(b.1950) is one of the most well-known personalities in the Czech Jewish community. After studying journalism, he worked as an editor at the publishing house Albatros, and published a few children’s books in the 1980s, for instance a book of Jewish fairytales, The Eight Lights. In the 1990s, he was a diplomat at the Czechoslovakian, later Czech Embassy in Israel for four years, and he has been the director of the Jewish Museum in Prague since 1994. He writes not only for a monthly of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic Ros Chodes, but also, for instance, in the dailies MF Dnes and Lidove Noviny. He has also regularly contributed his feuilletons to the BBC Czech Section.
“I have a feeling that any living Jew is a sort of spokesperson for those who died prematurely, that somehow he or she is an expression of their experience and dreams.” Leo Pavlát on the “Jewish character”, what it means to “be chosen”, and the dangers of relativism.
