Modern Jewish Scholarship in Hungary

Tamás Turán, Carsten Wilke, Tamás Turán, Carsten Wilke

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9783110395518
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

The Habsburg Empire was one of the first regions where the academic study of Judaism took institutional shape in the nineteenth century. In Hungary, scholars such as Leopold and Immanuel Löw, David Kaufmann, Ignaz Goldziher, Wilhelm Bacher, and Samuel Krauss had a lasting impact on the Wissenschaft des Judentums ("Science of Judaism"). Their contributions to Biblical, rabbinic and Semitic studies, Jewish history, ethnography and other fields were always part of a trans-national Jewish scholarly network and the academic universe. Yet Hungarian Jewish scholarship assumed a regional tinge, as it emerged at an intersection between unquelled Ashkenazi yeshiva traditions, Jewish modernization movements, and Magyar politics that boosted academic Orientalism in the context of patriotic historiography. For the first time, this volume presents an overview of a century of Hungarian Jewish scholarly achievements, examining their historical context and assessing their ongoing relevance.

Endnotes

1 Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger, ed., The Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest 1877–1977: A Centennial Volume (New York: Sefer-Hermon Press, 1986); József Schweitzer, “Das Budapester Rabbinerseminar: der Platz des Rabbinerseminars in der jüdischen Wissenschaft,” in Wissenschaft des Judentums: Anfänge der Judaistik in Europa, ed. Julius Carlebach, 74–85 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992), 74–85.

2 Magyar Zsidó Szemle 3 (1886): 606.

3 Róbert Dán, Humanizmus, reformáció, antitrinitarizmus és a héber nyelv Magyarországon [Humanism, Reformation, Antitrinitarism, and the Hebrew Language in Hungary] (Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1973), 29–33; Dénes Dienes, “A héber nyelv a Sárospataki Kollégiumban a 16–17. században” [The Hebrew Language in the Sárospatak College in the 16–17th Century] (2010, http://www.patakarchiv.hu/wa_files/aheber.pdf).

4 Sándor Büchler, “Mendelssohn Mózesnek egy ifjúkori magyar barátja” [Moses Mendelssohn and a Hungarian friend from his youth], Magyar Zsidó Szemle 9 (1892): 308–313; Yehudah Aryeh Blau, “חליפת מכתבים בין ראזענטהאל ובין איצק אייכל”, Ha-Tsofeh (1921): 48–52; Michael K. Silber, “Rosenthal Family,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Gershon Hundert (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), II, 1593.

5 Meir Gilon, “ר’ דוד פריזנהויזן בין קוטבי ההשכלה והחסידות,” in The Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, ed. Carmilly-Weinberger, xix–liv; Michael K. Silber, “Friesenhausen, David,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia, ed. Hundert, I, 550–551.

6 I. H. Weiss, זכרונותי מילדותי עד מלאת לי שמנים שנה (Warsaw: Schuldberg, 1895); Carsten Wilke, “Den Talmud und den Kant:” Rabbinerausbildung an der Schwelle zur Moderne (Hildesheim: Olms, 2003), 533–542.

7 Sándor Büchler, “A zsidó reform úttörői Magyarországon” [The Pioneers of Jewish Reform in Hungary], Magyar Zsidó Szemle 17 (1900): 111–119; Moshe Pelli,

Hebrew Union College Annual 39 (1968): 63–79; Michael K. Silber, “Chorin, Aharon,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia, ed. Hundert, I, 328–329.

8 Pest, Buda, and Óbuda were unified in 1873 to form the city of Budapest.

9 Tamás Turán, “Kunitz, Mosheh,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia, ed. Hundert, I, 957–958.

10 Lajos Blau, “Aus den talmudischen Randnoten des Herrn Rabbinatspräses S. L. Brill in Budapest,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 41, no. 2 (1896–1897): 16–25, 67–83; Id., Brill Samuel Löw, a pesti rabbiság elnöke, 1814–1897: Élet és jellemrajz [Samuel Löw Brill, President of the Pest Rabbinate, 1814–1897: Biography and Characterization] (Budapest: Athaeneum, 1902).

11 Andreas Brämer, Rabbiner Zacharias Frankel: Wissenschaft des Judentums und konservative Reform im 19. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Olms, 2000), 40, 359.

12 Wilke, Den Talmud und den Kant, 580–583.

13 Michael K. Silber, “The Historical Experience of German Jewry and Its Impact on Haskalah and Reform in Hungary,” in Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model, ed. Jacob Katz (New Brunswick and Oxford: Transaction Books, 1987), 107–157.

14 Michael Jacoby, Ben-Chananja, eine deutschsprachige Zeitschrift von Leopold Löw: Inhalte, Autoren, Rezipienten, 1858–1867 (Uppsala: M. Jacoby, 1997); György Haraszti, “A Ben Chananja szerkesztője” [The Editor of Ben Chananja], in Haraszti, Két világ határán [At the Border of Two Worlds] (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Kiadó, 1999), 220–238; Michael K. Silber, “Ben Chananja,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia, ed. Hundert, I, 148.

15 See especially the pioneering study (1848) by Henrik Pollák, “Adatok a magyar izraeliták statisztikájához” [Data for the Statistics of the Hungarian Jews], in Zsidó reformkor [Jewish Reform Era], ed. János Kőbányai, 125–163 (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2000), and Tamás Turán, “Dokumentumok a magyarországi zsidó statisztika és a makói zsidóság történetéhez” [Documents to Hungarian Jewish Statistics and to the History of the Jews of Makó] in Homályzónák; Felvilágosodás és liberalizmus. Tanulmányok Kecskeméti Károly 80. születésnapjára / Zones d’ombre; lumières et liberalisme. Mélanges offerts à Charles Kecskemeti pour son 80e anniversaire, ed. Béla Borsi-Kálmán, 116–130, http://www.bibomuhely.hu/articles/kiadvanyaink/homalyzonak.pdf (Budapest: n.p., 2013).

16 Gábor Lengyel, Moderne Rabbinerausbildung in Deutschland und Ungarn: Ungarische Hörer an Bildungsinstitutionen des deutschen Judentums (1854–1938) (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012), 175–177.

17 József Schweitzer, “Kohn Sámuel és a magyar zsidó történetírás két évszázada” [Sámuel Kohn and Two Centuries of Hungarian Jewish Historiography], in Id., “Uram nyisd meg ajkamat.” Válogatott tanulmányok és esszék [“Lord, Please Open my Mouth.” Selected Studies and Essays] (Budapest: Universitas Kiadó – Judaica Alapítvány, 2007), 209–221.

18 Thomas Domján, “Der Kongress der ungarischen Israeliten 1868–1869,” in Ungarn Jahrbuch: Zeitschrift für die Kunde Ungarns 1 (1969): 139–162; Jacob Katz, A House Divided: Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-Century Central European Jewry (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2005).

19 The sum that served as funds for the establishment of the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary had a convoluted history. It was originally imposed by the Austrian government in 1846 when the discriminative “toleration tax” for Jews was abolished, as a debt on Hungarian Jewish communities for their tax liabilities, which they did not fulfill in the previous decades. Subsequently, this sum was reduced and—after the revolution—redefined...