By Yale Strom
SAN DIEGO — One of the most popular travel destinations in Europe is the Czech Republic. In its beautiful capital city, Prague, the most visited tourist attraction is the former Jewish ghetto in the old city. It was in this Jewish ghetto that Rabbi Jehudah Loew ben Bezalel (The Maharal) wrote the story “The Golem”, which inspired Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” I first traveled to Prague in 1981. Here is an excerpt about that trip from my book, A Wandering Feast.
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The building I was in – the Jewish Town Hall –had been built by Marcus Mordecai Meisel, the banker of the emperor of Bohemia at the end of the sixteenth century. It was rebuilt after a fire burned a large section of it in 1754. At that time, a unique clock with Hebrew characters for numerals and with hands that ran backwards was added. It was rather dark inside as all the curtains were drawn and the lights were either quite dim or not turned on at all.
I noticed this in a lot of the buildings I had been in during my trek. It was a way to save money on electricity during the long winter months. With all of the hallways leading to one staircase or another, closed doors opening to room after room and the squeaking, scratching, and muffled sounds of disembodied voices filtering through the walls, I felt as if I was walking in a haunted house. Perhaps the legend that “The Golem” still existed and crept at night through the buildings in the former Jewish ghetto was true?
After perusing some old dusty books for two hours in one of the anterooms off the main archival room, I got up to go look for a bathroom. I heard some singing that sounded like a cantorial coming from a room above me. It was rather good and nothing like I had heard in Budapest. I wanted to meet whoever was singing but first I had to locate this room. I thought I was on the top floor… so where was the staircase the lead to this attic chamber?
Down the hallway, a left here, a right here, and finally I found the elusive staircase. This part of the building had once been a shul known as the High Synagogue. An appropriate name. I sat down in the narrow hall outside under a small, fluted window. I wanted to just listen to the pure singing, afraid if I interrupted or distracted him, he would stop.
There was a window at eye level, where just a touch of the autumn afternoon sunlight shone through and spread across the wooden floor where I was sitting. Through the glass I saw the tops of the ornately carved gables of the buildings on the horizon and below me. As if this picturesque view was not enough, in the distance I saw some geese flying in formation south. With this scenery, the light and beautiful cantorial singing, I felt as if I was a character who had just walked into an eighteenth-century landscape painting of Maislova Street in the heart of the Prague ghetto.
After some twenty minutes I carefully opened the door and spied a short, non-descript balding Jewish man wearing a faded red yalmulke, pacing the room while he held a prayer book in hands folded behind his back. He glanced at me for just a second, barely breaking his stride, and continued his singing. The room looked like it had been a beys medresh at one time. There were a few wooden chairs, benches and shelves full of various sforim (religious books). Another minute went by before he stopped singing. Then suddenly in Yiddish he said:
“Sholem Aleykhem; are you a Jew?”
“Yes, I am a Jew. I am researching klezmer music.”
“Not cantorial? I am the khazn of the Alte Neu Shul.”
“When do you daven?”
“Every morning at 7:30am and on Friday nights at 6pm.”
“I’ll come tomorrow.”
“Can you daven?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Good, you will help us make a minyan and I can tell you something about the klezmers in my shtetl. Now I must practice, please leave now.”
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I remain friends with the Czech Jews I met on that trip to this day, and was honored when that Jewish community brought me and my wife, Elizabeth Schwartz, to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring (1968). It was on that trip when I led her on a personal tour of the Jewish cemetery; I couldn’t help but correct an Italian tour guide when she gave the wrong depth of the Jewish graves – after all, when I first began traveling to Prague, there were no barriers and no tours and I could wander through these rich historic sites on my own.
I continued to explain what we were seeing as Elizabeth and I wended our way through the cemetery. We became aware of an older couple trailing behind us; they seemed to be eavesdropping. So, we turned and said hello and invited them to walk with us. And as soon as the couple told us they were from Stockholm, I switched from English to Swedish. Elizabeth called it “an absolutely Yale moment”.
I was happy to introduce my wife to old friends from my early expeditions, including the then-director of the Jewish Museum, Leo Pavlat (who had been married to the daughter of the world renowned Holocaust survivor and author Ivan Klima) and Daniel Kumermann. In 1981, Daniel was a window washer. He had been a highly esteemed professor of mathematics, but because of his anti-Soviet activism, he was fired from the university. After the Prague Spring, he became the Czech ambassador to Israel and remains an ambassador in the Czech foreign ministry.
Elizabeth and I have since traveled to the Czech Republic many times, both to perform and record our last album, “Live at the Shakh,” which we recorded in the 15th Century synagogue in Holesov, in the province of Moravia. Today, that synagogue (known as the Shakh because of the acronym of the name of its important rabbi, Rabbi Shabbatai ben Meir HaKohen. This rabbi wrote such an essential Talmudic treatise that this synagogue is now a museum visited by Jews throughout the world).
Should you ever find yourself wandering through the evocative streets of a Jewish quarter in some exotic location around the world, you’ll probably see us. Come and say hello and we can continue on together.
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Yale Strom & Elizabeth Schwartz are leading an Ayelet Tours trip to Poland and the Czech Republic in October 19-30, 2025. For more information, click here.