Prague Reflections III: The Baths of West Bohemia

One of the main reasons Toby and I took our expedition to the Czech Republic was to leave Prague and take a motor tour around western Bohemia, specifically to visit some of the many towns that boast thermal springs and medicinal baths. A number of the towns that dot the landscape of what were once crownlands of the Habsburg Empire (later Austro-Hungarian Empire) are the creation of the 18th and 19th centuries, and exist solely because of their hot springs. (One particularly bizarre, if somewhat sad tale for dog lovers, was that the Habsburg emperor Charles IV discovered the springs at Karlovy Vary [Karlsbad -- "Charles' Bath"], the best known of these baths, when one of his hunting dogs was sniffing around the woods and fell in to one of the springs. With water running at around 80 degrees C after it has been piped through the plumbing to drink - thus it is much hotter at its source - I imagine the dog was stewed).

What interests me is that fact that these springs and the towns that were built up around them became the main locus of Central European tourism for a great portion of the period that I study. There are a few reasons for this. The first is one of health: the baths were (and still are, I would learn) regarded as a legitimate cures for any number of ailments. People suffering from chronic illness -- probably some of the most common including things like TB, gout, cardio-vascular illnesses -- all of those things that we are able to treat so effectively today with modern medicine would come to the spas, often for extended periods, often many times over their adult lives. (It is sometimes hard to imagine just how central illness was to everyday life in a time before antibiotics and other 20th century innovations.)

As time went on and a more robust middle class developed, and along with it things we take for granted like disposable income and leisure time, the spas became some of the first major tourist/resort destinations. By the time we reach my period of interest, the fin-de-siecle period (around 1890 until the First World War), these spas had become perhaps the most common vacation destinations for anyone who had a bit of money set aside, and hotels and spas catered to income levels from the low to moderate middle class all the way to the aristocracy. In towns like Karlovy Vary famous personalities of all types, from Karl Marx to the Tsar of Russia, from Beethoven to Chopin, visited at various times to "take the waters." They were particularly popular among the increasingly middle-class Jews of Central Europe (who, in the darker side of the spa culture, were frequently caricatured in an entire genre of anti-Semitic spa-town postcards, many of which can still be purchased online today through specialty collectors) -- this is the reason for my specific interest, as I hope a chapter of my next book will illustrate.

The two towns Toby and I visited were perhaps the most famous two in Western Bohemia, Karlsbad and Marianbad (Kalovy Vary and Marianske Lazne). The former I've already discussed, the later, Karlsbad's smaller, but more refined sister is perhaps best known to modern ears (or at least lovers of avant-garde French cinema) as the location of "Last Year at Marianbad," (L'Année dernière à Marienbad) the surreal early '60s movie by Allain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais.

Both towns became significant spa destinations in the 18th century, but the height of their popularity was the second half of the 19th until the First World War. In their heyday, tens and even hundreds of thousands of visitors would descend on these towns in the tourist season.

The setting that visitors would encounter was bucolic and semi-rural, with the town centers featuring massive ornate colonades (usually late 19th century neo-Baroque; in the case of Karlovy Vary, some of them designed by Fellner and Helmer ) that provided the setting for the main activity: walking around and drinking hot water with a heavy mineral content that naturally surfaced from the hot mineral springs beneath. To facilitate the drinking, a special type of cup (called a "becher," supposedly after the Becher family of pharmacists-cum-distillers who created Becherovka, the ubiquitous west Bohemian spirit in the tall green bottles). The cup is ceramic with a hollow handle running from the bottom of the cup up, through which one sucks the mineral water (see picture of Toby above).

Around these colonades are dozens of hotels, many of them featuring their own spa treatments, most of them built during the post-Ausgleich (post-1867) pre-war period. In Marianbad, simply walking from the spa complexes down the hill gives one a sense of the social stratification. The grander, fantastic hotels are near the top of the hill, closest to the waters and the grand Lazni (spa buildings - see picture of the Nove Lazne above). Continuing down the hill, all along the right-hand side of the main street (Hlavni Trida) are smaller, botique-y hotels that become more and more middle class.

