Trained in philosophy and medicine, the writer, translator, scholar, and political and cultural activist Siegfried Kapper (1821–1879) devoted significant effort to the advancement of Jewish culture ...in Bohemia, Jewish emancipation, and to the commitment of Jews to contemporary Czech society. The three stories in this collection, which first appeared in the press in the 1840s and were posthumously published as a collection at the end of the century, offer a Romantic and folkloric vision of Jewish culture in Prague.The first story, “Genenda," displays Kapper’s operatic eye for detail and drama with its account of a dutiful rabbi’s daughter being swept away by a dashing young man, a Christian nobleman disguised as a Jew, a deceit that ends in tragedy. “The Curious Guest" is an intricate tale of a quest for wisdom and power that inevitably leads to the undoing of the arrogant protagonist. The final story, “Glowing Coals," is a supernatural tale of romantic desire and revenge, displaying Kapper’s skill at deploying the tropes of folklore for dramatic literary effect. The collection not only provides a colorful snapshot of nineteenth-century Czech-Jewish culture but also resonates with universal human themes that transcend a single national experience.
GENENDA Siegfried Kapper
Tales of the Prague Ghetto,
09/2022
Book Chapter
The moon emerged from the thick clouds right above Braník’s monstrous limestone outcrops, scattering its magical light in a thousand glittering stars over the gently flowing waves of the Moldau. A ...profound silence lay over the waters and the surrounding landscape, broken only by the monotonous, rhythmic stroking of oars.
A skiff had set off from the shore by Braník and was gliding slowly and peacefully down the wide river.
The boy at the oars sang a pious hymn in long-held notes. Zerah stared at the floor of the skiff in front of him, lost in thought, as Golda leaned
THE STRANGE GUEST Siegfried Kapper
Tales of the Prague Ghetto,
09/2022
Book Chapter
One evening Rabbi Cheskel, at whose school I was studying, slammed shut his large folio tome and said, “Children, pray your evening prayers and you may go home!” Tired from sitting for so long on the ...hard benches of the schoolroom we shut our well-thumbed books. Each of us picked up our prayer books, and stood facing the door over which hung the large plaque with the two golden lions holding the blue painted Star of David with the inscription:
East! From this direction blows the breath of God!
The eldest boy led the prayers and we followed along quietly
GLOWING COALS Siegfried Kapper
Tales of the Prague Ghetto,
09/2022
Book Chapter
On the left bank of the Moldau, immediately facing Prague’s old royal castle, there was a place where year in year out many black coals lay strewn among a heap of black stones, coals which neither ...all the waters of the Moldau, rushing by for centuries, nor the cloudbursts of summer were able to whitewash. It was also said that in the winter snow could not long remain on that place—it melted as soon as it fell. At such times that place with the black stones and the black coals against the wide white wintry expanse looked for all
