The Project Judaica Foundation, in partnerships with the Smithsonian
Institution, The Israel Antiquities Authority and twice with the Library
of Congress' Hebraic Section, has successfully mounted major world-class
museum exhibitions. The first was "The Precious Legacy: Judaic Treasures
From the Czechoslovak State Collection" which traveled to ten cities
in the United States and Canada over three years. This groundbreaking exhibit
set new attendance records for any Judaic themed exhibition.
The collection of Judaica of the Jewish
Museum in Prague (formerly the Czechoslovak State Jewish Museum) is
a unique repository of historic artifacts, artistic rarities, and cultural
memories. These objects document the vitality and significance of Czech
Jewry which has flourished for a millennium at the crossroads of East and
West and is the oldest
continuous Jewish community in Europe. One hundred fifty-three local
Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia were devastated during the Holocaust,
and thus the Prague Museum
bears eloquent testimony to a world
virtually snuffed out just one generation ago.
The Precious Legacy exhibit was drawn from this special collection
in Prague. In October 1994, after 56 years, the Jewish Museum in Prague
was returned to the oversight of the Jewish community. The return of this
collection comes after decades of hardship and abuse of the Jewish Community
under the Communist control of Czechoslovakia. The restitution of this massive
collection of Judaica back to the Jewish Community has been a major effort
of Project Judaica for the past decade. This collection was represented
by 553 objects selected to become The Precious Legacy Exhibit (1983).
This exhibition, which traveled North America from 1983-1986, brought the
first glimpse of this extraordinary collection of Judaica. The unparalleled
size and scope of this collection - some 140,000 treasures in all - derive
from an ironic twist of fate. From 1942 - 1945, the Nazis confiscated Jewish
possessions of artistic and historical value throughout Bohemia and Moravia
(Czech Republic), and while the Jews
of these lands were deported to captivity and death, these artifacts were
shipped to Prague. There, the Nazis intended to establish a "museum
to an extinct race", a pathological "research" and propaganda
"institute" that would justify to the world the "Final
Solution to the Jewish Question." While nearly all of European
Jewry vanished during the Holocaust, Prague
was spared from the wartime destruction, as was the collection of Judaica
that by war's end filled eight historic Jewish sites
and more than fifty warehouses throughout the city.
Teams of distinguished scholars from the United States and the former Czechoslovakia
participated in the research and preparation of this historic exhibition.
The treasures of cultural and religious artifacts include objects ranging
from manuscripts and printed books, to glasswork and porcelain, precious
metals and textiles, woodwork and oil painting and folk arts. Collectively,
they illustrate the diversity and dynamism of their creators and community
that inspired and nurtured them.
Please visit the Gift Shop
for the exhibition book and the Viennese Seder plate from 1900 available
for purchase.