TABOR

TABOR (Czech Tábor ), town in S. Bohemia, Czech Republic. Its *Hussite founders named it after Mount Tabor in Ereẓ Israel. The first information about Jews there dates from 1572, when a Christian house owner was punished for harboring Jews. A plot for a cemetery was acquired in 1634, and a synagogue was opened in 1655. In 1675 an agreement on residence was signed between the town and the Jewish community. The community numbered eight families in 1725; 18 families in 1769; 212 persons in 1840; 72 taxpaying members in 1869; 455 persons in 1884; and 683 persons in 1893 (including Jews in 21 neighboring localities). Jiri Fielder, the author of Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia, provides different details about Tabor: The earliest record dates from 1548 and mentions "Jew of Tabor," but the first Jewish family is recorded in the town only in 1594 (until that year, Jews were not permitted to stay in the town overnight). Three Jewish families are recorded in Tabor in 1618, eight families in 1653. From 1843 to 1884 Gutmann *Klemperer was rabbi of the community. During that time the community built a new, Reform-style synagogue and opened a second cemetery. From the end of the 19^th century the community decreased, numbering 400 in 1921 and 311 in 1930, when most of the Jews identified themselves with the Czech-Jewish assimilationist movement.

During the Holocaust, in November 1942, there were 1,267 Jews in Tabor. They were deported from there to concentration and death camps.

After World War ii a small congregation was reestablished in Tabor. A prayer room was dedicated in 1954. In 1955 a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust from Tabor and several nearby communities was unveiled on the site of the previous cemetery, which had been destroyed by the Nazis. A small congregation was still in existence in 1970. The former synagogue served as a storehouse.

bibliography:

Kroupa, in: H. Gold (ed.), Die Juden und Judengemeinden Boehmens … (1934), 625–9. add. bibliography: J. Fiedler, Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia (1991), 175–76.

[Jan Herman /

Yeshayahu Jelinek (2^nd ed.)]

ta·bor / ˈtābər/ • n. hist. a small drum, esp. one used simultaneously by the player of a simple pipe.

tabor. Small drum used in medieval times to accompany folk-dancing, usually played in conjunction with end-blown pipe. Performer struck drum with one hand, holding pipe in the other.