A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [174]
The hunt for collaborators cost Czechoslovakia its only remaining rabbi. At a time when there had been no rabbi left in Czechoslovakia, Daniel Mayer had studied for six years at the rabbinical seminary in Budapest. He not only gave the Community a rabbi where there would have been none in the country, but he also helped keep Judaism alive by gathering around him the small group of people willing to practice. After the revolution his stubborn work was remembered, and he was asked to run for parliament in the 1990 elections. As with all candidates, his police files were searched, and it was found that before Mayer had been allowed to go to Budapest, he had had to sign a paper agreeing to cooperate with the secret police. According to the records, if he received any information detrimental to the state, he agreed to report it. There was no evidence that he ever did pass on information. The regime did not really care. The important thing was they had him in their files. He was theirs. He was compromised and therefore part of the system. He could be trusted because they had this on him. After the regime was overthrown, the Jewish Commu-nily in its antiregime zeal used the information exactly the way the regime would have—to discredit the community's leader. Mayer was told he could no longer be their rabbi. Mayer could have argued, as did Ilona Seifert in Budapest, that his compromise had made some measure of Jewish life possible. But Mayer did not argue. To the disappointment of some in the community who very much liked him, he left Czechoslovakia.
Karol Sidon said, “Daniel Mayer was chosen by the regime to do their work. And he was used by the regime. I can understand it. It is difficult to condemn someone when you are not in their situation.” Sidon, who had been studying Jewish law for six years in Germany, always thought that this moment would come when Czechoslovakia would need a new rabbi. Now he went to Israel for an official conversion and to finish off his studies. He returned to Prague as rabbi in the fall of 1992, and with Viktor Feuerlicht/s help, he began establishing a kosher system and other institutions of traditional Judaism. They even planned a mikveh, though few Czech Jews had ever seen one. Hebrew classes were offered, and 150 students came the first year. By the second year, enrollment had doubled.
Sidon no longer had time for writing, and in any event, being a writer in this new capitalist world seemed unappealing. “The greatest artistic freedom this country ever knew was from 1968 to 1970,” said the screenwriter-turned-rabbi. “Now, after the revolution, what is important is money. The great influence is money.”
The Krauses, on the other hand, had become what had been considered before the war a typical Czech Jewish family, like the families of Tomas's parents Alice and Frantisek. The children had religious training, and the parents were involved in the Community. But they were not religious. Tomas described it as “a typical Prague Jewish atmosphere, where we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah.” He said he would like to attend Sabbath services, “but come the weekend, we have to get out of Prague. The kids need to breathe some fresh air.”
Prague became the hot travel destination in the post-Communist world —in fact, it became the new place to go in Europe. While prices soared far beyond the grasp of Czechs, the city was a bargain for Germans, French, and Americans. The old stone architecture, with ornaments on everything from lampposts to drainpipes, was still stunning. The lantern-lit cobblestone streets, where shadows from the dark archways and the echo of footsteps once gave an air of mystery, were now the terrain of youths on noiseless sports shoes, hunched over maps, their backpacks casting enormous deformed shadows.
Since “Jewish” had been out under Communism,