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Hermanmiestetz

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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City in Bohemia. Jews were living there as early as 1509, engaged in commerce and money-lending; but the Jewish community proper dates from 1591. The Jews were confined to a ghetto under the protectorate of the overlords of the city. One of these, Count Johann Wenceslaus Spork, built a synagogue in 1760, which was modernized in 1870. The Jewish parochial school was transformed into a German public school. Since 1891 Hermanmiestetz has been the seat of a district rabbi, the dependent communities being Chrudim, Roubowitz, and Drevikau. The following have officiated as rabbis in Hermanmiestetz: Bunem (d. 1734); Selig-Landsteiner (d. 1743); Ḥayyim Traub (d. 1790); Elias Treitel (d. 1823); Samuel Brod (d. 1850); Moses Bloch, till 1855 (since 1877 professor at the rabbinical seminary at Budapest); Benjamin Feilbogen, till 1863; S. Rosenberg, 1864-68; Dr. Nehemias Kronberg, the present incumbent, called in 1891. Judah Löb Borges (d. 1872), a member of the community distinguished for his Talmudic and literary attainments, officiated temporarily whenever there was a vacancy in the rabbinate.

The community supports a burial society, a society for nursing the sick, a Talmud Torah, and a women's society. The cemetery must have existed as early as the sixteenth century; for it is recorded in a document that in 1667 a field was bought from a citizen for the purpose of enlarging the burial-ground. In 1903 the Jews of Hermanmiestetz numbered 300, those of the whole district aggregating 1,100.