Letter to Her Daughter

Reisel (Resel) Landau was among the Prague-based correspondents who sent letters to Jews in Vienna, part of a dispatch that left Prague on November 22, 1619, never to reach its destination. Little else is known of her life, or of her relationship, if any, to the family of Ezekiel Landau (1713–1793), later chief rabbi of Prague. Reisel’s letter to her daughter Hannah is one of just a few in the batch that directly reflects the worsening political and security situation that probably led to confiscation of the letters, during the early months of what came to be known as the Thirty Years’ War.