Plague hospital in Vienna, 1679. Contemporary engraving. Public domain.

This lecture presented by Joshua Teplitsky, associate professor in the Department of History and the Program in Judaic Studies at Stony Brook University, explores the impact of a plague that ravaged the city of Prague for six months in 1713. While the plague impacted the entire population of the city, many municipal policies differentiated between the Jewish Town and the rest of the city. At the same time, Jews produced their own responses, in song, prayer, and law. In exploring the policies, practices, and outcomes of a period of plague, we learn not only about the disruption of disease, but also the structures and rhythms of daily and Jewish communal life within the fabric of the city of Prague in the early modern period.

Joshua Teplitsky is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Program in Judaic Studies at Stony Brook University. He specializes in the history of the Jews in Europe in the early modern period.  His current work explores public health, Jewish life, and epidemics.  He earned his PhD from New York University's Departments of History and Hebrew & Judaic Studies and has held fellowships at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies of the University of Oxford, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the National Library of Israel, and Harvard University.  His first book Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History's Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library (Yale, 2019) was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

The lecture will be presented live online on ZOOM. RSVP through Eventbrite to receive a Zoom link (a week prior to the event). It will be recorded and available on YouTube.

Free and open to the public.

This event is organized by the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews with support of BBLA.