| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
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Besides, it was not exhibiting local history, but history of the Incas of Peru. This would have been of some interest, but not for this trip.
We could walk around the grounds of the castle, take pictures of the valley below, etc. That was worthwhile, because like most castles it was built at the top of a steep hill. One thing that I found strange was that there was a kindergarten classroom, complete with class, in one of the buildings in the castle. Must be an interesting place to have kindergarten. Ten minutes alone there with Evelyn and I was literally climbing the walls. Luckily there was a nice view to photograph from the walls.
We came back down the steep hill and bought some lunch to eat on the bus. The bus soon crossed the border into Czechoslovakia. They have not been non-Communist for long and are still pretty paranoid at Customs. So they collected our passports. We went in to change money and found the following warning to motorists. The following is word-for-word what it said. Honest!
'Dear visitors,
Welcome in Czechoslovakia.
We wish you many pleasures in our country a [sic] we
hope you will enjoy the safety drive on our roads
without be mentioned at our statistic of traffic accidents.
The foreign drivers are responsible for 4893 traffic
accidents in Bohemia and Moravia in 1990. 128
persons was killed and 224 heavily injured.
Have a nice days in our country!'
I thinking from now days to come I write in styles like Czechoslovakia government. There words usage are wonderful happy.
Then again, maybe I won't.
Anyway, soon we were on our way. The Czech countryside is not as nice as Austria's and is just sort of rural--small farmhouses punctuating large fields.
The most obvious crop the Czech farmers grow is rape, a plant grown for its oil. Fields of rape are bright yellow rather than green.
We stopped to devour our lunches at a coffee stand and a grocery. The grocery did not have a whole lot. It had the Czech system that says everybody must carry a shopping basket on their arm. If there is no basket you wait until somebody comes out and leaves a basket. In this way they are sure the store is never overcrowded.
So I looked for prices of things but had a hard time. A covered cup of fruit juice had a little sticker that said '1.90.' 'What do you think that means?' I asked. Evelyn said, 'It costs 1.9 crowns.' 'Isn't a crown about three cents?' Then she got my point. Food prices in Czechoslovakia are not low, they are minuscule! We ended up buying some of this candy, some of that, a bag of something that looked a bit like corn curls. I even got myself an ice cream bar. It totalled to about 20 crowns or 66 cents. You cannot convert crowns back into dollars when you leave Czechoslovakia and you cannot spend your last crowns on food. You cannot use up your money on food. (P.S. When we left we had $3 left in crowns. I tried spending it on candy to snack on. I gave up after $2 because we just were ending up with too much candy to handle easily. We then bought two Cokes and a beer that we would give away the contents of, but we wanted the bottle for a friend. That was all we had time for and we still had some change we couldn't get rid of. Sam and Susan claim they always spend all their money in any currency, but fell well short of spending it all in Czechoslovakia.)
Examples of food prices: a big jar of pickles was 27 cents. The corn-curl-like stuff was actually of a consistency like corn curls but peanut-flavored. A three- or four-ounce bag was about 13 cents.
We got to the Hotel Panorama about 4:05 PM. This on a Friday afternoon. And we were leaving 9 AM on a Sunday. This is horribly frustrating timing. One of the most interesting things about Prague is the Jewish quarter. But everything you could go into there closes at 5 PM Friday and reopens Sunday morning. We would have to content ourselves with the outside of closed buildings. I particularly wanted to see the attic of the Altneuschul, where the Golem is said to be kept ready to be used again. I wondered how aware people locally were of the Golem of Prague. Well, even as we were getting our keys Evelyn saw a pamphlet of what was going on in Prague called 'Pra Golem' and it had a little sketch of the Golem as he appears in Czech films. So maybe I should explain what the Golem is.
Imagine one story that incorporates aspects of Robin Hood and Frankenstein. That is the folktale of the Golem of Prague. This has been a popular Jewish folktale that has been the subject of films in Germany, France, and Czechoslovakia. The historical basis is this: In the Middle Ages, if you exposed a crime to the law courts and a fine was levied, you could claim a piece of the fine. This law gave Jews a lot of trouble. Non-Jews had a misconception that Jews required the use of Christian blood in their ceremonies. The Church would teach this to explain why Christians were better people than Jews. One of the beliefs was that Christian blood was used in the making of matzoh. (This seems to be related to the belief that the Catholic wafer really becomes the body of Christ and if you prick it with a needle it will bleed with Christ's blood. In the Middle Ages, Jews were also accused of stealing the wafer and torturing it, an accusation that implies Jews really believed the wafer becomes Christ so Christians should believe it all the more. Very clever in a sinister sort of way.) In actual fact, the eating of blood in any form is strictly forbidden by the laws of kashrut and kosher meat is to be soaked until all the blood (and most of the flavor!) is gone.
But even a stupid idea is hard to disprove, particularly if it comes from the respect spiritual leaders of the community and it is impossible to prove Jews never use Christian blood even though they never do. (Barbara Iskowitz, from our Southeast Asia trip, was once working in the South someplace--I think she said it was Texas--and a co-worker kept staring at her head. When asked why, the co-worker said she knew that Jews had horns and was trying to figure out why she did not see them on Barbara's head. If people in the 20th Century believe Jews have horns, it is not surprising that religious hatred in the Middle Ages and later would convince many of just about any sort of libel made against the Jews.)