The tourist diversions in both towns included theater (in Karlovy Vary, the theater was designed by Fellner and Helmer) and casinos. But the main activity of these towns was quite simple: promenading around the colonades and parks, stopping at the many little spigots -- some of them ornately decorated (see picture) found everywhere around the springs -- to fill up your becher and drink. It was a place to see and be seen, where health care became a pretext for socializing and traveling.

The waters themselves are, as I mentioned, heavily metallic. In Marianske Lazne, they actually had a pleasant taste (to me at least), a more mild mineral flavor, kind of like warmed-up seltzer. In Karlovy Vary, the waters had a much, much stronger flavor. From what I could tell, they probably have a heavy iron content, as the first flavor that popped into my head when I drank was that it tasted like blood. According to some sources, it was recommended to patients at times that they consume as much as 5 litres per day of the waters -- but I can't imagine doing that was very good for you.

As I mentioned before, these towns were very popular sights for Jewish tourism specifically. My theory is that this had nothing to do with any particular attachment by Jews to spas, but rather that they were the destinations that epitomized middle class style, and Jews over the course of the late 19th century entered the growing urban middle class in numbers far disproportionate to other ethnic populations. As I mentioned, an entire, rather disturbing, genre of postcards quite popular at these places featured rabidly anti-Semitic stereotypes. The postcards were ubiquitous indicating how popular they were as souveniers (and still seem to be: the postcard shown here, with the caption "Gruss aus Karlsbad" -- Greetings from Karlsbad -- I took from an on-line catalog of anti-Semitic postcards from a mainstream stamp and postcard collecting website -- http://www.stampcircuit.com/).

But whatever that world was, it has been totally effaced. In Marianske Lazne the only surviving indication of any Jewish presence is a stone marker in the park on the main Hlavni Trida. The marker is a monument to the synagogue that once stood in the city -- a monumental 19th century neo-Moorish building. I didn't realize until I crossed the street to look at it that, if you turned around, there was a large gap and vacant lot among what was otherwise an unbroken line of hotels and shops. It dawned on me that this lot was in fact the site of the shul -- the monument across the street, I guess, was put up to be more visible to passers by. The monument contains an image of the facade of the shul, beneath which is written first a verse from Tehillim (Psalms 118 -- לא אמות כי אחיה ואספר מעשי יה -- I shall not die but live to tell the works of God) and a platitude in Czech and German -- "Na pamet Marianskolazenskych Zidovskych Obcanu a synagogy postavene roku 1884, vypalene v noci za pogromu 9-10.11.1938 -- Nikdy nezapomine jme!"/"Zur erinnerung an die juedischen Buerger von Marienbad und die im Jahre 1884 Erbaute und in der Pogromnacht 9/10.11.1938 niedergebrannte Synagoge -- Vergessen wir nie!" (In memory of the Jewish citizens of Marianbad and the synagogue built in 1884 and destroyed by fire in the pogrom night [i.e., Kristallnacht] of November 9-10 1938 -- We do not forget!).

I frankly think the empty lot says a lot more than the stone.

Toby's response was very interesting. He really wanted to dig down into the snow to find the ground on the vacant lot (there was about 6 inches of packed snow -- with more falling constantly). I think he was hoping that he might find the floor of the building or something...but of course (as he found out), it's just dirt.

Nowadays, the towns are once again hopping after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kalovy Vary is the most surprising: it has become almost entirely Russian. I don't know the figures or the details, but from a casual observation, the tourist heart of the city is oriented firmly east. At almost every hotel and spa, Russian was the second (after Czech) if not the first language of menus and rates. Several buildings, many of them either old buildings that were being remodeled and subdivided into holiday apartments, had signs advertising the units exclusively in Russian.

