“The Precious Legacy: Judaic Treasures From the Czechoslovak State Collections” which is on view at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History through January 1 is more than an exhibition, albeit an extraordinary one. It is a means of experiencing 1,000 years of Jewish history, culture, religion and art in Bohemia and Moravia.
It is a “precious” experience because much of the legacy of centuries of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe was destroyed by the Nazis. But in Prague, where a Jewish museum had existed before World War II, the Nazis shipped the possessions of the Jews who were being deported to concentration camps from Bohemia and Moravia in order to create a “museum to an extinct race.”
These items became part of the collection at the Jewish museum in the old Jewish Quarter of Prague which is now on view outside of Czechoslovakia for the first time.
The visitor walks through arches made to appear like the old Jewish Quarter. He is first given an overview of the legacy and the history of 1,000 years of Czech Jewish life. There are old prayer books and much textile, particularly Torah curtains and other synagogue material.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE LEGACY
After walking by a beautiful and unique synagogue clock, the viewer comes to the section on worship highlighted by a bimah typical of the historic Prague synagogues. Then comes a section on Jewish learning and the viewer learns that Prague was once a major center of Jewish book publishing. A section on charity illustrates its importance to Jewish community life.
Other sections show items dealing with the Jewish holidays and with marriage and birth. One of the most fascinating sections is on the burial societies and the many elaborate utensils they used.
The final section deals briefly with the Holocaust and particularly with the Terezin concentration camp where 140,000 Jews were sent to await deportation in the East European death camps. Here you can see a crude Chanukah menorah made in 1944 and a skullcap with the word” Theriesienstadt, 1945″ on it. A companion exhibit at the B’nai B’rith Klutznick Museum has 44 drawings by children in Terezin.
It is important to remember that the Nazis tried not only to exterminate the Jews as a people but to eradicate their history, their culture, their religion. Despite the great losses suffered in the Holocaust, the Nazis failed in both attempts.
American Jews since the Holocaust have been reaching out to learn more about their roots. Most of the Jewish communities from which our parents and grandparents came no longer exist.
This is why “The Precious Legacy” is such an important event. This is not an exhibit of some ancient culture that no longer exists. It is the legacy of a culture that has nearly vanished where it once thrived but now continues to flourish in Israel, the United States and wherever Holocaust survivors and the descendents of East and Central European Jewry now live.
Mark Talisman, vice chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and director of the Washington office of the Council of Jewish Federations, spent 15 years trying to convince the Czech government to allow the items to be shown in the U.S. “The American Jewish community doesn’t realize what they have here,” he told this reporter at a press preview for the exhibit.
Most American Jews will be able to see the exhibit, and its organizers hope that many non-Jews will also view it. After closing in Washington, it will go to the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, Florida, on January 21 and then travel to New York, San Diego, New Orleans, Detroit and Hartford, Conn, where the exhibit will end on July 29, 1985.
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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.
