With a keen eye for revealing details, the author examines the contours and distinctive features of Jewish experience in the lands of Bohemia and Moravia (the present-day Czech Republic), from the late 18th to the late 20th century. In the Czech lands, the author writes, Jews have felt the need constantly to define and articulate the nature of group identity, cultural loyalty, memory, and social cohesiveness, and the period of "modernising" absolutism, which began in 1780, brought changes of enormous significance. from that time forward, new relationships with Gentile society and with the culture of the state blurred the traditional outlines of community and individual identity. The author navigates skilfully among histories and myths as well as demography, biography, culture, and politics, illuminating the maze of allegiances and alliances that have moulded the Jewish experience during these 200 years.