Epitaphs from the Ancient Jewish Cemetery of Prague (review)

138 SHOFAR is striking indeed, since a broader perspective than that of a literary critic is obviously needed in order to grasp the full "meaning" of Yiddish or any other language. There is also the Yiddish proverb "yeder bal-darshn darshnt far zikh" (every speaker speaks in terms of his own particular interests and self-interest). This proverb too is applicable to the book under review, and, quite probably, to this review as well. Joshua A. Fishman Yeshiva University Epitaphs from the Ancient Jewish Cemetery of Prague, by Otto Muneles. Jerusalem: Publications of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Fontes ad res judaicas spectantes, 1988. 508 pp. The old cemetery in Prague is today one of the most attractive spots for Jewish pilgrims to visit. While not the oldest of European cemeteries, it is no doubt the most famous one. Together with the city's "old-new" synagogue, the Jewish city hall, and other well preserved monuments, it helps people to realize how important Jewish life was in the capital of Bohemia at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when its 6,000 inhabitants formed the largest Jewish community in Europe. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, scholars were already conscious of the invaluable documentation preserved in the cemetery. At different times, they copied the gravestone inscriptions-thousands of cards are preserved today in the Jewish Museum in Prague-and published some of them. To date, however, no effort has been made to report the finding systematically . One wonders when this will be done. Dr. Otto Muneles, whose book was published posthumously by the Israel Academy of Sciences, was the last of Prague's historians to publish such a collection. Out of the 250 inscriptions catalogued, 200 date from the period 1500-1700, labelled "The Golden Age of Prague's Jewry" by Leopold Zunz, 13 date from the period 1459-1500, and the rest from the eighteenth century. It may be assumed that, in this collection, Muneles catalogued all or most of the inscriptions which could be found for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries , but this is no more than an assumption. In his introduction, Muneles fails to explain his selection policy, or to state how representative that selection was. Is it, for example, mere chance that 95 of the inscriptions relate to women, or is this a reliable assessment of the status of women in Prague in the early modern period? It is obvious, however, that Muneles attempted to include as many of the scholars and luminaries who were then part of the life of the city and of the Jewish world as a whole as possible, and in this he was Volume 9, No.3 Spring 1991 139 quite successful. The inscriptions catalogued include Juda Loew b. Bazalel, the "Maharal," the greatest Jew of Prague (number 182); the talmudist and preacher Ephraim of Luntschitz (number 188); David Oppenheimer, whose manuscript collection is kept today at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (number 232); and members of the family of Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, known as "Tosaphot Yom Tov" (numbers 212, 214, and 217). The collection also includes the long inscription engraved on the tombstone of Mordechai Maisel (1528-1601), a great financier and major community benefactor. The study of such inscriptions reveals a great deal about the ideals of the society and its attitude to wealth and learning, charity and mutual help. The inscriptions also illustrate some aspects of contemporary attitudes towards women and the expectations which society had of them. The two most outstanding merits of Dr. Muneles's work are, no doubt, his precise deciphering of the inscriptions and the commentaries which he has given on almost all of them. He has drawn on a considerable base of archival materials-data collected from Prague city council's documents (see pp. 361-479), contemporary Hebrew chronicles, private Yiddish letters from the year 1619, and other relevant documents assembled by Gottlieb Gondy and Franz Dworsky in their collection Zur Geschichte der Juden in Bohmen, Mahren and Schlesien von 906 bis 1620 (2 vol., Prague, 1906)-to identify almost all the individuals whose names were recorded on these stones, and to say something about their families, their forefathers, or...