Herem ha-Gadol ve-ha-Nora (Ban on Opponents of Maria Theresa), Ezekiel Landau (Noda bi-Yehudah), Prague: 1757

1 broadside (14 x 8 ½ in.; 355 x 215 mm). Lightly browned and stained; residual stain from older binding along length of right margin; edges lightly worn; a single pinhole affects a single letter at center, five lines from end of text. Within modern morocco portfolio.

Sharon Flatto, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-Century Prague: Ezekiel Landau and his Contemporaries  (Oxford, Littman Press, 2010), p. 26.

 

Ezekiel Landau, (usually referred to as the Noda bi-Yehudah, after the title of his halakhic magnum opus) was already a widely regarded legal authority before being appointed Chief Rabbi of the city of Prague, in 1754. Prague was a major city of the Habsburg state with approximately 7000 Jews and was necessarily affected by the major political events of the period. On the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756, Landau delivered a public address in Prague’s historic Altneu synagogue, announcing a herem (excommunicative ban) on any Jew who would spy for the Prussians, or oppose the Empress Maria Theresa in any way.

The present broadside records the text of that address, including the details that marked the event as a formal public issuance of a herem: the Torah scrolls were removed from the ark, the shofarot (rams’ horns) were sounded, and candles extinguished. The text of the ban itself is draconian in nature, though much of it is formulaic; it nevertheless calls for the death penalty for violators as well as for the denial of even basic communal services, including burial, to any who fail to report even the least transgression. The document is rendered in  a patois of Hebrew and Yiddish, matching the spoken vernacular of Prague's Jewish community.

Landau’s attitude to the Habsburg government in general, and to Maria Theresa in particular have sparked the interest of scholars. That the Empress was renowned for her anti-Jewish measures (in 1744, she expelled the Jews from Prague), did not deter Landau from his consistent expressions of loyalty. In addition to prayers for her military success, Landau wrote a prayer for Maria Theresa’s recovery from smallpox in 1767 and delivered a memorable eulogy sermon on the occasion of her death in 1780.