What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 31 July 2022.

Izraelská was built in 1945.

Until 1995, the street was part of ‘Nad vodovodem’ (‘Above the water pipeline’), which is still located directly to the east of it in Prague 10.

Izraelská is directly south of the New Jewish Cemetery. The cemetery founded in 1890, as the previous Jewish cemetery (located where the Television Tower now is) had become overcrowded.

It has space for 100,000 graves, as well as its own urn cemetery (despite Judaism considering cremation as destruction of property).

The most famous resident of the cemetery is obviously Franz Kafka, but here are many other highly noticeable people who are buried here:

Vilém Flusser, Czech-Brazilian philosopher (biography on https://flusserstudies.net/flusser).

Arne Laurin, journalist and editor of the Prager Press (obituary from 1945 on https://jta.org/archive/arne-laurin-influential-czech-jewish-journalist-dies-in-new-york-was-56…).

Arnošt Lustig, author whose work frequently dealt with the Holocaust (2007 interview with Czech Radio on https://english.radio.cz/arnost-lustig-writers-are-clowns-8604571…).

Jiří Orten, poet who died aged 22 in Prague as he was hit by an ambulance, but was refused treatment because of his religion. The Jiří Orten Award is awarded annually to a Czech author under the age of 30. Biography in French on https://francais.radio.cz/jiri-orten-8046726….

Ota Pavel, writer of autobiographical and biographical novels (see this Radio Prague broadcast from 2005: https://english.radio.cz/golden-eels-and-long-ordeals-life-and-times-ota-pavel-8095568…).

I really wanted to find out exactly when the name change took place in 1995 – specifically to see if it happened as a reaction to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

I wasn’t able to find out, though I did establish that Václav Klaus attended Rabin’s funeral in Jerusalem (https://cesky.radio.cz/zpravy-utery-7-listopadu-1995-8055054…), and then-president of Israel Ezer Weizman visited Prague in January 1996 (https://cesky.radio.cz/zpravy-streda-10-ledna-1996-8055093…).