Jewishness and Beyond
eBook - ePub

Jewishness and Beyond

Jewish Conversions in Hungary 1825–1914

  1. 450 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Jewishness and Beyond

Jewish Conversions in Hungary 1825–1914

About this book

Throughout the nineteenth century, Hungary's government steadily dismantled obstacles that kept its rapidly expanding Jewish communities from enjoying the full benefits of citizenship. The state's concerted efforts to "Magyarize" Jews promoted Hungarian language, culture, and sensibilities, but did not officially require Jews to abandon their faith. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews converted to Christianity during this era, with conversion rates continuing to rise even as Judaism gained full legal equality.

Jewishness and Beyond addresses the apparent contradiction between these two trends. Despite the egalitarian promises and laws of Hungary's liberal nationalist government, the administration and traditional elites as a whole maintained a persistent bias against Jews that spurred particularly high conversion rates among the community's upper echelons. While Christians never forgot converted Jews' origins and increasingly thought of them in racialized terms, they also valued and generally rewarded conversion and the symbolic gesture of baptism. Conversion was an uneven and ever-shifting process in which gender and occupation played key roles, and where the actual percentage of converts within the total Hungarian Jewish population contrasted sharply with both Christian and Jewish perceptions of its frequency and spread.

Jewishness and Beyond, which can be read as an introduction to the identity dilemmas of Hungarian Jews in the age of emancipation, reveals the motivations and strategies behind the conversions of Hungarian Jews, the complex reactions within and outside of their communities, and converts' own grappling with conversion's expected and unforeseen outcomes.

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Yes, you can access Jewishness and Beyond by Miklós Konrád, Jason Vincz, Miklós Konrád, Jason Vincz,Miklós Konrád in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Eastern European History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Note on Names and Statistical Figures
  8. Abbreviations
  9. Introduction
  10. 1. The Historical Context of the Conversions of Hungarian Jews
  11. 2. Numbers of Conversions, Chronological Patterns, and Social Reactions
  12. 3. Profiles of Hungarian Jewish Converts
  13. 4. Paths to Conversion—Portraits
  14. 5. After Conversion
  15. Afterword
  16. Bibliography
  17. Index
  18. About the Author