Browse Items (150 total)
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Pinkas hakehilla
This large bound volume containing 420 folios out of an original 454, constitutes one of the oldest preserved communal books (so-called pinkas) of the Jewish community from the Castlemount area of Bratislava. The book records the incomes and expenses of individual community members between the years 1764 and 1792, including over 540 heads of households. A special sheet is asigned to every taxpayer; in the case of higher fees, additional sheets are also reserved for these. The records are divided into two parts, debits and credits, and in the event of death the required fees were deducted from the bequest and payment duties transferred automatically to the widow of the deceased. Fees were collected four times a year at intervals of two or three months (in the months of Cheshvan, Shevat, Iyar and Tammuz); later, this practice of collecting fees was fixed for every half-year (in Cheshvan and Iyar) and over the last few years the fees were collected only once a year. There was a compulsory tax to pay for the protection of the Jewish quarter by municipal guards and a regular, annual religious tax. In some exceptional cases, we come across communal fees linked to the Jewish life cycle (wedding, burial, etc.). The oldest records often have an entry of the last fee from an older communal book appended to them in order to allow for the smooth transfer of fees from the original registry. The community offices probably kept several communal books at once, listing further tax duties for managing business affairs, direct and indirect taxes for the feudal landlord, and other Jewish fees. -
Memorial plaque commemorating the soldiers who fell in World War I
This modest plaque from Bratislava’s Neolog synagogue features evocative patriotic lines from the Hungarian poet Mihály Vörösmarty’s 1836 Szózat (Appeal), followed by a listing in golden letters of local Jewish soldiers who fell on the battlefields of the First World War. Its design and message place it among other similar, simple pieces arising from a painful dilemma of commemoration. The sons and husbands of Jews in Slovakia had fought and died for the Monarchy as Hungarian Jews. Yet the state in which their community now lived depended on the collapse of the Monarchy, and its continued existence depended on securing its borders against the revisionist ambitions of the interwar Hungarian government. When the Jewish community in Budapest initiated a memorial project to create a Heroes’ Temple (Hősök Temploma) memorial to honor all fallen Jewish soldiers from the entire territory of the former Kingdom of Hungary, the Czechoslovak administration closely followed potential Slovak Jewish participation in the project, deeply suspicious of a project extending beyond Hungary’s Trianon borders. As Budapest Jewry sought to engage Neolog Jewish communities in Slovakia with the project, Slovak Jews pulled away. Rather than participate in the Budapest-based memorial, Jews in Slovakia chose to commemorate their dead locally: in their towns, and in their synagogues and cemeteries. Plaques such as this one allowed Jews in Slovakia to honor their war dead without incurring political stigma. -
Bachurim (students of the Pressburg yeshiva)
A yeshiva is a Jewish school of higher education focusing particularly on study of the Talmud and religious law (Halacha). The head of the yeshiva (rosh yeshiva) was usually the chief rabbi; in some cases, yeshivas were headed by local rabbis as well as private scholars. The operation of the yeshiva and care for students was mostly provided by the Jewish community and sometimes by communal and educational foundations or charitable societies. Yeshiva graduates often performed the functions of the rabbi in Jewish communities. The beginnings of the Bratislava yeshiva go back to the end of the 17th century, yet the first credible reports date from the 1720s, when the school was headed by Chief Rabbi Moshe Lemberger. After his death (in 1758), the institution was enhanced by his successors, Rabbis Akiva Eger, Meir Barby and Meshulam Eger. The yeshiva reached its peak under Rabbi Moses Schreiber (the Chatam Sofer) who reorganized the school’s management from scratch, introduced a fixed structure for the educational curriculum, developed a system of social and financial support for the yeshiva and its students (including a dormitory and canteen) and took part in the creation of educational and supportive societies for the further advancement of the institution. The yeshiva consisted of educational subsections (yeshiva gedola, yeshiva ketana, kollel) for different levels of study. In the following years, his sons and their descendants continued to head the yeshiva without interruption until 1938; in fact, the pedagogical activity of the yeshiva was carried out to a limited extent until 1940. Ten years later, the Pressburg yeshiva was reopened in Israel, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Kiriyat Moshe. Ateret Bachurim, the debating club of yeshiva students, was also among the yeshiva’s educational societies and the photograph of this club dates from 1899/1900. -
Parochet
This Torah curtain (parochet) has ornamental and floral applications. Above, the abbreviation for Keter Torah (Crown of the Torah) can be seen. The Hebrew inscription includes the Hebrew year and place of the Jewish community, Yergen, a Hebrew name for Svätý Jur, a small town in western Slovakia near Bratislava. In German it was called Sankt Georgen, and in Hungarian Szentgyörgy. It became known in the Jewish world when religious authority and fierce defender of Orthodoxy Moshe Schick served here as a rabbi in 1838-1868, before he moved to Chust in Ruthenia. -
Cemetery in Častá
The new Jewish cemetery is located about 500-600 meters south-east of the edge of the village, next to a farm. A rectangular flat compound with north-east to south-west orientation, it is today hidden by mature trees that have turned the area into a pleasant location. Sections of the original stone walls remain and traces of the cemetery chapel can be found on the north-eastern side. This was the original entrance to the compound: a long, narrow strip of land, which once provided road access, remains to this day in Jewish ownership.