I could not help but be struck by the irony. Not 20 years ago, the Soviets were regarded as brutal colonizers, occupying the country and imposing near-martial law after the protests of '68. They left in 1989...but now their successors are, arguably, more influential (in terms of the tourist economy) than ever.

Prague Reflections 2: Jews and the lack thereof

Of course, as a Jewish historian the main goal of this trip was to once again try and make sense of the locations I visited as the loci of significant, modernizing Jewish populations at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. In so doing, it is impossible to avoid encountering the ways in which the small remnant -- both of people and of sites -- as they exist today. I have to admit, this encounter gave me a great deal more to think about that I expected.

The Jewish world of Prague, it goes without saying, is so dimished as to not even qualify as a pale reflection (or whatever cliche you like) of what once was. A city that boasted one of the oldest continuous Jewish settlements in Europe (although, if you want to be technical about it, it was interrupted very briefly in 1744 -- thanks for blowing the perfect game, Maria Theresa!), Jewish Prague is as old, and arguably older, than the idea of Prague as a municipal center itself. It is certainly older than this comparatively recent phenomenon known as a Czech national identity. But so it goes everywhere...this is not intended to be a comparative claim polemic.

Sufficed to say, the Jewish world of Prague -- and indeed of the Czech Lands in general (Bohemia and Moravia) was deep and broad. Keep that in mind as I describe what is left.

In Prague itself, there are two primary bodies that continue to represent some aspect of the Jewish world of Prague in its original loci of the central city, the official Jewish community of Prague (Židovská obec v Praze [ŽOP]) under the leadership of Rabbi Karel (Ephraim) Sidon and the Prague Jewish Museum authority. Please note that this is a somewhat impressionistic account: in fact, a liberal/Reform organization, Bejt Simcha, is also present and, because of its enterprising founder/tourguide, serves as a frequent interface both among American Jews visiting Prague and Czechs with an interest in Judaism. A Chabad, not surprisingly, is also present. But by and large, that which is officially "Jewish" in Prague falls under the auspices of these two organizations.

This division is a telling indication of the state of affairs. Judaism in Prague is in fact a relic, a museum, and even in its active life more a placeholder of a former world than a living creature. I say this not to disparage (although more about that below), but to observe. I'll discuss each in turn.

First the kehilla. Toby and I, because of the convenience of our identity as shomer Shabbat Jews, were able to have an unmediated and extensive encounter with what survives as a religiously-active Jewish Prague. We spent all of Shabbat in and out of the Altneuschul, what seemed to me to serve as the central location of Shabbat life (although it appears that the Jerusalemska synagogue is also functioning for Shachrit services on Shabbat, although I was unable to find any clear indication of it being open at all -- the policemen posted in front of it at all times were not very illuminating on that score).

The Altneuschul thus is the de facto locus of the main "Orthodox" community (although officially there is no other community; the kehilla doesn't recognize Bejt Simcha). Rabbi Sidon, it turned out, was there, as were other men who were clearly regulars, including the gentleman who was our liason for the apartment, Jacob Shvab. There was a hasidic gentleman (I assume was the local Chabad emissary), three or four older gentlemen (one of whom turned out to be the gabbai rishon, the others clearly "machers" in the shul), and a few others, some of them clearly ba'alei teshuva or, as is more likely, converts. One family I whom I became briefly acquainted with through Toby (he has the most amazing knack for making friends without speaking their language -- Toby spoke not a word of Czech, the kid he played with all Shabbat not a word of English) who seemed to be regulars didn't even live in Prague, but 100 km outside, and rented an apartment in Prague for Shabbat and holidays.

