An exhibition of valuable Jewish religious objects opened May 3 in the 400-year-old Maisel Synagogue, which is part of Prague’s state-run Jewish Museum.
The exhibition took six years of preparation.
Ludmila Kybalova, director of the museum, said the silver artifacts on display came from 153 synagogues in Bohemia and Moravia destroyed or plundered by the Nazis during World War II.
She said the present exhibition is temporary, to be replaced by one with greater emphasis on the religious uses of the objects.
Under the former communist regime, Judaism was like “the dark side of the moon,” Kybalova said.
Kybalova also announced that the 456-year-old Pinchas Synagogue, closed for more than 20 years for various political and technical reasons, will be reopened soon.
Plans call for inscribing on its walls the names of the 77,000 Czech Jews who perished in the Holocaust, a project that will take considerable time.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
