prague | Can the strife afflicting Prague’s Jewish community for the past two years serve the greater good?
That’s the question community members ask as they try to move forward after the extraordinary election held last month in an effort to end conflicts over leadership, rabbis and money that have divided the 1,500-strong community.
“I think something good has definitely come out of all the fighting,” said Sylvia Wittmann, who runs Bejt Simcha, the Czech capital’s Reform congregation. “A lot of issues were brought to the forefront and never again will the leaders be able to do whatever they want.”
The new leaders say they’re only too aware of such concerns.
“There’s no reason to believe that these recent disputes need to have a long-term impact on the community,” said Frantisek Banyai, the newly elected chairman, who hopes to be a conciliatory figure.
He said his top priority is pushing through the Hagibor Home for the Aged, a $7.3 million project championed by his predecessor, Tomas Jelinek, who had accused his opponents of being more interested in building monuments than in taking care of Holocaust survivors.
Banyai was part of a platform, Community for All, formed last year with the goal of removing Jelinek from office. The group was a mix of religious and non-religious Jews, including some who were loyal to the pre-Jelinek leadership and others who opposed what they called Jelinek’s “dictatorial” leadership style.
Jelinek argues that his critics couldn’t stand to see him reform the community’s entrenched power structures.
His opponents ousted Jelinek during a special community meeting last November, though Jelinek refused to recognize the move. In this year’s elections, which were viewed as an acceptable solution by both sides, Community for All won three-quarters of the seats on the 24-member board. Jelinek and his supporters, called Coalition for a Democratic Community, won three seats, and another three went to independents.
Jelinek’s supporters and detractors have issued a long list of accusations and counteraccusations. A public rift surfaced in 2003 when a principal at the Lauder School, who was backed by Jelinek, fired a teacher whom she held responsible for pornography found on the school computer’s server. The community’s former leadership, particularly Jiri Danicek, a former community chairman, and Leo Pavlat, a board member and director of the Prague Jewish Museum, protested the firing. Seventeen teachers resigned from the school and one-third of its pupils left as well. Since last month’s elections, the new community leaders have created an independent supervisory board to search for a new principal and reinvigorate the school.
Still more controversial was Jelinek’s firing last year of Prague’s chief rabbi, Karol Sidon, a former anti-Communist dissident and a pillar of post-Communist Jewish life in the Czech Republic. Jelinek said Sidon had mismanaged religious objects, but a personality clash and struggle for control also appeared to be involved.
Jelinek argued in the Czech press that before he took over, the community had been stifled by a lack of financial transparency, rigid orthodoxy and nepotism. He also criticized the Jewish Museum for keeping some $5 million in reserve that Jelinek felt could have been used to help the elderly.
Jelinek’s political tactics earned him the ire of community members like Jakub Roth, a founder of the Community for All platform and the new board’s vice president.
“It’s time to disband the platform, put aside differences and work on communication that was so problematic in the past,” Roth said. “I hope Mr. Jelinek will be a constructive, not a destructive, critic.”
Jelinek said the new leaders want to brush reform under the carpet. Roth, however, said the new leadership should be given time to prove itself, and its goals for the community aren’t so different from Jelinek’s.
Roth said the community will make “more of an effort than ever before” to find out how it can best service non-Orthodox congregations. Along with Bejt Simcha, there’s Bejt Praha — which describes itself as an “open” congregation and is particularly popular with foreigners — as well as a burgeoning Conservative movement.
“We need to sit down and find out what it is they need, whether it’s a place to worship or some other type of support,” Roth said.
Roth, who holds a degree from MIT and speaks fluent English, admitted that the community has had a reputation for being closed to outsiders.
“I’ve heard that tourists and foreigners living in Prague don’t know how to get information about services, about community activities, about kosher food,” he said. “That’s going to change, I promise.”