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Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 16Focusing on Jewish Popular Culture and Its Afterlife$
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Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 16: Focusing on Jewish Popular Culture and Its Afterlife

Michael C. Steinlauf and Antony Polonsky

Print publication date: 2003

Print ISBN-13: 9781874774730

Published to Liverpool Scholarship Online: February 2021

DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774730.001.0001

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Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands

Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands

Chapter:
(p.505) Book Reviews Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands
Source:
Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 16
Author(s):

Hillel J. Kieval

Publisher:
Liverpool University Press
DOI:10.3828/liverpool/9781874774730.003.0030

This chapter explores Hillel J. Kieval's book, Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands. Kieval's Languages of Community demonstrates that the development of the community of Czech Jews in the period before the First World War was fraught with intense struggles against emerging Czech nationalism. In these interlinked essays, Kieval's primary emphasis is on the way in which the conflicts over language shaped the identities of the Czech Jews—a persuasive emphasis given the centrality of language in the definition of nationalisms in the Habsburg Empire. The fact that German was the primary spoken and written language of urban Jews was a particular irritant to Czech nationalists, who in the nineteenth century were seeking to turn Czech into the language of a new national culture. Like other Jews in the multi-ethnic empire, Czech Jews were caught between the German culture of the regime and the culture of their indigenous environment. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a Czech Jewish movement emerged which favoured the adoption of the Czech language and culture. But Kieval argues that this movement had only modest success, which was limited primarily to the abolition of German Jewish schools in the villages.

Keywords:   Hillel J. Kieval, Czech Jews, Czech nationalism, Czech Jewish identity, Habsburg Empire, German language, Czech nationalists, Czech language, Czech culture, Czech Jewish movement

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