Thoughts from Bohemia

Jan 18, 2024

They say time slows down when you experience new things.  After half a month in Europe, I can confirm that to be completely true. These past weeks have been some of the longest of my life in the best possible way. A truly necessary cleanse from the most hellish semester of grad school yet.

As you know, I spent my winter break searching for remnants of Jewish Europe as part of my research for Magicians of the Book, the Adult fantasy thriller novel I'm working on. I spent one week in Prague, notorious for its Ashkenazi Jewish history, and one week in Southern Spain, a pre-Inquisition hub of Sephardic Judaism. I am now full of thoughts, musings, and knowledge! So much, in fact, that I have to make two separate posts about it. I'll start with the first leg of the journey: Prague.

Bohemia

After a week in Prague, I can make a plug for the place as an incredible visitor destination. Eastern Europe is extremely cheap, and very beautiful and easy to navigate. The Prague Jewish Museums were thorough and extensive, with five different synagogues, the Ceremonial Hall, and the Jewish Cemetery. The entry ticket is good for three days because that's how long it takes to go to all of the exhibits. I'll upload more photos in a separate post. Just know that the museum was brilliant and I needed all three of those days to see everything.

My favorite part of the Jewish Museum circuit was the Ceremonial Hall. The hall is a very old building connected to the cemetery, with two floors of exhibits devoted to Jewish lifecycle traditions from birth to death. This was probably the most valuable part of the circuit in terms of information for worldbuilding. Rituals are a fundamental part of being Jewish. Judaism isn't just a faith, but a culture, one that has survived so many millennia because its people continue to practice the traditions, the languages, and the customs. It won't be possible to write a recognizably Jewish novel without incorporating those things. As you might imagine, I spent a few hours in there.

My second favorite part of the circuit was the Spanish Synagogue. This synagogue is the newest of all of the synagogues, built in 1868. Its architecture and decoration is strongly influenced by Moorish tradition, including the Alhambra of Granada (which I cannot wait to talk about in the next post). This synagogue was heartbreakingly beautiful, with the floors and walls completely covered in geometric designs. The Spanish Synagogue exhibits are devoted to the period of time from the 1780s to shortly after the second World War. Not so valuable for the book I want to write, which is set just before this time period, but I found it interesting, nonetheless. Also, the Czech Collegium forms several chamber music orchestras, which perform weekly concerts in this synagogue. I went to one of the concerts, and I consider it a highlight of the trip. The orchestra played Bernstein's Barber of Seville Overture and Orff's Carmina Burrana, as well as a few other pieces. The soprano opera singer, in particular, was absolutely brilliant.

If you’re not certain what Barber of Seville Overture is, go ahead and give it a listen. You’ll probably recognize it.

The Pinkas Synagogue is the second-oldest surviving synagogue in Prague. Its walls are completely covered in the names of the Czech Jews who died in the Shoah. 77,000 people. Every inch of wall covered in writing. 

It was hard to walk through this synagogue and not think about the horrific violence Israel is currently committing against Palestine.  30,000 civilians dead in three months with no end to the war in sight. Art Spiegelman, the author of the graphic novel Maus, once said, "Suffering does not make people good. It just makes them suffer." But I'm starting to wonder if suffering actually makes people worse, carving deep, lasting wounds that, when left untreated, carry into the next generation, and the next, and so on. One would think a people who suffered so mightily and who lost so much would be reluctant to inflict the same pain upon another group of people. But maybe carrying out the same violence, in some bizarre, awful way, actually eases the generations-old agony of a wound that never closed. I wonder if, one hundred years from now, there will be museums in Gaza with walls covered in the names of the innocent Palestinians killed during this war and all of the others. If descendants of today's Israelis will walk through these museums and remark on how monstrous it all was, and how of course, they would never have taken part in something so evil.

I won't lie, my immersion in old Jewish Prague made me think long and hard about whether it's ethical for me to write this particular novel right now, given Israel's current atrocities. Magicians of the Book is set in an entirely Jewish world, completely absent of the classic Jewish themes of oppression and resilience. In the world of the novel, Judaism isn't defined by the suffering experienced by the Jews at the hands of some cruel majority group. In this world, everyone is some shade of Jewish, be it Ashkenazi, Sephardic, or Mizrahi, and because of this, no one suffers for their faith. But this condition, unfortunately, makes me think of Israel, the only Jewish-majority nation on Earth, and how their freedom and safety is built upon the subjugation of others. Given current horrific events, would it be in poor taste for me to replicate this setting in a novel, even if the fictional setting isn't formed of the same violence?

I don't have an answer. I don't know if there is one. And even though "Israel" doesn't equal "Jews" and even though the ongoing war is driven by colonialism and empire, rather than by faith and religion, it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Something I'll have sit with and work through, I guess.

Aside from the Jewish museum, I did many other things in Prague. I climbed to the top of the Astronomical Tower, hiked Petřín Hill, and walked through Hradčany, the Castle District. I drank beer in Old Town Square and ate potato dumplings in Vinohrady. I tried kolaches, traditional Czech pastries, and trdelník (chimney cakes), which have no historical value whatsoever, but to be honest, I liked way more.

I'm forever grateful that I can do things like this. Buy plane tickets that will take me halfway around the world so I can perform research that will make me a better novelist, experience things that will make me a better artist, and be forced into ethical quandaries that will make me a better person. I wish America funded its artists like Canada and Ireland do with their Arts Councils. I wish everyone on Earth could do things like this. How rich and beautiful this world would be if they could.

Until next time (which will be very soon because I can't wait to talk about Southern Spain),

xx Claire