In about 1615 an anonymous Jew from Prague composed a short Hebrew chronicle to recount ‘the expulsions, miracles, and … other occurrences befalling [the Jews] in Prague and the other lands of our long exile’ (p. 21). Abraham David discovered the manuscript in the Jewish Theological Seminary Library in New York and published it in 1984. David added glosses, historical notes, and an intro - duction. By means of extensive references to Jewish and non-Jewish historical literature, David showed that the chronicle was accurate. The English translation of this edition is well designed and produced, and the translation itself is very readable and generally true to the original. (There are some errors: for example, on page 79, ‘between Red and Red’ should be ‘between Edom and Edom’. The translation also deletes a number of phrases from the original, as in the entry on the Peasant's War on page 27.)

The chronicle, like the world-chronicle Tsemaḥ david (Prague, 1592) by David Gans, briefly lists events year by year. Also like Tsemaḥ david, it lists events from both the Jewish and Gentile worlds, and even some meteorological and astro - nomical events. Unlike Tsema ḥdavid, however, the 1615 chronicle focuses primarily on gezerot, the ‘evil decrees’ that have befallen the Jews. (David also included two other documents in this volume, both of them lists of gezerot. One contains gezerot occurring from 1096 to 1520, the other from 1488 to 1525.) The notion of gezerah encompasses human as well as divine decrees. The expulsion of the Jews of ‘Rus’ (Ukraine) in 1494‒9 and the martyrdom of the Jews of Trebitsch in 1498 (p. 23), for example, are both gezerot, as are a flood in the Prague Jewish Quarter in 1501 (p. 24) and a fire in 1516 (p. 26).

Like David Gans and other Jewish historians of the sixteenth century, the author of the 1615 chronicle was interested in non-Jewish history. In fact, in the chronicle's account of the years 1522 to 1537 (pp. 26‒44), Jewish misfortunes recede entirely to the background.