Passover – a Festival of Matzos, Memory and Identity: Transformation of a Religious Tradition in the Bratislava Jewish Community

• Authors: Salner Peter

Title variants

CS

Pesach – sviatok macesu, pamäti a identity: premeny náboženskej tradície v bratislavskej židovskej komunite

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

Based on the field and archival research into the Bratislava Jewish community, the author explains the transformation of the Passover (Pesach) traditional religious festival in the 20th and 21st centuries. The Festival commemorates the liberation of Israelites from Egyptian slavery and their forty-year long journey through the desert, during which Moses presented Torah to them. On Passover the Jewish believers have to pass down a message about these events to next generations. Passover is celebrated at two nights by Seder (ritual dinner) accompanied by reading of Haggadah. Beside this, the observing Jews are not allowed to possess and eat any leavened foods for the eight days of the Festival. They can eat only matzos which is a symbol of Passover and which has an identity-shaping meaning. The Jewish origin was a life-threatening factor during the Holocaust time. However, many members of the Bratislava Jewish community continued observing the religious rules, while some others gave up their faith, and chose various compromises. During the Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, Atheist ideology and repressions conducted by the regime dominated the country; this was strengthened by the fact that after 1948 there remained only one rabbi who decided to emigrate after August 1968 when the Soviet army occupied Czechoslovakia. Since November 1989 the Bratislava Jews have shown a selective attitude to Jewish holidays (including Passover). From a variety of options, they have chosen only a few traditional elements, namely those that are suitable to them. Some of Slovak Jews observe only a few regulations and bans of the Passover, and some others ignore this Festival entirely.

Keywords

EN

Jews; Bratislava; Pesach; Haggadah; Holocaust; Seder dinner; matzo

Discipline

• ETHNOLOGY: ETHNOLOGY

• Publisher: The National Institute of Folk Culture
• Journal: Národopisná revue (Journal of Ethnology)
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 154 - 161

Contributors

author

Salner Peter