Access to the cemetery is now from the south-east, where the local civic association that maintains the site has placed an entrance structure, bench and information panel. There are about 100 marked graves in the compound. Ninety are organized in seven rows in one part, and about ten more are dispersed in the north-eastern section.
The cemetery was established in the second half of the 19th century to replace the old cemetery near the castle. Older headstones are traditional vertical stellae (matzevot), some of them with semi-circular endings. Some older gravestones are textually rich, with poetic Hebrew texts commemorating the deceased, as was common in the past.
Later tombstones are of the obelisk type, with Hebrew text on one side and vernacular (mostly German, but with one in Slovak) on the reverse. Many headstones are only fragments, but the local civic association is gradually restoring the site and re-assembling the tombstones. The cemetery is the property of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Slovak Republic.
Tags Bratislava Region -
Cemetery in Modra
The Jewish cemetery in Modra was located on today’s Šúrska Street, which is the southern thoroughfare of the town. It was razed in 1960 and its land now belongs to the local municipality. However, it did not disappear into complete oblivion. In 1999, a group of local activists cleaned and marked the site of the cemetery. A granite plaque was mounted on the remaining cemetery wall. A matzevah (tombstone) was carefully reassembled from three fragments and is attached to the wall. It belongs to Samuel Blau, who passed way in 1850 at the age of 71. Another matzevah is a broken fragment with only the stone maker’s sign in Hebrew letters: Leicht Pressburg.Tags Bratislava Region -
Synagogue in Modra
Throughout its history Modra has been a prosperous wine-growing town situated among the vineyards of the Small Carpathian hills. Its German-speaking inhabitants blocked the establishment of a Jewish presence for centuries. A small Jewish community was established here only during the second half of the 19th century. The synagogue, dating from 1902, is located on the southern edge of the historical part of the town, in the line of the town’s original fortification walls. The character of the building remains legible: a tri-partite façade vertically divided by lesenes and topped by an arched molding. Modern windows have replaced the historical round-arched fenestration and most of its decorative details have disappeared. The postwar owners completely altered the interior. The synagogue currently serves as a studio for an artist from Bratislava.Tags Bratislava Region -
Cemetery in Studienka
The rather forlorn cemetery is located in a pine forest, about 300-400 meters east of the edge of the village. The flat plot belongs to the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Slovak Republic. Only four fallen tombstones, belonging to Moshe Beckmann, Jakob Grünhut, Emanuel (Mendel) Pissk and Regina Kohn remain. They have Hebrew-German texts.Tags Bratislava Region -
Cemetery in Závod
The cemetery is located in the northern part of village in a residential area. It is a small walled lot containing about fourteen graves, seven with standing tombstones. The local Jewish community was small: there were 17 Jewish residents here in 1927. The oldest tombstones are typical sandstone matzevot with semi-circular endings, while three later tombstones are period-typical black granite obelisks. The latest grave is from 1915 (Amalie Kohn). Several tombstones belong to the Weisz family. These include the neighboring graves of Adolf (Aaron Yehuda) and Regina (Rivkah), Marie (Mirel) and Nathan. Nathan’s sons Robert and Sándor Weisz, who died as little children, are buried in a twin grave and share a matzevah. The tombstone texts are bilingual, in Hebrew and German. The cemetery is in fair condition, and is maintained by the neighbors.Tags Bratislava Region