Jewish Czech Republic

The Jews arrived in the Czech Lands as early as during the time of the Great Moravian Empire in the 9th century. They first passed through as merchants and later started settling down permanently here. A report by an Arab-Jewish merchant, Ibrahim Ibn Yaqoub, written in 965, refers to the presence of Jewish merchants in Prague marketplaces. At first, Jews lived either in separate enclosed courts or, for safety and religious reasons, in small settlements. At the time, they founded these freely, with the permission of the ruler, in places which they found suitable, probably close to international or local markets. Their situation was affected, however, by the Crusades and restrictions which pushed them to the margins of society. They were the direct subjects of the king, who provided protection to them for which, however, they had to pay. From the end of the 13th to the end of the 18th century the Jews were mostly forced to live in ethnically enclosed settlements. Different kinds of settlements emerged; in some places, mainly in the country, they were just a cluster of cottages, in other places rows of houses along one or both sides of a “Jewish“ street, and in places where a larger number of Jewish families lived Jewish quarters were founded. Jewish streets and quarters were most often referred to as V židech [At the Jews], which corresponded to the Spanish Judería , German Judengasse or Judestadt and the French Juiverie. The now common term ghetto started taking root from the 16th century. The largest ghetto in the Czech Lands was the Jewish Town of Prague; other large ghettoes included, for example, Mikulov and Boskovice in Moravia.