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Jan. 27, 2006
Relaunching Jewish community
Remembering the past while living in the present is of key importance
to Prague tour guide Sylvie Wittmann.
EDGAR ASHER ISRANET
Sylvie Wittmann was born in Czechoslovakia in 1956, in what she
describes as "deep communism." For her, the fall of communism
enabled her to establish Prague's leading Jewish guide service.
Wittmann Tours is dedicated to educating both Jews and non-Jews
about the rich heritage of the country, as well as to explaining
the depths of cruelty and depravation suffered by Jews at the hands
of the Nazis in Theresienstadt (the "model Jewish ghetto"
with which the Nazis duped the Red Cross and the world's media).
"I have to say honestly that anything I ever started, started
with anger," said Wittmann. "I trained as a restorer of
Judaica and I also studied theology. I learned English as well,
but unfortunately there was nowhere to practise speaking it."
In the early '80s, a friend invited Wittmann to work in a hotel.
"I recollect thinking that I wasn't sure what somebody who
was a restorer and studied theology would do working in a hotel,"
she observed. "My friend said, 'Don't be ridiculous, you can
practise your English.'
"I began to see countless numbers of mainly American and English
Jews coming here, with no guides, no explanation, no religious services.
If you went to the Jewish museum in those days - the state Jewish
museum - the guide would take you to the Jewish Quarter and he would
say, 'The Jews did, the Jews ate, the Jews felt, the Jews celebrated,'
as if the Jews do not exist anymore, as if Hitler had won the war.
I thought, 'We Jews are not the stones from the cemetery of the
Maharal - we are living people.' "
Wittmann teamed up with a friend, Helena Zalos and, in 1990, they
started educational tours to Theresienstadt - originally known by
its Czech name of Terezin. They took their customers from Prague
to Theresienstadt in an old minibus owned by an acquaintance. Today,
in part due to Wittmann's success, this minibus company has one
of the biggest and best fleets in the Czech Republic.
"After the Velvet Revolution, there were organized tours to
Theresienstadt's small fortress, but not to Theresienstadt, the
ghetto, which was only one kilometre further on," said Wittmann.
"People were coming to our country and not knowing the real
history of what the Nazis had done to the Jewish people here, because
nobody was explaining it to them."
Before the fall of communism, Jewish communal activity in Czechoslovakia
was very limited and mostly clandestine. The suppression of Jewish
practices and education had taken its toll on the few thousand Jews
remaining in the country after the war. Intermarriage was high and
the community lacked any leadership, cohesive or otherwise. At the
end of 1989, there was a slow revival, as the spark of the rich
Jewish culture that existed before the war began to reappear. Jewish
buildings and property were returned to the community and this spurred
the creation of some kind of Jewish communal body.
This newfound freedom was yet another challenge to Wittmann. "If
I make money on the memory of dead people and tragedy that happened
years ago, then I also have to give something back to the community
of living people," she said. For Wittmann, this meant helping
to establish and run Beit Simcha.
"The Prague Jewish community had nearly vanished as a result
of the Nazis and 40 years of Communist rule," she said, "and
my aspiration was to bring the remnants of Czech Jewry back to the
abandoned synagogues."
Half the members of Beit Simcha are also members of the official
Prague Jewish community. Beit Simcha was the first liberal Jewish
community to be created after the December 1989 fall of communism.
There is still "very little co-ordination between the different
factions in the community," Wittmann conceded. "A questionnaire
was sent to all known Jews in the Czech Republic to ask their opinion
on what they would like to see as the future of their community.
Over 50 per cent of people responded to the questionnaire and of
that number, 80 per cent said that they would like to see pluralism
in the community. They did not want to have a chief rabbi who was
in effect chief rabbi of nobody. Rabbi Ephraim Sidon is presently
the chief rabbi of the Orthodox community and he does not have any
connection with liberal or Reform communities."
Most Jews in the Czech Republic are converts, as their mothers were
not Jewish. Many Jews have been looking for their roots and decided
to convert to overcome the problem of the intermarriage that resulted
from years of war and anti-Semitism, followed by an even longer
period of living under a regime that outlawed all religion.
"You must remember that more than 80 per cent of the Czech
Jews perished under the Nazis," said Wittmann. "Most who
died were women, because Hitler did not need weak women to work.
He wanted the men with muscles to work as slave labor to feed his
war machine. This, then, is the basic reason for the problem of
finding people who are today halachically Jewish. People who have
not experienced living under totalitarian rule can have no idea
of the problems we have."
Unlike most of the Jews in the Czech Republic, the Jewish community
of Prague is financially very well off, due to restitution payments.
Unlike other communities around the world, whose members support
the community apparatus, in Prague, Jewish community organizations
support the people. The official community has an annual budget
of $3.75 million US to run its various programs, including two old
age homes.
However, "I'm afraid that you have to be a halachic Jew to
be taken into one of the homes," Wittmann noted. "It means
that you could have easily been in Auschwitz, but because your mother
was not Jewish, you are not good enough for the old peoples' home."
Ninety per cent of Czech Jewry today can be described as being secular.
The Prague Jewish community may number thousands of people but,
as Wittmann says, "it always depends on who you recognize as
Jewish. You can be a member of the Prague Jewish community only
if you can prove your mother is Jewish."
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