Fanny Neuda

Fanny Neuda (née Schmiedl, b. March 6, 1819 – d. April 6, 1894) was a Jewish writer best known for her popular collection of prayers, Stunden Der Andacht (1855). She was born in Lomnice (Lobnig), Moravia to the family of Rabbi Yehudah Schmiedl (1776–1855, present-day Czech Republic). After marrying Abraham Neuda (1812–1854), she moved to Loštice, where her husband served as rabbi. After Abraham Neuda's death in 1854, her book of prayers became widely published. She died at the age of 75 years in the spa town of Merano (present-day Italy). In 2015, a plaque honoring her was unveiled in Loštice.

Fanny Neuda was born into a rabbinic Jewish family. Her maternal grandfather, Rabbi Moshe HaKohen Karpeles (1765–1837) and his wife, Titl (née Grünbaum) 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 (then Proßnitz), home to her grandfather Moshe, and both a center of Talmudic study and the growing German Reform movement. It was there that Fanny’s brother, Adolf Schmiedl (1821–1913), was born. As his father, grandfather, and uncles before him, Adolf became a rabbi, eventually assuming a prominent rabbinical post in Vienna.

After marrying Rabbi Abraham Neuda some time in the 1830s, the couple settled in Loštice (then Loschitz), Abraham’s hometown in eastern Moravia. They had three sons: Moritz (1842), Julius (1845) and Gotthold (1846). When Abraham's father Aaron Neuda, the rabbi of Lostice, died in 1834, Abraham was elected 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 at least until 1857 whereafter she moved to Brno.

Fanny Neuda, like many learned Jewish women, likely served as firzogerin of the weibershul (women's gallery) in her husband's Loštice synagogue, a role suited to the collection and composition of prayers read in the vernacular of the women 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 (Hours of Devotion: Book of Prayer and Edification for Jewish Wives and Young Women) 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 (supplicatory prayers) to be offered in German rather than Yiddish. Published in Prague in 1855 Stunden Der Andacht, became a best seller, 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 (1866), 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 (All the Days of Your Life: A Book for Jewish Women; 1935). The latest printing was issued in Basel, Switzerland, in 1968. In 2013, the Open Siddur Project completed work transcribing a digital edition on 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 (Noami: Tales from David’s Life of Wandering; 1864) and Jugend-Erzählungen aus dem israelitischen Familienleben (Tales of Jewish Family Life for Youngsters; 1876).

In 1880, Fanny Neuda joined her brother Adolf in Austria, who was then serving as a rabbi in Vienna. At the age of seventy-five, she died on April 16, 1894 while in the spa town of Merano, Italy.