Under the Pressure of the Enlightened State: Changes in the Burial Customs of Prague Jews during the Reign of Joseph II

By focusing on the example of Prague and the broader context of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Bohemian lands, this study seeks to explain the changes in Jewish burial practices that took place at the end of the 18th century as a result of the state’s policy aimed at rationalizing and modernizing everything related to death and burial. Drawing on newly discovered archival documents in the Czech National Archives and in the Archives of the Jewish Museum in Prague, and based on the recently published results of research on this issue in the context of the majority society in Bohemia, it illustrates the implementation and specific impacts of the burial reforms introduced by Maria Theresa and Joseph II in the Bohemian Jewish community. The main focus is on the most populous Jewish community in the Bohemian lands – Prague. It explores in detail the circumstances surrounding the transfer of burials from the Old Jewish Cemetery in the centre of the city to the newly expanded Old Jewish Cemetery in Olšany (now the Žižkov district of Prague) and the far-reaching effects this had. It illuminates the difficulty of enforcing a 48-hour waiting period between death and burial, as well as other hygiene regulations associated with death and burial in the Jewish milieu.