From a People to a Church by the Grace of the State: Another View of Hungarian Jewish Orthodoxy

Abstract

Following the disintegration of Austria--Hungary in 1918, hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews found themselves as residents of other states—mainly Romania and Czechoslovakia. In this new situation, the question of their national identity became open to debate. Their “Hungarianess” having been rendered all but irrelevant, the option of a Jewish national identity became increasingly attractive, strengthened by a zeitgeist in which the notion of national self-determination was leading to the creation of new states, and groups (like the Jews), unable to claim an independent territory, were gaining recognition as “national minorities.” By the same token, Jewish national aspirations found reinforcement through decisions being made by the great powers through the instrument of the League of Nations, which in 1920 granted to Britain an internationally backed mandate with the aim of establishing in Palestine a “national home for the Jewish people.” Among two groups of Jews in particular the collapse of Hungarian national identity created a deep crisis. The first group was the highly assimilated, whose decades-long effort to adopt the Hungarian language and culture and to become integrated into Hungarian society had been nullified at a single blow. For all practical purposes, their Magyar identification went from being an advantage to being a burden—and a potential source of danger. The second group, less to be expected, was the Orthodox. Known for their anti-assimilationist ideology, they might have been thought prime candidates for Jewish nationalism. Yet they fought fiercely against it because they regarded Jewish nationalism as a threat to the Orthodox ethos which was built on the concept of separation from other Jews on the basis of religious doctrine and practice. In 1919, now cut off from the Orthodox central office in Budapest, a number of prominent rabbis in Slovakia formed the “Central Bureau of Slovak Orthodox Congregations.” (The Czech communities, which lacked an organized Orthodoxy, were ignored.) A similar move took place in