The Jewish community was religious and in the final analysis also a culturally peculiar group, so that the ordinary body of Bohemian citizens felt the Jews as an alien body. On the other hand, Jewish life and property were insured…
Author: Dr. James Loeffler
BEFORE THE DELUGE: THE JEWS OF BOHEMIA (PART I)
The Czechoslovakian Republic, outside of the historical lands of the Bohemian Crown (Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia), stretches outward to include two great regions which previously belonged to Hungary: Slovakia and sub-Carpathia, also known as Carpathian-Russia. The Jews fell into the…
BEFORE THE DELUGE: THE JEWS OF HUNGARY (PART III)
The social activities of the Jews in Hungary showed a somewhat different picture from those of the eastern neighboring countries. The Jews were the dominant owners and workers in agriculture, and likewise in mining. In trade and transportation the Jews…
BEFORE THE DELUGE: THE JEWS OF HUNGARY (PART II)
The adaptation to the prevailing Magyar culture progressed. A rabbi named Isaac Eisik Taub of Nagy Kallo, who arose from the world of Polish chassidism, wrote poetry in the nineteenth century in Hungarian. To this day the Hungarian Jews sing…
BEFORE THE DELUGE: THE JEWS OF HUNGARY
As a result of the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary lost a portion of its provinces: Slovakia, Sub-Carpathia, the Maramos-Sziget district, Transylvania, the Banat, Croatia, Slovenia, and the so-called mountain lands which today belong to Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Austria. The…
BEFORE THE DELUGE: THE JEWS OF SPAIN (PART III)
After 1391 the Jews in Spain were a particularly impoverished element of the population, who in great portion occupied themselves as itinerant peddlers, shopkeepers, and in a few restricted crafts. The Jewish upper stratum at this time appears to have…
BEFORE THE DELUGE: THE JEWS OF SPAIN (PART II)
Chasdai ibn Schaprut (905-970), leader of the community in Cordoba, was the physician and prime minister of the Caliph Abdurrachman III. Ibn Schaprut presented a shining new way of combining Jewish teaching with secular knowledge. He forged relations with the…
The Jews of Spain (Part I)
It happened thus in the last days of July 1492. Great masses of people forced themselves slowly forth to the sea, to Barcelona, to Seville, to Malaga. The Catholic clergyman Palaccio reports what he saw: “They laid down to rest…
BEFORE THE DELUGE: THE JEWS OF IRELAND
The Jews of Ireland Ireland has been a free state since 1921 and, with the exception of Northern Ireland, which belongs to Great Britain, is a member only of the British Commonwealth. From 1170 there existed a Jewish community in…
Before The Deluge: The Jews Of India
The comparatively small Jewish population of India – after the census of 1921 there were hardly 20,000 out of a general population of 352 million – fell into four groups: the Cochin Jews of the Malabar Coast, the Bene Israel,…