The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia 1870-1918.

Abstract

The turn of the 19th century found society and culture in the Czech lands undergoing transformations that would alter the face of Bohemian Jewry forever. Intensified ethnic nationalism, urbanization, demographic pressures, and changing prospects for integration combined to produce what would be in effect a second Jewish modernization, one which would give rise to two large-scale cultural experiments - the Czech-Jewish Movement and Zionism. In this first modern history of Czech Jewry to appear in English, Hillel J Kieval examines the post-emancipatory, post-industrial world of Czech Jewish society. Emphasizing the multi-ethnic character of the region, the linguistic dexterity and cultural ambiguity of its Jewish population, and the decisive impact of national conflict on the creation of Jewish attitudes and behaviour, he argues against the prevailing image of of Prague and Bohemian Jewry as bastions of German culture and political liberalism in a hostile Slavic world.