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Czech Literature

Concept · http://data.judaicalink.org/data/ep/2539311

The oldest examples of Czech Jewish writing are glosses in medieval Hebrew manuscripts; Jewish scholars in Prague explained unusual or difficult Hebrew terms using Hebrew transcriptions of “the language of Canaan,” which was, Roman Jakobson has argued, a variant of Old Czech. These glosses are most extensive in the work of two Prague scholars, Avraham ben ‘Azri’el of Bohemia (also known as Abraham Chladek), who wrote his commentary ‘Arugat ha-bosem (Bed of Spices) in the late 1230s, and his student Yitsḥak ben Mosheh, whose Or Zaru‘a (Light Sown) dates from the mid-thirteenth century. The glosses cannot really be said to constitute a literary work, but they are evidence that Jews in medieval Prague were thoroughly familiar with spoken Czech.

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