Without exception, the community was warm and welcoming -- even the Czech security guards, once they recognized you as a shomer Shabbat person and stopped grilling you every time you tried to enter. And I have to say, there is something awesome about being able to walk past the throngs of tourists who are standing around the entrance, forbidden from entering on Shabbat, and walk in the door without a second glance. After Kabbalat Shabbat and Shacharit the next day, Toby and I returned for Mincha. We were then able to enter the other main Jewish sight under the administration of the kehillah, the Jewish town hall (see the picture: it is the building with the clocks next to the Altneuschul). Here we enjoyed a small seudah shlishit (third Shabbat meal), with most of the regulars from the synagogue in attendance. Oh -- one other thing -- I was given an aliyah during Shacharit. Now, those who know me know I'm not the most sentimental when it comes to religion, but I think that after having an aliyah in the Maharal's synagogue, just a couple of meters from the seat in which he and his illustrious predecessors and successors sat, has pretty much made any future aliyah superfluous. I came away from Shabbat really on cloud nine.

My ecstasy was quite completely punctured by my encounter with the other institutional body, the Prague Jewish Museum authority. All of the other Jewish sights of the town center, including the cemetery, the Maisel synagogue, the Pinkas synagogue, the Hevra Kadisha hall, and the Spanish synagogue are under the administration by the PJM. None of the sights functions in any way as a sacred site anymore, all have been turned into museum space and tourist attractions.

When Toby and I paid the exorbitant fee to enter these sights (500 crowns for the two of us; higher than any other tourist sight we visited on the trip), I will readily admit that my mood was swinging towards irritated. But that was just the beginning. Entering the Spanish synagogue first, we encountered a fantastic example of late 19th century neo-Moorish style, ornamentation that was among the most extensive I've ever seen in a comparable building of the period. It was both gaudy and fantastic. Of course, as I am writing an article on these buildings, I needed to take notes on it. Everywhere were hung signs that forbade photography...so fine, I thought, I'll take notes with the recorder in my I-phone. I happily went my way, walking around commenting on the details of the shul, respectful of the ridiculous injunction against photography (because it actually is ridiculous, and cynical, to forbid photography inside; the excuse is that flash photography would damage the site somehow -- although I never use a flash; the real reason is that the PJM wants to have exclusive monetary rights to any images of the buildings). The museum exhibitions were somewhat interesting but poorly executed and arranged.

As Toby and I were making our circuit of the building, the ugliness began. While holding my phone/recorder, a Czech woman, in her late 70s if not older, accosted me loudly: "No photographs!" I showed her the recorder, invited her to examine it, and said, politely, that this was a phone recorder, not a camera. "No photographs!" she yelled louder and with undisguised hostility. I protested, again, that it was not a camera. Her response: "It is camera. No photographs!" Now I was mad. Clearly, she didn't understand enough English for me to explain, so I simply said, "I'm an academic, this is a recorder, I'm following the rules, so please go away," and turned my back. She followed me for a few minutes, and then went away, apparently satisfied that she'd done her job when no flashes emanated from my phone.

Now, I wouldn't make more of this, as much as it annoyed me, were it not for the next day, when Toby and I went to the second synagogue that has been desecrated by the PJM association to form the other "half" of the museum exhibit, the Maisel synagogue. I had gotten over the previous day's irritations. Toby and I walked around the main floor of the building, and once we had seen everything, we looked up, and saw clearly that there were more exhibits in what had been the women's gallery, and also that there were other museum patrons walking around up there. To this day I don't know who they were. Toby and I looked around the building trying to find the access point to the gallery. Having no success, I approached this building's own old Czech woman sitting to make sure no one was (gasp!) taking a picture, and asked, politely, how one got to the gallery, gesturing in case she didn't understand me. "No upstairs!" she yelled. Yelled -- I do not exaggerate. I looked up, and saw people up there, and began (for some reason...I still don't know why I bothered) to protest that there were people up there. With indignation that would have been appropriate if I had vilely insulted her mother, she looked at me, "NO!" she actually shouted again. And again, "NO!" I could not help myself; I said with a smile knowing that she likely did not understand me, "Could you say that once more? I didn't hear you the first three times," and turned on my heel...I heard her muttering in Czech at me so that I could hear as I walked away. Had I really been quick I would have turned around and yelled "Rozumim cesky!"[I understand Czech] at her to see if it would cause her any embarrassment to think I understood her mutterings, but to be honest, I was shaken, and couldn't think that far out of the situation.

