Sarah Brownlee

March 22, 2021

In his article, “Heroes and Victims Without Villains: Plague in Early Modern Prague,” Joshua Teplitsky discusses the impact both plague and Prague had on Prague’s Jewish community in the early eighteenth century. The plague hit the Jewish neighborhood much harder than it hit other areas of the city. Noting this, the Habsburg government placed various restrictions on the Jewish community, including forbidding them to make contact with Christians. Teplitsky goes into great detail about how these restrictions affected the Jewish community in Prague, and gives insight into why the neighborhood may have fared worse than others. He explains that Jewish life in Prague was normally very integrated with the Christian world, and that, despite their higher rates of disease, the general public did not blame the Jewish community for the plague. However, there is no central argument to this paper. It simply recites the facts, and remarks on a need for empathy at the end.

The best thing about this paper is its thoroughness. Teplitsky takes us through the impact of this epidemic and the resulting discrimination on various parts of Jewish life, from burial rules to their roles in government. He spends a lot of time discussing Jewish life in Prague before the epidemic, including what factors caused the Jewish neighborhood to be the center of the epidemic. This epidemic was small, and contained to one city, so it is less well-known, but Teplitsky gives the reader all the information they could possibly need. Teplitsky also sets the paper up with a strong framing device, referring to plague stories as stories of heroes and victims, both of whom lack villains. This engages a pandemic-era reader by summing up a feeling that can be hard to express. However, after setting up the expectation of heroes without villains, he abandons this framework, villainizing local rulers who discriminated against Jews. The paper also had very few heroes, save a nameless group of Jews who complained to the ruling empire about said discrimination until the empire intervened on their behalf. This paper also lacks a thesis. There is no central argument, there is only a recitation of facts. Teplitsky engages the reader, but does not go anywhere with their attention.