Prague versus Jerusalem? National Representations of Maharal from Prague within Prague Zionism and by Jerusalem Historiography School
Prague versus Jerusalem? National Representations of Maharal from Prague within Prague Zionism and by Jerusalem Historiography School

Summary/Abstract: “When I attempt […] to find a formula to indicate and contain the special atmosphere of the Prague community, to me this is its most obvious trait: Prague was a city of the blending of cultures, and our culture, the Jewish culture, was among those that left their imprint on the complexion of this wonderful city. And we, the Jews of Prague, therefore felt at every turn the part that our people had contributed to the shaping of the city’s character.” Thus began Samuel Hugo Bergmann’s public lecture on the history of Prague and its Jews; a lecture that straddled the boundary between historiography and autobiography, delivered in the summer of 1943 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. These were the days of revelation, even of growing certainty, regarding the dimensions of the devastation of European Jewry. The context was a series of lectures delivered at the Hebrew University between May to June 1943, which surveyed, one by one, in the manner of the commemoration literature that would evolve within a few years, the distant and recent past of the large Jewish centers in Europe prior to their destruction.

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