One of the famous Jewish scholars of the time was Judah Loew ben Bezalel, known as the Maharal, who served as a leading rabbi in Prague for most of his life.

According to a popular legend, the body of Golem (created by the Maharal) lies in the attic of the Old New Synagogue where the genizah of Prague's community is kept.

[15] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands of Jews came to Prague from small villages and towns in Bohemia, leading to the urbanization of Bohemian Jewish society.

[17] Antisemitism in the Czech lands was less prevalent than elsewhere, and was strongly opposed by the national founder and first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937),[18][19] while secularism among both Jews and non-Jews facilitated integration.

[citation needed] It is estimated that of the 118,310 Jews living in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia upon the German invasion in 1939, 26,000 emigrated legally and illegally; 80,000 were murdered by the Nazis; and 10,000 survived the concentration camps.

Due to years of persecution by both the Nazis and the subsequent Stalinist regime of Klement Gottwald, however, most people do not feel comfortable being registered as such.

Services are regularly held in Prague, Brno, Olomouc, Plzeň, Teplice, Liberec, Karlovy Vary, Děčín and Krnov and irregularly in some other cities, for example Ostrava, Úštěk, Ústí or Mikulov.