The Jewish Museum in Prague has launched an informative web site with online exhibits about the eclectic material discovered in genizas in a dozen synagogue buildings that have been researched in the country since the 1990s.

Looking up in the restored synagogue in Březnice, where a geniza was found

The web site, in Czech and English, grows out of its “Secrets in the Attic” project, which — as we posted last year — has displayed geniza material in two thematic exhibitions mounted in regions where the findings come from.

 The current exhibition, at the West Bohemian Museum in Plzen, is up until June 25.

Genizas are depositories of worn out or disused ritual and other objects which for religious reasons cannot simply be thrown away. Sometimes they are buried in Jewish cemeteries; often they are hidden away in the attics or walls of synagogues.

Synagogue in Úsov, Czech Republic, where one of the genizas was found

Since the 1990s, researchers from the JMP surveyed 13 sites in Bohemia and Moravia and obtained more than 3,000 finds, the oldest from the 16th century and the most recent from the 19th century.

You can read more in an article in the jewish-heritage-europe.eu web site at: https://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/2023/06/01/czech-republic-geniza/.