Question about jews in Bohemia?

Off-topic
#1

Not sure where to put this topic and even if jews are not depicted in the game, it’s not my concern as the game looks beautiful and it has given me a very large interest in medieval history as well as bohemian history in general.

I was curious about jews in bohemia if they were seen as foreigners or a part of bohemian history, my understanding was most lived in Prague and it appears reading more into the Hussite movement, it seems that Hussites were generally in favor of the jews for purpose of conversion but also were generally seen as pro jewish compared to the Germans at that time.

I am not sure if any jews were part of the fuedal system or if they were more travelers at that time, there’s a few books out there in English but I prefer maybe a Czech answer this or someone familiar with bohemian history in general.

What was the purpose of jews mainly in Bohemia and during the Hussite revolution ?

#2

Have a look at this: http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/bohemia/boh621.html :smile:

#3

I am not a Czech but I know some answers. Some information about jews in Bohemia can be explained with father of king Wenceslaus IV who is important character in the game. His father was Charles IV, and like Wenceslaus also Charles has often problems with money. So he let jews pay for their security to gain a new source of income.
As the black death starts, a french jew confess in torture he had poisoned some wells and start the black death. This news spread about all over europe and jews in all countries get murdered and blamed about black death. This was not good, not only for the jews, also for the emperor who need them to pay taxes.

People don´t liked the jews and wanted to kill them. So Charles get the jews under his security. But he had not enough might to do it in the whole HRE, it was a system of feudalism. Emeror in HRE never had absolute power. So he sell some of the jews to cities and rulers who killed or banned them. They also had another notion in mind. Jews often deal with money, and many people get debts at the jews. So if they kill the jews, they also could burn their debenture. No debts anymore if the jews die.
The black death was not a problem in Bohemia and especially in Prague and Charles IV had all his power in this country, because it was his property. So while he sells his jews in most areas of HRE, he was able to guard them in bohemia. They were important, because jews pay for this kind of security.
Its not about more friedly people in Bohemia, but with no black death at their place they don´t need to blame the jews, and the ruler of Bohemia was the Emperor himself, and he needed his jews. Unlike as in other parts of HRE here he had the power to protect them.

I don´t know exactly how it was in 1403, but worst phase of black death was over, and I can imagine also son of Charles, Wenceslaus used the jews to get more taxes.

#4

There was a good discussion about this some time ago:

#5

A quickie: There were plenty of Jews in Bohemia back then. And there was plenty of antisemitism as well.
Jews lived primarily in major cities or “seat towns” of nobles (except for mining cities). They lived in the kingdom in considerably large numbers until later 16th century when they massively moved to Poland. Jews lived in their own quarters and had their own courts (for disputes among themselves) and other administration stuff. Quite often when they entered a Christian quarter (=any other than Jewish) they had to wear a sign of their jewish origin (funny hats or similar stuff, think of Star of David in Nazi controlled areas during WW2). Pogroms happened from time to time. Either due to mere escalation of socio-religious tensions or for political reasons or simply to acquire money. So why were they hated?
It’s a circle of self-feeding stupidity.

  • Jews were restricted from craftsmanship or any honorable profession. Sometimes they could only do crafts for other Jews but never ever were they allowed to make stuff for Christians (everybody).
  • They had to pay high taxes to their lords.
  • As such they were a good resource of revenue for the lords and thus were protected by them.
  • Thus they had to make money somehow and this is where loans come to the party. But loans are still not enough. “Luckily” Jews, unlike Christians, could impose high interests. Well in fact they had to. Remember they had to pay extra taxes.

And this is where the snake feeds on itself. This system forced Jews to screw people over and ultimately made them the richest guys around. People didn’t like non-Christians to put it gently. But now imagine that the non-believer belongs to those who “killed Jesus”, screws over you or someone you know, is rich due to being allowed to do stuff you cannot do and finally is protected by your lord. Yay! And all these ideas are around since 11th century, when they started coming, (I hope I remember the timeframe correctly) to this day.

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#6

Interesting, I’ve heard a lot of responses about jews, it seems much of it was religious motivated. It’s interesting to note that some jews seem to have been favored more than others, for example it appears two sects of judaism appeared at that time, the karaites and tthe rabbinical jews. Interesting enough, Crimean karaites rejected the Talmud but followed plaintext literal meaning of the Torah and tanakh. Apparently karaites had more freedom in Russia and the Crimea and many other areas as they weren’t defined as jews despite technically being jews, some were claimed to be khazars who spoke a Turkic language despite the fact they were descended from the Middle East. I guess Trakai castle in Lithuania had used them as guards from some research I have done.

On the other hand, it seems Sephardic Jews from Spain assimilated and were more accepted in Western Europe and parts of Central Europe and the Balkans more so than the Ashkenazi Jews which I found interesting. Not sure how this would have affected the karaites or Sephardim in medieval times but it sounds like jews were seen similar to the serfdom in Bohemia ?

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