Fanny Neuda
Fanny Neuda was a German-language Jewish writer best known for her popular collection of prayers, Stunden der Andacht.
After marrying Abraham Neuda, she moved to Loštice, where her husband served as rabbi. After Abraham Neuda's died in 1854, her book of prayers became widely published.
Family
Fanny Neuda was born to the family of Rabbi Yehudah Schmiedl. Her maternal grandfather, Rabbi Moshe HaKohen Karpeles, and his wife, Titl Karpeles, raised three sons and a daughter, Nechoma Karpeles, Fanny's mother. Nechoma married Rabbi Yehudah Schmiedl, Fanny's father. By the time Fanny was two years old, the family had moved to nearby Prostějov, home to her grandfather Moshe, a center of Talmudic study and the growing Jewish Enlightenment. It was there that Fanny's brother Adolf was born. Like his father, grandfather, and uncles before him, Adolf became a rabbi, eventually assuming a prominent rabbinical post in Vienna.After marrying Rabbi Abraham Neuda sometime in the 1830s, the couple settled in Loštice, Abraham's hometown in eastern Moravia. They had three sons: Moritz, Julius, and Gotthold. When Abraham's father, Aaron Neuda, the rabbi of Loštice, died in 1834, he got selected by the Jewish community of Loštice to succeed him. His election was opposed, however, by the chief rabbi of Moravia, Nehemiah Trebitsch. While Abraham eventually prevailed, he died in 1854, aged forty-two. Fanny remained in Loštice with her sons until 1857 when she moved to Brno.
Writing
Fanny Neuda, like many learned Jewish women, likely served as firzogerin of the weibershul in her husband's Loštice synagogue, a role suited to the collection and composition of prayers read in the vernacular of the women's congregants. Following the death of her husband, Fanny Neuda published a book of these prayers for women. Stunden der Andacht: Ein Gebet- und Erbauungsbuch für Israels Frauen und Jungfrauen zur öffentlichen und häuslichen Andacht was the first collection of Jewish prayers known to have been written by a woman for women, and the first collection of women's teḥinot to be offered in German rather than Yiddish. Published in Prague in 1855, Stunden der Andacht became a bestseller, and it was reprinted more than two dozen times between 1855 and 1918. In 1866, Rabbi Moritz Mayer published his abridged English translation, Hours of Devotion: A Book of Prayers and Meditations, in New York. Stunden der Andacht was re-printed in more than 30 editions. A revised version accounting for the special conditions existing in Nazi Germany was prepared by Martha Wertheimer and titled Alle Tage deines Leben: Ein Buch für jüdische Frauen. The latest printing was issued in Basel, Switzerland, in 1968. In 2013, the Open Siddur Project completed work transcribing a digital edition of German Wikisource.Neuda also wrote stories about the domestic life of Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. Two of her other books appeared in Prague: Noami: Erzählungen aus Davids Wanderleben and Jugend-Erzählungen aus dem israelitischen Familienleben.