Now, I can stomach many things. And while I am neither a patient nor a particularly thick-skinned person, one thing I do take very seriously is being a guest in another country. I go out of my way to cooperate, to not make myself stand out, to be polite, to respect that I am visiting another culture and another society, and that I should comport myself as such. It is a point of pride for me.

And because of that, I can tolerate many things. I can stomach seeing these beautiful buildings, once a vibrant part of Jewish daily life (or even not-so-daily, but at least present life), rendered sterile, mothballed relics. I can stomach the fact that the artifacts on display in these shuls, as Toby very keenly and sadly noticed again and again, were taken away from the people who used them and now can't be used the way they're supposed to be (I am so proud of my boy, by the way), and are now in the possession of an institution that indicates no sense of their living meaning. I can even, barely, stomach that I am being charged for the privilege of going into a synagogue, with the money NOT going towards the support of a living Jewish community, but an institution that whose raison d'etre is to see the sites remaining, for all intents and purposes, tombs (and in the disturbing case of the Pinkas synagogue, as close to a real tomb as one can get without actual bodies).

But I discovered that there is a limit for me. And that limit is being made to feel like an intruder, a bother, a disturbance in these very sights, which was exactly the aim and attitude of these pitiful Czech women. And I am not comforted by my awareness that they knew Toby and I were not only foreigners, but Jewish foreigners (Toby's tsitsit were out, and we both took off our winter hats while inside the shuls -- even though we were careful not to wear our kippot outside, I felt that I had a right to be Jewish in a goddam shul!).

And I have to say, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Never have I been so clearly aware that I was most certainly NOT welcome. Oh, sure, I was welcome to pay my 500 crowns, walk quickly and quietly and for God's sake NOT take any pictures and then get the hell out, but I was not welcome.

I have a hard time processing this feeling. But I guess if I had to, it would go something like this: I am offended at the pure, unadulterated chutzpah (for lack of a better word) of being treated like this in a Jewish place, a Jewish building built by people whose descendants, had they not been sent on a train to Terezin and then to Auschwitz, would have not only probably been happy to see me spending Shabbat in their community, but likely invited me for Shabbat dinner some of them. I am offended -- I am outraged -- that these two Czech women, both without a doubt alive to see these same Jews who lived and worked and worshiped in these buildings put on said trains (when there were trains, and watched them walk out on foot when there weren't), felt they had the right to make me and my son feel like nuisances and an intruders.

I know I'm probably reading too much into it; here are two little old ladies who have to deal with hundreds of tourists every day, and who don't have a lot of patience for anything from any one individual. They just want to get their paycheck, not be bothered too much, and go home to their apartments and knedliky. In other words, it's nothing personal. But when was it ever? And if one can't expect a modicum of decency in places like these, where such decency would at least convey a degree of respect for the place (which I doubt these women have either), where can one ever hope for it?

Actually, outraged doesn't quite cover it.

Prague Reflections

I can't deny that I had expectations on going back to Prague, the first time in a decade and a half. After all, it was where I spent perhaps the most formative semester of my college career. More importantly, of course, it was the point of origin of Kara's and my relationship. It is a place I remember fondly.

But this time, the trip was supposed to be (at least in part) all about business. I was coming to Prague with a very different set of goals than I had had the first time. Then, it was about experience, self-discovery -- all that college-y crap. This time, it was about trying to see the locus of so much that has disappeared, but which is so vividly a part of my professional life. It was about trying to grasp the physical geography of the world in which my subjects lived.

To that end, me and my intrepid research assistant Toby, set out in the middle of one of the colder Central European winters in recent memory, to wander around Prague and, weather permitting, the spa towns of Western Bohemia.

