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Introduction On January 26–27, 2023, to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a two-day online masterclass was held on the latest findings of Jewish cemetery research in Hungary. The event was organized by institutions (the Jewish
The Jewish pilgrimages in Hungary belong in the context of expansion of the 18th century Chassidic movement of the Ashkenazic Jews of Poland. The differing forms are connected to the charismatic figures of the communities, to the so-called righteous men. Pilgrims visited them at the time of individual crises or at major feasts. The news of their travels attracted thousands of pilgrims. This pilgrimage could be repeated for their funeral and on the anniversaries of their death. Places of pilgrimage with very large areas of attraction arose. Societies and Talmudic schools were often associated with these persons, which became the germs for the organisation of virtual communities forming again after the Holocaust. Today these graves are important mnemotechnical places for the Chassidic virtual communities, and the pilgrimages are mnemotechnical occasions and compensatory rites. They can provide new knowledge for history of mentality studies of the religious practice of rural Jewry, and for research on sacral communication, the organisation of virtual communities and on pilgrimages.
The paper examines a highly interesting workQirim Qarai Türkleri,published in Istanbul in 1928 by Seraya Sapsaloglu (Seraja Szapszal in Polish sources), the renowned Karaite communal leader, one of the leading Russian Turkologists of his time, a former Czarist diplomat and a Jewish Pan-Turkist. This popular and quasi-scientific work was typical of the Romantic Period of the “nation-building”stage in the history of many Eastern European minorities. It was, however, essential in the presentation of the Türkic-speaking Eastern European and Crimean Karaite Jews as remnants of some imagined ancient Türkic race, clandestinely preserving Altaic paganism. Written in an appealing style, this work made a deep impression on the Early Republican intellectuals. In the present paper some of Szapszal's assertions made in this work are analysed against their historical and linguistic background. The paper touches on intellectual trends current during the Early Republican period, the state of the European, Russian and Turkish Turkology of the age, and the metamorphoses of the secularised communal consciousness.
The basic structure in the Jewish awareness of time - just as in other cultures - is the succession of weekdays and the various cycles formed on the basis of natural phenomena. This dimension of time is embodied in the contents of the Jewish feast. Only traces of the Jewish view of time can be found in their awareness. “Man's time” is, in fact, his fate which is at the same time also the subject and aim of the theological interpretation of time. The nature of Jewish time and its practice of handling time in different periods faithfully reflect the processes of change in the different Jewish societies.
From the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe supported the development of musical theater in Yiddish. Given the difficulties of life in the shtetl, comprising isolation from non-Jewish neighbors, limited educational opportunities, poverty and political oppression, Yiddish opera functioned as a statement of Jewish nationalism. In this paper, I will discuss the historical conditions under which it was presented, including the following factors: effect of folk music styles documented in the field research of ethnomusicologists in Eastern Europe; topicality of subject matter in Yiddish opera as definition of the growing Jewish nationalist political movement; and identity and background of important composers and performers of the genre, and the effect of emigration to the United States on the style and content of their work.
Slovensku po druhej svetovej vojne. [Revival of the Jewish Community in Slovakia after the WWII.] Acta Judaica Slovaca , 4 , 65 – 78 . E ichler , Benjamin 1972 : Príspevok k histórii Židov na Slovensku z doby druhej svetovej vojny až po október
This paper explores intersections of memory and cinematic representation in contemporary Hungarian film culture. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, with the concomitant financial crisis in Hungarian cinema, a number of films have foregrounded questions of Jewish identity, a taboo subject on Hungarian screens after 1945 when nationalistic historiography supported an official government culture of denial with regard to responsibility for the deportation and extermination of some 550 000 Hungarian Jews. The production of relatively few narrative and documentary films on this subject, the essay suggests, is perhaps in part attributable to the fact that the Hungarian uprising of 1956 tended to eclipse the drama of Jewish deportation and genocide. The authors consider post-socialist filmmakers’ uses of the past in the context of the country’s current nationalistic climate, interrogating the impact of controversal films such as László Nemes’s Son of Saul (2015, Grand Prix, Cannes Film Festival ; Academy Award for best foreign film) within a Hungarian society still conflicted about its Holocaust trauma.
To be a Jew in communist Hungary between 1948-1989 was to be a person carrying a stigma. Jewish identity was suppressed in public and in many cases in private. Since the demise of the communist regime Hungarian Jews have begun to proclaim their identity publicly. In short Jews are “coming out”. In this paper I describe the ways in which Jewish identity is expressed and I analyse the factors, both internal and external that have facilitated such expression.
Ethnographic research that focused mainly on agrarian groups living at the lower level of society did not really seek or find a handle to approach Jewish culture in the late 19th and early 20th century. At the same time, for its part, the Hungarian Jewry made no effort to deal with its own culture from the viewpoint of ethnography. Although ethnographic and anthropological research has been conducted since then, and important results have been achieved, it cannot be claimed that the subject has been exhausted. That is why the Ethnography Museum’s exhibition Picking up the Pieces: Fragments of Rural Hungarian Jewish Culture was an important, unique and timely opportunity for both experts and audience. The exhibition aimed to conjure up an image of rural Hungarian Jewish life before the Holocaust based the materials in the museum. For the first time, the exhibition presented the Museum’s small but important collection of Judaica, Jewish implements, objects that entered the collection through art dealers and private collectors, not to mention the rich photographic material. In addition, local “case studies” were utilized to grasp the distinctive culture of the everyday life of the Jewish population, their position within the majority society, and the possible paths (mazes) of modernity. Various issues were discussed, not in general but through concrete examples (family histories, specific communities, local characteristics, etc.), and in this spirit, several specific themes were presented, such as weekdays and festive days, various situations, occupations and social strata. In the second part of the study, special mention is made of a few highlighted objects from the exhibition through the eyes of visiting American students.
The essay discusses the renewed interest in Jewish subjects in post-1989 Hungary and, more specifically, popular new Hungarian fiction dealing naturalistically and anecdotally with the Hungarian Jewish experience - fiction written in most cases by “engagé” Hungarian Jewish writers. The essay also touches on the phenomenon of “de-Judaized” Hungarian Jewish literature, in which the Jewish content is masked, concealed, universalized, and with Hungarian writers of Jewish descent who object to the category of “Hungarian Jewish” literature. It is in this context that the essay deals with Imre Kertész and his works, and attempts to show that while his novels deal explicitly with the Hungarian Jewish “fate”, or fatelessness, he is always intent on suggesting the universal relevance of this state of fatelessness.
