| This dissertation examines the communal, religious and political history of Moravian Jewry in the course of the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the Revolution of 1848 as a critical watershed. The Moravian chief rabbinate---the principal supra-communal institution of Moravian Jewry in the first half of the nineteenth century---serves as a prism through which to view the conflicts among Moravia's fifty-two Jewish communities, the debates over religious and educational reform, and the struggle for Jewish emancipation. Based on a wide variety of sources from archives in the Czech Republic, Austria, Israel and the United States, this dissertation traces the perpetual tension between the collective will of Moravian Jewry and the individual will of the autonomous Jewish communities---a tension that was temporarily relieved during the Revolution of 1848. The Revolution of 1848 provided a rare opportunity for the Jews of Moravia to coalesce around a common goal (Jewish emancipation) and a common leader (Chief Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch), but this unity proved to be rather fleeting. Although the Revolution ushered in a new age of freedom, it also precipitated demographic, financial and social transformations that threatened Moravian Jewry's unity as well as its future.; Samson Raphael Hirsch, who served as Moravia's chief rabbi from 1847 until 1851, assumes a central place in this dissertation. While scholars have focused on Hirsch's subsequent tenure in Frankfurt-am-Main (1851--1888), which was marked by a militant and uncompromising defense of Orthodoxy, Hirsch's brief yet industrious sojourn in Moravia has, until now, received little attention. Hirsch came to Moravia with an almost messianic hope of unifying its Jews and guiding them into the age of emancipation with their traditional Jewish observance intact. However, after a frustrating four years in Moravia, he departed for Frankfurt, convinced that unity was no longer a possibility as far as religious and communal affairs were concerned. |