When we arrived, after a day that began at 2:30 am in Jerusalem, to an absolutely freezing Prague. Strangely, I had never been to Ruzne airport (to my readers who know Czech, please forgive the lack of diacritics -- I can't make them work on this blogging site!) -- the last time I was in Prague, I took the very poor advice of flying to Frankfurt and taking a train...which added about 12 hours to the journey. The airport today offered the first of what would be a consistent experience of the entire trip: a city that has come very far towards becoming a west European city, with all that is good and bad about that (in my opinion, mostly bad)...but still had not gone all the way. The airport was as sterile as Luden or De Gaulle (or Ben Gurion, for that matter, which it probably resembles most) the same yellow signs now synonymous with international air travel, the same duty free shops, and on and on. Yet, there was no gate for our arrival -- only a shuttle bus that brought us from the freezing tarmac to the terminal.

We were met by a driver at the baggage claim, a man that I can only describe as about the most typical Czech driver I've ever seen. Portly, full head of grey hair and trimmed but unkempt beard, wire rimmed, aviator-style eyeglasses...he could have been written by Kundera. That I liked -- for a while. It would be a few days before I would remember what came along with this picturesqueness.

We arrived in Prague...and as hackneyed as it is to say, it really was just as I remembered it. We drove down Evropska, but turned towards the castle before hitting Dejvica, taking Horakove to Badanelho, and down around the front of the castle. When I saw the 22 tram, which runs along the same route from Bila Hora, it was like a homecoming.

Then things were different. As a student, living in a dorm in Dejvica, I had never really approached the Stare Mesto and Josefov from a car. I had always taken the Metro from Dejvicka station to Mustek, and then gotten hopelessly lost walking from the boundaries of the New and Old Towns towards the river. For the first time, I realized how compact the city actually is. In what seemed like less than two minutes, we had crossed the Vlatava on Manesuv bridge, and were immediately in the middle of Josefov. Two turns, past the Altneuschul, down Parizska to Siroka to Elisky Krasnohorkse...and stopped on a magnificent street of c. 1900 Art Nouveau apartment blocks to our apartment for the week, which looked out upon four gargantuan pink atlantes. It was exactly what I had come to see.

Although we were tired, Toby and I started out immediately. We crossed the street, and found ourselves facing the Spanish Synagogue with its appallingly bizarre statue of Franz Kafka. I took it in. I have been writing about synagogues like the Spanish for months now, trying to get my head around not just the buildings but the mise-en-scene, and here was one of the finest standing examples, literally around the corner from where we would be living for the next eight days. After sitting for a few minutes in the Pasta Cafe, attached to the entrance to the Jewish Museum (which I will describe in more detail later), to call Kara -- we needed wireless to use Skype on my I-phone -- and I should add that it worked wonderfully.

We walked about two blocks and found ourselves in the Staremestske Namesti. This was a place I had not spent much time at years ago -- in fact, I avoided for the most part the tourist areas to the extent that I could. The good thing about coming during a cold snap at the beginning of December was that, at least for the first few days, we had these spaces almost to ourselves. Even the stalls set up for the Christmas fair on the square were affected -- only about 2/3 of them opened, the rest of the merchants didn't bother to show up until the weather improved.

These were the best days. The weather was terrible, and thus the tourists were very few in number.

I had not realized, and was delighted to find, how thoroughly modern Josefov had been made at the turn of the 20th century. The buildings, almost every one, were built between 1890 and 1910, all of them showed a degree of design and craftsmanship -- even the more modest ones such as were on our block -- that showed the neighborhood to have been re-designed with a very affluent clientele in mind. The old Jewish neighborhood (which tourists are still mistakenly believing they are looking at when they walk around Josefov) is really nowhere to be found -- indeed, it was probably through an act of the same sentimentality that allowed for the survival of those buildings (the Altneuschul, the cemetery, the Hevra Kadisha hall, the Maiselova and the Pinkas synagogues) that still do stand of the old neighborhood. The rest is long gone...but so much the better for my project, as it shows precisely the cultural factors at work in the neighborhood's construction (if you want me to elaborate, check out my book when it's published in about three years :-))...

OK, it is getting late...more in the next few installments!