The dean of CU FA, Eva Lehečková, has been awarded Hillel J. Kieval from Washington University in St. Louis for his contribution to Jewish history in Central Europe and his persisting support of Jewish Studies in the Czech Republic.
Kieval is connected to the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, since 1977 when he arrived in Prague for the first time as a participant in the Summer School of Slavonic Studies. He has repeatedly returned to Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic ever since. This summer semester, he hosted at the Prague Centre for Jewish Studies at CU FA.
Hillel Kieval is one of the most prominent experts on the history of Jews in the Czech Lands in the 19th and 20th centuries. He has written several monographs on this topic, in particular The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918. Together with historian Kateřina Čapková from the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, he is also the editor of Prague and Beyond: Jews in the Bohemian Lands.
Kieval’s latest book Blood Inscriptions: Science, Modernity, and Ritual Murder in Fin de Siècle explores the accusations of ritual murders in the 2nd half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, including the infamous case in Polná. He has also devoted a course on this topic that is taught this summer semester at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at CU FA.