So everybody 'knew' the Jews used Christian blood. If one could just demonstrate it to the courts, one could get very rich.
Now at this time infant and child death from disease was very common and it was not difficult to obtain the body of a dead child. If one took such a body and planted it in the yard or the well of a Jew and then accused the Jew of ritual murder, the Jew would almost certainly lose. Courts would either believe the Christian, or believe the Jew and accept the word of the Christian. And winning could be worse than losing, since it could touch off anti-Jewish riots in which many were killed. It would not be uncommon-- according to historian Barbara Tuchman--for Jews to be locked in a synagogue and the synagogue burned. These 'blood libels' were a very bad matter.
Historically, we are told that in Prague, where the libels were particularly bad, a famous rabbi and mystic, Judah Lowe, went to Emperor Rudolf II and talked to him about the problem. Rudolf Hapsburg turned out to be, like some of his family before him, a reasonable man in an unreasonable time. He issued an edict saying simply that his courts would no longer consider blood-libel cases against Jews. Period. And at least under Hapsburg rule the accusations simply stopped.
That much is history. Now the folklore. While the libels were going on, as the story goes, Rabbi Lowe decided the Jewish ghetto needed a guardian and protector, someone strong and tireless. In his great knowledge of the book of Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah, he found the answer. The Bible says that to create man, God gathered the dust of the earth and breathed life into it. The Kabbalah tells how to call upon God to do it again, or perhaps how to do it oneself. Lowe collected clay and made a statue somewhere between seven-and-a-half and nine feet tall. He placed in it either in the forehead or the mouth a parchment with either a secret name of God or the Hebrew word for 'truth.' Then with the proper ritual Lowe brought this 'golem' to life. Joseph, as he was called, was nearly human but could not speak and was frightening of appearance.
The early Golem stories have a Superman or Robin Hood touch. Also a certain sameness. Some malefactor breaks into the ghetto with evil intent, but his plot is foiled when he is collared by the clay giant.
Later there came to be more stories that looked at whether having a golem might not be a mixed blessing. One story is a variant on 'The Sorceror's Apprentice,' in which someone in the Rabbi's household sent the Golem to fetch water but was unable to tell him to stop. Only the return of the Rabbi prevented a flood.
Other stories varied this theme, saying that the Golem developed a will of his own and became uncontrollable and a monster. These stories became incorporated into German folklore and were quite common. Mary Shelley said the idea of Frankenstein was taken from German folklore. Since golems were about the only artificial cultures in German folklore, FRANKENSTEIN was probably just a reframing of the Golem story.
Early German cinema had Paul Wegener playing the Golem as a very large wild-eyed man in DER GOLEM. A French-Czech film from 1935, if I remember correctly, had Harry Baur playing it as a statue of a more intelligent but also large man. It appeared in one bad English-language film called IT!. There the makeup was more artistic. It is much more angular and less human with a pointy head. The Czech version, as he appeared in at least two films and how he is portrayed on the street, is like a fat and rounded version of Gumby with what looks like a large bolted-on belt and with fleshy arms that end in big fists. I have claimed this Golem looks sort of like a blast furnace with fists. This Gumby-Golem is the only visualization you see in Prague and somewhat to my delight, you do see it. For example, it was a sort of logo on 'Pra Golem.'
We were very anxious to see the Jewish quarter so Evelyn, Steve, Mary, and I hopped a cab and got there just a little after 5 PM and all was locked up. I did take pictures of the Altneuschul, where the Golem was supposedly made and in whose attic the deactivated Golem rests, according to legend. The Altneuschul was much smaller than I'd pictured it. It covers no more ground than a fast-food restaurant, though it is taller. It has only one room inside. There is an interesting statue of Moses on one side. It is Moses as an old man, bent and tired. Not the way he is usually pictured.
We had not changed much money into crowns, having been told prices are low and you cannot change back. I blew what we had on a description of the Jewish quarter and two pottery golems--a particularly appropriate medium. We next saw the outside of the Jewish cemetery and I was quite surprised. It looked more like an expressionistic version of a Jewish cemetery. Grave stones were sort of piled together at different angles. The Jews wouldn't or were not allowed to bury elsewhere, so they buried their dead right over previous graves, sometimes twelve deep.
The more we saw of the architecture of Prague the stranger it looked, including the Jewish quarter. The way the ghetto was shown in the German DER GOLEM looked fanciful and weird. I now believe it to be much more accurate than I previously thought. Prague seems to be a beautiful and weird-looking city. It is unique in Eastern Europe, perhaps in all of Europe, as being one of the most strangely beautiful cities in the world. Church steeples look like court jesters' caps. Building look like a romanticist's version of the Middle Ages rather than the real Middle Ages. The town hall clock shows positions of the sun and the moon. On the hour it turns into a symphony of motion. Doors open and apostles come looking out and other figures in front move around. This is really a unique city. |
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