Jewish Emancipation as a Compromise. In The Creation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: A Hungarian Perspective, edited by Gábor Gyáni. New York – London: Routledge, 2022, 229–256. (original) (raw)

Between Emancipation and Antisemitism: Jewish Presence in Parliamentary Politics in Hungary 1867–1884

2004

The early 1880s were both difficult and extraordinary from the point of view of Hungarian Jewry. Political antisemitism had been present for half a decade, but it became violent and influential during these years, though only for these years. In other words, this was a time of crisis within the ‘Golden Era’ of the Hungarian Jewry, as some researchers of Hungarian Jews call the period of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy 1867–1918. [1] Besides antisemitism ‘normal’ political debate took place in parliament simultaneously, namely that related to the bill on Jewish–Christian marriages, which was also decisive from a Jewish point of view. The ‘antisemitic wave’ started with the attempts to establish a nation-wide movement, the Central Association of Non-Jewish Hungarians, following the example of Wilhelm Marr’s Antisemitenliga in Germany. [2] This period of virulent antisemitic activity culminated in the events related to the infamous Tiszaeszlár blood libel case, including a series of riot...

Conversations on the Jewish Question in Hungary, 1925-1926” (translated and annotated text), Jewish History and Culture, Vol. 7, no. 3 (Winter 2004), pp. 93-109

Conversations on the Jewish Question’ is a series of three interviews, which were published in the Hungarian-Jewish periodical Múlt és Jövö in the years 1925–26. The interviews, which were only published in Hungarian, were conducted with Lajos Biró, Tamás Kóbor and Bernát Alexander, three leading Hungarian-Jewish intellectuals of the period. Aladár Komlós, who initiated the three conversations, was not a neutral interviewer. His own attitudes are clearly expressed in the dialogues as well as in the introductory paragraphs. The conversations, whose historical and biographical background are presented in the introduction, vividly raise key problems relating to post-emancipation European Jewry in the interwar period.

THE POLITICS OF JEWISH ORTHODOXY: THE CASE OF HUNGARY 1868–1918

Modern Judaism, 2016

In its early days at the turn of the nineteenth century, Jewish Orthodoxy (henceforth: Orthodoxy) was no more than an abstract notion shared by a few European rabbis who dreaded the consequences of modern values, opposed the idea that Jewish children should be taught secular subjects and resisted the introduction of religious reforms. Only a century later, at the beginning of the twentieth century, were two global Orthodox organizations—Ha-Mizrahi and Agudath Israel—established. These were fully-fledged political movements, one of which operated within the frame of the Zionist movement, while the other, although willing to cooperate with the Zionist leadership, never became a part of it. While the link between religion and politics has occupied academia worldwide, the history of the relations between Orthodoxy and politics has gained far less attention. Most available studies address the historical processes and events that occurred after the establishment of the two major Orthodox movements, i.e. during the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. Only a handful of studies has examined the early stages of the evolution of Orthodoxy’s political forms, and even less attention has been paid to Orthodoxy’s inner politics. Although this article deals with occurrences that took place more than a century ago, many of the political and social issues it discusses are as relevant to Orthodoxy today as they were back then.

The Pursuit of the Sanhedrin: The Hungarian Jewish Congress in the Tradition of Nineteenth-Century Synods

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).

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.

“Between ‘Center’ and ‘East’ – The Special Way of Jewish Emancipation in Hungary”, Jewish Studies at the CEU, vol 4, 2004-2005, pp. 111-138

Both Terms " East " and " West " are used very often in the historical research of Jewish communities in Europe. The division between " East " and " West " in Jewish historiography had to do in the past with the identification of each of the two sides with various other terms and concepts. " West " was identified mostly with progress and economic development as well as with deep integration of the Jews in their respective European homelands, their languages, cultures and societies. Western Jews (Westjuden) were presented first and foremost by their own speakers as important contributors to the economy and culture of their various homelands and sometimes even to the whole world – a model of success that the Eastern Jews (Ostjuden) wanted so much to imitate. A more critical profile of the western Jews, as mostly Jewish Orthodox and Zionists speakers presented it, described them as " assimilating " – Jews who gave up on their roots and their intimate Jewish Identity for the sake of the profits of integration. This " deal " was also presented, before but mostly after the Holocaust, as a false bargain. Eastern Europe was identified, on the other hand, with political, economic and social backwardness. Its Jews, it was often said, never really achieved full equality and stayed in the Ghetto. They were not connected to their countries' language and culture and did not really identify with its people. More emphatic historians and thinkers, primarily but not exclusively from eastern European origin, tended to identify the " East " with Jewish authenticity which was not damaged by the process of modernity, as well as with collective loyalty to traditional or national values in contradiction to the western Jews who gave up these values. The Jewish historiography of the last decades, which gradually became free from ideological considerations, dissociated itself from the polarity between East and West for the sake of a much more complicated picture. The tendency for empiric, detailed and impartial historical research, the aspiration to understand each of the historical experiences of the various European Jewish communities with its uniqueness and diversity as well as the closer contacts with the general non-Jewish historiography of these countries and with the social sciences, contributed to the undermining of the " East – West " dichotomy. 1 In this context, the tendency to integrate the research of the Jewish history in the various countries with a comparative perspective emerged, which will contribute to the understanding of the whole picture. Some used the comparisons in order to emphasize the differences and the uniqueness of each process – as did Todd Endelman with the description of English Jewish history as based on circumstances and processes which differed in their essence from those which characterized the German Jewry. 2 David Sorkin, who also avoided the tendency to  This article is a slightly updated version of the Hebrew original which appeared in: in: Raya Cohen (ed.), European Jews and Jewish Europeans between the Two World Wars, Tel Aviv, 2004, pp. 69-98