Passover Tragedy of Prague
by Pearl Herzog
On Passover, more than six hundred years ago, as a result of young Jewish boys playing with some pebbles, almost the entire Prague community was massacred — three thousand Jews perished, many women and children were baptized and the Jewish quarter was burned and ransacked.
What enraged the non-Jews to such an extent that a mob was incited enough to destroy gravestones, and scatter the remains of dead bodies they exhumed from Prague’s Jewish cemetery?
The answer lies in the powerful narrative that developed about Jews in late medieval Europe, the host desecration accusation.
Beginning in Paris in the year 1290, and taking place throughout Europe for the next two centuries, Jews were accused of desecrating the Eucharist, the wafer that Christians believed embodied their savior. For two hundred years, violent anti-Jewish activity took place in areas from Catalonia to Bohemia where region wide massacres and cleansing took place.
The terrible tragedy that took place in Prague on April 18, 1389, as a result of this accusation is considered the most tragic period in the city’s Jewish history.
Easter Sunday that year coincided with the last day of Pesach. A priest who was leading the Easter procession through the ghetto was hit by some pebbles and caught in the cross fire of some Jewish children playing in a sandbox. The priest, who was carrying an eucharistic wafer claimed that pebbles hitting him, made him drop the host.
He insisted that the community purposely plotted against. him. The priest’s followers beat up the boys. The parents of the boys came to the defense of their children. The clergy led byJešek Čtyrhranný riled up the mobs to take vengeance. A mob was then incited to attack the ghetto. Jews were bludgeoned to death with axes and killed with bows and arrows.
The synagogue was destroyed and the Torah scrolls were trampled and stepped on. The buildings were set ablaze and the homes were pillaged.
According to a Latin parody Christians fell upon all Jews, amputating their limbs one by one…….
The following Monday, it was decided that the Jews should be legally punished. Five tons of silver were demanded and taken from them.
Rabbi Avigdor ben Yitzchok Kara a liturgist who composed many piyutim including Echad Yachid Umyuchod which is sung while a chosson is pelted with candies and nuts during his aufruf, authored Es Kol Hatela’ah, (All the Afflictions). This liturgical poem describes the persecution and slaughter of Jews in Prague in 1389 which he witnessed. This piyut used to be recited every year in Prague on Yom Kippur in commemoration of the tragedy.
Here is an English translation of some of the lines of the Hebrew piyut:*
“…Chastisement hit flourishing Prague in the year five thousand one hundred and forty-nine after creation,
As the just fell before evil, the line spoilt
How the staff of fortitude, the rod of magnificence, has been broken
Blood touched blood in that spring month,
on the last day of Passover, the feast of sweet salvation
and Now a roasting fire has burnt me, has baked the Matzos
since I have heard the libel of many and danger around me
Evil men’s counsel was heard on this woeful day
Rushing, running nameless sons of villainy
Each of them with weapons in hand, bows and arrows,
with axes they came like wood cutters,
From every gate, from every opening they entered,
gathering in groups, hovering in troops,
their chants tremulous and joyful,
as they spilt pure blood for swift robbery, to do and to have done with……..”
*Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews by Miri Rubin, (c) 1999 University of Pennsylvania Press, See appendix, pp. 196-198
About the writer:(Dr.) Pearl (Preschel) Herzog teaches Jewish History at Kean University. Her Ph.d. dissertation submitted to N.Y.U. was a history of the Jews of the Greek island of Corfu. She is the publisher and editor of American Jewish Times, a biweekly newspaper that appears in Lakewood, N.J..