A new issue of the journal Judaica Bohemiae (Vol. 54/2019, 2) came out at the end of December 2019. This issue starts with a study by Andrea Jelínková (“Ohncensurirte viel übles in sich enthaltende Bücher”: On the Registration and Censorship of Hebrew Books in Moravia in the Mid-18th Century), which focuses on the Hebrew printing press of Franz Joseph Neumann in Brno and on the course and consequences of his dispute with the Jesuit censors in Olomouc and Prague. The Documents section contains two valuable studies that explore, in a broad context, two important documents relating to the history of Bohemian Jews in the 14th and 18th centuries. Firstly, Milan Žonca presents a commented edition and English translation of a famous begging letter written by the Prague scholar Avigdor Kara (d. 1432) shortly after the Prague Pogrom of 1389. Secondly, Olga Sixtová and Kajetán Holeček present an edition and translation of a previously unpublished source – the statutes of the Jewish Community of Rychnov nad Kněžnou (Reichenau an der Knieschna), which were confirmed by the local manorial authorities in 1657 and are the earliest known community statutes from Bohemia. The edition and analysis of this document provide a significant contribution to the study of Jewish self-government in the European context.

The Reports section contains a paper by Filip Paulus and Šárka Steinová on the famous Resettlement Maps of Jewish Dwellings in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, 1727–1728, with an outline of an extensive research project on these documents at the National Archives of the Czech Republic. In the next report, Vlastimila Hamáčková provides an overview of the annual ‘Jews in Bohemia’ seminar, which has been organized by the Jewish Museum in Prague since 2006. This is followed by a report by Christian Porzelt on the international conference Seelenheil und Spektakel. Jüdische Konversionen im zentraleuropäischen Raum bis 1848 [Salvation and Spectacle: Jewish Conversions in the Central European Space until 1848], which was held in Brno in October 2019.

The final section of the journal contains reviews of the following books: Lukas Clemens and Christoph Cluse’s (eds.) The Jews of Europe around 1400. Disruption, Crisis, and Resilience (2018, reviewed by Martin Musílek), Joshua Teplitsky’s Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History’s Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library (2019, reviewed by Andrea Jelínková), and Olga Sixtová’s Kniha představených kolínské synagogy 1730–1783: překlad a regesta s úvodní analýzou pramene [Ledger of the Synagogue Treasurers of the Kolín Synagogue, 1730–1783: Translation and Abstracts with an Introductory Analysis of the Source] (2018, reviewed by Lenka Uličná).