THE POLITICS OF JEWISH ORTHODOXY: THE CASE OF HUNGARY 1868–1918 (original) (raw)
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AJS Review
The Haredi Agudat Yisrael (AY) and the Religious Zionist Mizrahi political movements, both associated with Jewish Orthodoxy, have received considerable scholarly attention over the past few decades. Book-length studies, edited volumes, master's and doctoral theses, and articles are devoted to each of them. This cumulative knowledge relates to a wide range of topics, including specific developments, processes, and episodes; these movements' respective ideological and theological platforms; various organizational, institutional, and economic infrastructures; and biographical sketches of their spiritual and political leaders. Some of these studies relate to the complex and tenuous relationships between these two rival movements, but in many cases do so in passing; in other studies this topic is overlooked or underestimated. In this volume based on a PhD dissertation, Daniel Mahla is therefore revisiting a scene that is not terra incognita, and does so forcefully, thoroughly, and systematically, with an important grain of sensitivity. The thrust of Mahla's persuasive argument is that the complex relationship between AY and Mizrahi, characterized primarily by struggles, encounters, rivalries, tensions, and competition, is crucial to understanding the "DNA" of these two religious-oriented political movements. In addition, he argues that these internal relationships are no less important, and at times more so, than those that they held with the nonreligious Jewish and Zionist movements, and are crucial to understanding how they shaped themselves and acted. This aspect must be added to the surrounding environment and contexts, which also clearly influenced the relationship between these two movements. In addition, Mahla submits that the core difference between these two movements is not solely their respective approaches toward and dealings with the Zionist movement, as certain scholars have suggested, but evolves around two pivotal issues: rabbinic authority and political activism. Exploring the internal relationships between different and competing Orthodox movements in the first half of the twentieth century demands several skills, and these come to the fore in this study. First and foremost, Mahla's rather unique command of languages enables him to utilize primary sources in English, Hebrew, German, and Yiddish. Second, it requires the ability to analyze rhetoric that is based upon a rich exposure and intuitive knowledge of classical Jewish sources. Third, Mahla demonstrates a command of the existing scholarship. Based upon a wide array of primary sources, including protocols, letters, and additional archival sources, memoirs, and the press, Mahla documents and contextualizes the relationships between AY and Mizrahi throughout most of the first half of the twentieth century, in chronological order. Following the introduction that sets the stage, each chapter is devoted to a specific period. The chapters begin with a strong focus on the European scene, where these movements were established, and gradually the focus shifts to Palestine.
During the first half of the twentieth century, nationalizing processes in Europe and Palestine reshaped observant Jewry into two distinct societies, ultra-Orthodoxy and national-religious Judaism. Tracing the dynamics between the two most influential Orthodox political movements of the period, from their early years through the founding of the State of Israel, Daniel Mahla examines the crucial role that religio-political entrepreneurs played in these developments. He frames the contest between non-Zionist Agudat Yisrael and religious-Zionist Mizrahi as the product of wide-ranging social and cultural struggles within Orthodox Judaism and demonstrates that at the core of their conflict lay deep tensions between rabbinic authority and political activism. While Orthodoxy's encounter with modern Jewish nationalism is often cast as a confrontation between religious and secular forces, this book highlights the significance of intra-religious competition for observant Jewry's transition to the age of the nation state and beyond.
Truth and/or peace: the political toolkit of the Hungarian Jewish Congress (1868-69)
Jewish Culture and History, 2020
Controversial religious or quasi-religious issues were responsible for the split within Hungarian Jewry. At the Congress, dividing lines over non-religious, 'political' controversies correlated only loosely with those over religious issues, as a rule. In this paper we limit ourselves to corroborating this thesis by taking a closer look at three items on the Congress's political agenda: (1) electoral issues, (2) centralization, and (3) ecclesiastical analogies. The paper demonstrates the profound impact that Hungarian contemporary political discourse exerted on Congress delegates in both camps.
