Židovská náboženská komunita v českých zemích mezi válkami

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the religious Jewish community in the Czech lands underwent a change which to some extent paralleled the developments in the society as a whole. In the middle of the 19th century, religious practices still played a central role in the daily life of every Jew. They included regular attendance of services, observing holidays, receiving basic religious education, respecting the rabbinical authority and traditional household roles. -- Yet, merely within several decades, these formal manifestations of Jewishness changed radically in the Czech lands, especially in Bohemia. The basic thesis of this paper is that the life of Jewish communities and affiliated institutions in the Czech lands was influenced mainly by a decrease in the number of village communities and emergence of reformed urban communities; a decline of rabbinical education and the prestige of that profession; as well as the fact that only very few Jewish refugees from Poland and Russia sought the Czech lands as their destination. ...