Arno Parik’s introduction opens with the Talmudic law that the dead are to be guaranteed the eternal inviolability of their graves. When founding these historic cemeteries, Bohemian and Moravian Jews purchased land on a permanent basis, which meant they often paid large sums for ground that was too steep or remote from town to serve any other purpose. Those criteria aided in the preservation of graveyards recorded here, even as the Nazis dismantled the Jewish communities of the surrounding area.
Parik describes the historical burial societies who cared for the dying, arranged funerals, and comforted the bereaved. He details Jewish burial practices. Memorial pebbles, placed on headstones whenever someone visits a grave, are explained as deriving from the duty of wayfarers in antiquity to add a stone to the graves they passed in the desert. I found this part of the book fascinating.
Things go downhill once the photographic section begins. Rather than focus on the artistry of individual gravestones, this book demonstrates how gravestones record community. Photographer Petr Ehl was more interested in documenting graveyards as a whole, rather than selecting special stones on which to focus, which limited his photographs to landscapes rather than the close-ups I prefer. The photos underline the similarities between the graveyards: weathered stones poking up between saplings, slanted stones staggering up steep grassy slopes, crowded stones huddling side by side. Unfortunately, the message of the book — that these graveyards (often the only record of the communities they once served) must be preserved — is undercut by the similarity of their documentation. If all the graveyards look the same, why not save one and let the rest fall to ruin? (Luckily, that question is answered by Arnold Schwartzman’s Graven Images.)
One hopes that this book was more persuasive for the audience for whom it was originally published: the Czechs of the living communities surrounding these graveyards.
What an indispensable little book this is! It collects 240 full-color photographs of motifs on Jewish gravestones, breaking them down into family symbols, workman’s tools, Talmudic references, etc. Like an encyclopedia, it defines each symbol, gives a reference from the Bible or Jewish lore, and remarks on the differences in symbolism from one community to the next. The artistry of tombstone carvers has never, in my experience with cemetery books, been as completely or as beautifully documented as this.
Inside are gravestones that depict Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac, candelabra which were believed to ward off grave robbers, hands feeding the charity box, skeletons with scythes, Jewish cherubim, lions, monkeys, fantastic birds, even a scorpion (which the author can’t explain). The variety is startling and impressive.
My only disappointment with the book is the size of some of the photos. A two-page layout demonstrating the blessing hands motif contains 28 pictures, each less than two inches square!
Throughout the book, the photographs themselves are wonderfully reproduced, even the tiny ones. The printing captured the spectrum of lichen, as well as the ivy and grasses that surround the stones. The stones themselves seem rough enough to touch. The sunshine looks as if it’s warmed the stones. The occasional shadow looks chilly.
Chaim Potok’s foreword explores the second commandment (“No graven images”) and its relationship to the creatures here displayed. He grounds his discussion in passages from the Talmud and Jewish authorities (whom I wish he had named), saying that there was never any consensus on what constituted an image. Perhaps tombstone carvings are permissible because they are in low relief, rather than three-dimensional?
Potok also reviews the history of Jewish grave markers. The first tombstone is mentioned in Genesis, when Jacob places a monument at Rachel’s grave.
Schwartzman uses the centuries of vandalism of Jewish cemeteries to detail the persecution Jews have suffered. Many of the communities recorded on tombstones in this book have ceased to exist. I am glad these beautiful carvings were recorded before they too disappear.
The Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague
Part of the Jewish Museum in Prague
U Staré školy 1
110 00 Prague 1
Telephone: +420 222 749 211
e-mail: officejewishmuseum.cz Founded: in the first half of the 15th century Oldest surviving monument: 1439 Size: Approximately 2.5 acres Number of interments: Perhaps up to 100,000 lie beneath 12,000 tombstones Open: Every day except Saturdays and Jewish holidays. Winter from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Summer from 9 a.m. until 6. Admission: Adults – 200 CZK, under 15s and students – 140 CZK, children under 6 are free.
Jews first came to Prague as free traders in the 10th century. They settled along the trade routes below Vysehrad Castle, where they lived peacefully until Christian Crusaders destroyed their settlement in 1096-1098. Afraid to lose the money generated by the Jewish traders, Prague’s nobility invited them to shift their homes into the city’s Old Town. This area became the first ghetto, three centuries before the word was coined in Venice.
Medieval Christians believed that Jews had killed Christ and continued to use Christian blood in their rituals. The “Passover lamb” was considered a euphemism for Christ and it was widely imagined that unless Jews were locked behind ghetto walls at night, Christian infants would end up on Passover plates.
As the Middle Ages melted into the Renaissance, interest in the Kabbalah swelled amongst both Christians and Jews in Prague. In this atmosphere, Rabbi Loew (pronounced Lurve) became chief rabbi of the ghetto in 1597. History records that he was once summoned to the palace by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who funded research into the alchemical transformation of lead into gold. (This was the same period of time that Queen Elizabeth consulted astrologist John Dee about similar matters. Dee later came to study in Prague, purportedly with Loew.)
Legends sprang up around Rabbi Loew, said to be one of only four men, post-Adam, to see the Garden of Eden. While there, he was granted the shem, the secret name of God, which can create life.
This came in handy when the ghetto was once again menaced. (The menace varies according to the storyteller, though it’s always rooted in Christian bigotry.) The Rabbi and two apprentices created a champion out of the muddy banks of the Vltava River. This artificial man served faithfully, protecting the Jews from slander and worse, until something went wrong one night and Loew had to rip the shem — variously a clay tablet or a scrap of paper — from behind the golem’s teeth.
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Founded in 1478, the Beth-Chaim (Hebrew for House of Life) served as the only Jewish graveyard in Prague for three centuries. Penned in by buildings on every side, the Old Jewish Cemetery could only increase in height. 12,000 surviving tombstones totter over the graves of an estimated 20,000-100,000 people. The ground consists of twelve layers of graves.
The most visited of these belongs to Rabbi Yehudah Loew ben Bezalel (1512-1609). Rather than a tablet marker, Loew has a tomb of pink stone, guarded by lions. When I visited, pebbles, coins, and folded scraps of white paper covered its every flat surface.
I’ve read several explanations of the custom of placing pebbles on graves. The simplest appeared in Mystical Stonescapes by Freema Gottlieb: “Vegetation fades, but stones are as close as matter gets to Eternity.” Old Bohemian and Moravian Jewish Cemeteries by Ehl, Parik, and Fiedler traces the ritual back to when the Hebrews wandered in the desert after Moses led them out of Egypt. Anyone who fell during that forty-year trek was buried along the wayside. Travelers who passed those graves added a rock as a way of keeping the burial mound inviolable.
While the Nazis demolished many Jewish graveyards, this one — and Loew’s tomb — was spared as part of a museum dedicated to the extinct race. The beauty of the place must have touched some Nazi soul. Now overseen by the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Czech Republic, the graveyard welcomes 10,000 visitors each year. Most bring pebbles in their pockets for Rabbi Loew.
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Old Bohemian and Moravian Jewish Cemeteries by Arno Parik
