Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/424

of which some knowledge has come down from the days of the Bohemian princes came to these parts apparently from Byzance and from Italy. It is pretty certain that they were southeastern Jews, “Sephardim”. Later Jewish immigrants were men who had been driven from Spain and Portugal and settled in Holland, also “Sephardim”; then came the Jews from Germany and in the later days mostly from Poland, racially different from the first, the so-called “Ashkenazim”. They are hardly true descendants of the Palestinian Jews. The further we go east into Slovakia, the more evident is the kinship of the Jews now living in the Republic, with the Polish Jews.

What the mother-togue of the “Sephardim” was it is now impossible to say. But the “Ashkenazim” brought with them undoubtedly the German-Hebrew dialect; but that was of course in the 14th century.

In the earlier times the Jews settled here adhered strongly to the Czech culture, if not socially, at least as far as language was concerned. In the old Prague Jewish cemetery we find on the tomb stones many Czech names down to the 16th century. The chronicle of the Prague Jewish congregation, writen by Rabbi Moses Ramschak in the 17th century, tells among other things of an audience of the Jewish elders before one of the Czech kings, perhaps Vladislav II.; it appears that the elders of all the congregations could not attend, as they knew only Czech, while the audience was held in German.

Through the generosity of the late Boh. Bondy, president of the Prague Chamber of Commerce, the court archive keeper published in 1906 sources for the history of the Jews in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia from 906 to 1620.

This work contains 1346 documents and reports which throw much light on the history of the Jews in the Bohemian lands. When the Czech nationality was flourishing, the Jews too became assimilated to their Czech environment and used the Czech language as their mother tongue. The downfall of the nation of course affected the use of Czech among the Jews. Germanization which was most successful in the cities was bound to influence the Jews who lived mostly in the cities, the more so, as German colonists gradually took over many Czech cities and at the same time Jews immigrating from Germany and Poland brough with them their common German- Yiddish dialect; gradually the old-stock Jews adopted it also. Joseph II. who extended many economic measures of relief to the Jews was also a fervent champion of Germanization. Against Jewish opposition he introduced the German language into their schools as the language of instruction; in his reign, too, Jewish family names were Germanized—forced upon them.

But Germanization of the Jews was only external. When the Napoleonic period created the idea of nationality, even the Jews felt its influence. It came to them in the guise of toleration from France by way of Germany, where Moses Mendelsohn in spite of indignation of the orthodox translated the Bible into German. The German Bible, then Hebrew-German prayer books, the humanitarian influence of Herder, the works of German poets and philosophers completed the internal Germanization of Jews in the Bohemian lands.

The era of Joseph marked the beginning of liberation for the Jews. His enlightenment became in their minds identified with his Germanizing efforts, and as a result the German culture which was then free of nationalistic superiority and imperrialistic jingoism was adopted completely by Jews in Bohemia. This process was so much simpler, because the 6ld Czech culture stunned by the catastrophe of the White Mountain was then just beginning to revive.

When the constitutional era came, Jewish energy held down for centuries was freed of all restrictions and was employed naturally along the lines most fitted to Jewish Ghetto education, namely commerce, industry and learned professions—journalism, medicine, law, etc. All these lines were ruled by German language and German spirit. When the Bach absolutist regime collapsed in 1859, German liberalism came to the helm. The leaders of it realized, what an efficient help they could have in Jews against the growing Czech national opposition; through favors extended the Jews were actually won.

After the realization of dualism Magyar oligarchy in Hungary adopted the same procedure toward the Jews. In both German and Magyar journalism Jews acquired an ever-growing influence, and with true