The fates Lostice

Fanny Neuda

Fanny Neuda (Schmiedl) was born on March 6, 1819, in the Moravian town of Ivancice to a rabbinical family. Her father Juda Schmiedl (1776

1855) was a rabbi in Lomnice, Osoblaha and other places.

Around 1840 Fanny married Rabbi Abraham Neuda (1812 -1854) and moved to the town of Loctice, where she later wrote her book Stunden der Andacht (Hours of Devotion). This book is quite significant, because it was the first of its kind to be written in German by a Jewish woman for Jewish women. The book was published in 1855. Soon it became a best seller, published in more than 30 editions and translated to Hebrew and Yiddish. In the 1860s it was also translated into English (Published in New York, 1866, reprinted until 1900). The modern German edition was issued for Jewish women living in the Nazi Germany (Frankfurt, 1936) and reissued after the war during the 1950s and 1960s. The new enlarged English edition was prepared by Dinah Berland (editor of Getty Publications, Los Angeles) and published by Schocken Books (New York) in August 2007. A number of the prayers written by Fanny Neuda appeared also in Tefillat Nashim (Jewish Womans Prayer Book), which was prepared by dr.Aliza Lavie (Bar-Illan University) and published in Hebrew (Jerusalem: Yedioth Ahronoth, 2005) and in English (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2008). The first Czech translation was prepared by Achab Haidler and published under the title Hodiny zboznosti by the Foundation Respect and Tolerance in 2008.

In 1835 Abraham succeeded his father, Aaron Moses Neuda (1761 -1835), as rabbi of Loctice. Abraham Neuda was one of the first progressive rabbis in Moravia, who supported reformist views and believed in delivering sermons in German (instead of Hebrew). Severe conflicts over the reforms caused Abraham much grief. He died young on February 22, 1854. Fanny Neuda was widowed at the age of thirty-five with three children to raise. She admired her husband’s views. In the foreword to her popular book Fanny wrote:

Namely, I would like to employ all my meager powers, by publishing these pages, to erect a living memorial to the spirit of my notable late husband, Abraham Neuda, rabbi of Loctice, Moravia...

Fanny also wrote stories for children titled Naomi (Prague, Leipzig, 1867) and Jugend-
Erzhlungen aus dem israelitischen Familienleben (Prague, 1876, 1890). After her husband death she lived for several years with her sons in the Loctice synagogue. Sometimes after 1857 they moved to Brno and later she settled in Vienna. Fanny Neuda died in Merano, (formerly the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, now Italy) on April 16, 1894, at the age of 75. She was buried in Vienna.