In her essay, the author deals with the traditional position of woman in Jewish society. Although woman’s life role may seem very restricted and insignificant, according to the tradition, Jewish woman is considered to be the pillar of the family and the key element in passing on the Jewish tradition to future generations. Women’s participation in religious life is limited, yet their main attention is almost exclusively directed towards family and child raising. their absence from religious rituals is perceived as a positive element which enables women to fully concentrate on their most important role of a mother. Jewish families are traditionally large. Among Jewish woman’s main tasks is the observance of family purification rules, preparation of kosher food, arrangements for family celebrations of Sabbath and festivals and child raising. Attention is also paid to the basic principles of matrimonial cohabitation, to the educational opportunities of Jewish women in the past, their charitable and associational activities and the most frequent ways of earning their living.
Since 1996 the Jewish Museum in Prague has been researching certain Czech and Moravian synagogues that were supposed to contain the so called genizot (sg. genizah). These are the places where damagedand cast off writings andsynagogual objects that might had contained the Hebrew name of God. Such objects were habituolly considered as needing protection from the incompetent hands. This was accomplished exactly through their retention in genizot, or thorugh their rituál burial. Up to now, bigger or smaller genizot háve been found in Luže, Bezdružice, Všeradice, Úsov,
Březnice, Zalužany, Kdyni, Janovice n. Úhlovou, Rychnov n. Kněžnou and Holešov. The textile objects were disinteredfrom six of them. The greatest collection contained the genizah in Luže that
included also an extraordinary collection ofbig synagogual textile (curtains and mantles) and a great number of personál objects (smáli talii ts and cidakles). Next to this one, as far as the extent is
considered, are the collections from Březnice and Rychnov n. Kněžnou, single textiles had showed up in Zalužany, Holešov and Bezdružice, in other localities the textile objects were not found. The oldest textiles dáte back to the middle of the 17th century, the youngest to the end of the 19th century. To the most important findings of the synagogual textile belongs the curtain from Luže from the year 1652, collection of mantles from the same locality, from theyears 1688 and 1691, or a beau-tiful mantle from Březnice from 1758, with linen lining decorated with bound batik. These objects
represent for us important evidence of the decoration and technology, ušed in given time period especially in the country. An extraordinary importance has the circumsicion apron from Luže, the
only onepreserved in the country, and the collection of cidakles, smáli tallits worn over the clothes, that in all localities také the form of a smáli vest with elaborated buttoning. Also these cidakles had
not showed up in our collections before. Concerning the technologies and textile production, the evidences of bound and vax batik are wery interesting, even though these might had been ušed
secondarily, and objects made from the remainders of cotton prints containing identification stamps of the producers.