Global Politics and the Shaping of Jewish Religious Identity: The Case of Hungary and Galicia
JEWISH POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, 2019
When scholars discuss major turning points and novel worldviews in the Jewish religion, they generally address ideological changes and social trends that took place either within the Jewish realm or in its adjacent non-Jewish environment. In this article, however, I demonstrate how Jewish society in general, and its religious concepts in particular, were also influenced by political decisions taken by the leaders of the countries in which they lived. To this end the article examines two of the most religiously diverse Jewish societies, that of Galicia and that of Hungary. In referring to these two locations, this article does not relate to territories contained within recognized political borders but rather to the Jews who lived in two distinct, yet adjacent, geographic regions. The one, located north of the Carpathian Mountains and known as Halych or Galicia since the 12th century, was recognized as a semi-independent region after its annexation to the Habsburg Empire in 1772. The second is the vast area surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains to the east and the Pannonian Basin to the west known as Hungary since the 10th century, nowadays referred to as “Greater Hungary.”1 From a Jewish perspective, Galician and Hungarian Jews were always considered to be two distinct types, regardless of their formal nationality, be it Polish or Austrian in the case of Galicia, or Romanian or Czechoslovakian in the case of Hungary. Compared to the groupings of Jews in the regions that surrounded these two territories, be these the German-speaking territories in the west, Poland to the north, the Russian Empire to the east, or Romania and the Ottoman Empire to the south, the Jewish populations of both Galicia and Hungary displayed a wider assortment of religious orientations. Both contained a large number of Hasidic communities – the most conservative and traditional of Jewish groupings – which offered the strongest opposition to modernity and to other international social trends. Next came the non-Hasidic mainstream Orthodox Jews, who were more receptive to external influences such as general education, proficiency in the local languages, openness to European culture, and the partial adoption of the prevailing dress code and appearance. Then there were the nonobservant yet traditional Jews, who adhered to some of the customs and public rituals as well as to their Jewish identity. Many of them moved freely between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, while some exchanged their observance of religious lifestyle for Jewish nationalism and became active, yet predominantly secular, Zionists. At the furthermost end of the spectrum were those who were born and raised as Jews but who chose to sever all connections to their forefathers’ spiritual heritage. This, of course, is only a partial list of the Jewish subcultures that existed in these two lands. On closer inspection, one may differentiate, for example, between mainstream non-Hasidic Jews who believed that acquiring general knowledge and even an academic education was permitted by Jewish law, and the neo-Orthodox, who regarded such an education as an integral and obligatory part of Jewish education, in a manner they titled “Torah and science.”2 One may also distinguish between one sector of more radical and zealous Hasidic courts and a second grouping of courts, which were more tolerant toward other Jewish concepts and lifestyles. Among the nonobservant, there were those who maintained a somewhat nostalgic attachment to the traditional, namely Orthodox institutions and customs. Others, on the other hand, were more inclined toward the Reform movement, which defiantly abandoned the “old” Judaism while extravagantly conducting “novel” public rituals in its newly fashioned institutions. When it came to the secular Jews, some eagerly adopted every new European cultural and social trend and eschewed any connection to Jewish tradition, while others, seeking to put their Jewish past firmly behind them, simply converted to Christianity.
Modern Judaism, 2018
See full article at: https://academic.oup.com/mj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mj/kjy012/5091309?guestAccessKey=d0b50c3f-1860-4f40-aeff-e046583cc60e Abstract Developments of the 21st century, such as women’s quest for equality, gay rights, the constantly-connected smartphone, the stream of information from social media, and the spread of new and old spiritual movements, present Jewish religious leaders with an enormous dilemma. Some think that in order to preserve the ancient Jewish tradition, it is imperative to erect and guard high and impenetrable social, moral and halakhic walls around their community. Others believe that expanding the perimeter and allowing more people to feel at home within the realm of Jewish religion is a preferable solution. While this kind of debate once marked the differences between the Orthodox and the Reform movements, nowadays it takes place within the heart of Orthodoxy itself. This is well demonstrated by the newly established Open Orthodoxy movement, which seeks to exploit each and every halakhic leeway in order to adjust religious standards to accommodate today’s social values. Its ultra-Orthodox opponents, however, condemn it for blurring the boundaries of halakha and distorting the true, namely conservative, meaning of Orthodoxy. This article takes us back a century to a time when, in the wake of WWI, Orthodoxy faced numerous crucial challenges. In those days, two very similar Orthodox societies existed side by side, but were differentiated by the nature of their rabbinical leadership. While one was led by relatively tolerant rabbis, who had a broader education and were more receptive to social change, the other followed rabbis who took a far more rigid and traditional stand. The outcome of that historical episode may well have a bearing on the ongoing controversy between today’s opposing trends in Jewish Orthodoxy.
Jewish Culture and History 21, 3 (2020): 213-225.
This article studies the Hungarian Jewish Congress of 1868–1869 from a European perspective. During the run-up to the Congress, the Jewish press discussed intensely the organizational models found in Jewish history, in modern Jewries abroad, as well as in the minority churches of Hungary. Central European Jews challenged the success narrative that had come to be associated with the Napoleonic Sanhedrin and the central administration of French Jewry. Comparison with other religious unification attempts can teach us about the expectations that were projected onto the effort to control the Hungarian Jewish pluralization processes with the devices of parliamentary democracy. According to JCH policies, there is a 18 months embargo period on uploading articles to open platforms such as academia.edu, but the author may share the text with colleagues in private (wilkec@ceu.edu).
Jewish Orthodoxy’s First Rabbinical Conference Held in 1844 in Paks (Bacs), Hungary
Modern Judaism, 2021
The early stages in the formation of the movement that would subsequently become known as Jewish Orthodoxy have been well researched. This article, however, reviews the circumstances around a specific episode, a rabbinical conference held in Paks, Hungary in 1844. The review of this failed conference opens the door for a discussion on three key questions related to the understanding of Jewish Orthodoxy: a. Why were the Hungarian rabbis the first to react to religious reforms? b. Why did they become so instrumental in the establishment of Jewish Orthodoxy? and c. why, despite of this, Orthodoxy practically lost the war against modernism, religious reforms, and secularism. Analyzing the reasons leading to the conference’s failure suggests that Jewish Orthodoxy, which is committed to a traditionalist worldview, obtain a major intrinsic flaw. Hailing conservatism also implies rejecting initiatives based on modern modes of operation. This, however, undermined Jewish Orthodoxy’s capability to swiftly and decisively confront the numerous social and religious challenges it faced since the early nineteenth century. The Paks conference was convened in response to several conferences of modernized rabbis which led to the establishment of the Reform Movement. The Paks conference’s failure allowed the Reform movement to expand without any significant resistance on behalf of the more conservative rabbis who remained unorganized for many years.