the national press, scholarly efforts to write the longstandingJewish community out of Czech history,an attemptedeconomic boycott and actual violence in the form of attackson synagogues andJewish properties in the wake of both Badeni language reforms and Hilsner ritual murdertrialsshouldhave put paid to fond hopes of symbiosisaltogether. This makesthe ratherpositivepost-I9 I8 Czech-Jewishaccommodation especiallywhen comparedto thebleakscene in the restof the 'New Europe'all the more compelling and intriguing.Equallyintriguingly,however, Kieval does not offertoo much in theway of explanation.As an essentiallyintellectual history man, social and economic trends, while acknowledged, rarely take centre stage. As a resultwe are little the wiser as to whether it was a visceral anti-semitismor a classicartisanrevoltagainsta textile development in which Jewish entrepreneurshappened to be at its cutting-edgewhich...