On Transylvanian Jews. An Outline of a Common History. Working Paper

The present paper brings new information about the situation of Jews of Romania in the time of Holocaust and its aftermath (the years of transition to communism and the first years after the setting of communism). It appears that the Jews from Transnistria were deprived by their fundamental rights under the leadership of Ion Antonescu and many of them were killed in their interaction with Romanian military forces. After the war, the surviving Jews have the right to adjust to the communist regime, and to integrate in the communist state, but they have to close their organizations and the ties with Israel were considered as dangerous, although they continued to dream and search ways for emigration.

The Scientific Heritage, No. 94, 2022

The information regarding the study of the Jewish presence in Transylvania is relatively substantial, the main characteristic in the analysis of this minority is that there can be found the first reports about it, which consist in a series of documents about the 11th century Kingdom of Hungary and its problems. On the other hand, the studies and historical documents are written more thoroughly allowing a more precise analysis than their equivalents in the other areas of Romania. In this article we are trying through real contributions, for the first time, to outline a history of the Jewish presence in the city of Fagaras (between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 2000s), the heart of a geographical area filled with history – Fagaras County –, located in the South-Southeast of Transylvania.

2012

1989

The issue of determining the time, when the Judaic communities have settled on Romanian land, is one of the most interesting and most delicate details that can be mentioned when talking about this ethnic group. The presence of the first Jewish communities in ancient times on this land was a “taboo” subject during many historical periods until 1989, but even after this year, studies oriented in this direction were more than sketchy. The article does not only bring a surplus of information in this domain, but manages to concentrate – almost didactically – the information and the archaeological proofs known and reknown to the present time. There are depicted material evidences as well as linguistic ones, toponymical and even religious. Also, the author tries to draw a parallel between some layouts of the Dacian state and Dacia Felix, conquered by the Romans, and the presence of some Judaic communities, not very numerous, made out of Judaic population who came together with the Roman co...

importing rabbis, importing Culture: The Munkács rabbinate as a Case study for a Hungarian-Jewish Meta-Narrative (Hebrew) 117 Judith Karpati Changes in Female Attitudes regarding the use of the Mikveh in Hungary in general and in the Town of szombathely in Particular during the 19th-20th Centuries 95*

Journal For the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 2010

Colloquia Humanistica, 2015

T he book, to which the prominent Assyriologist and Hebraist Géza Komoróczy (b.1937) devoted ten years, aims at no less than providing a full scale picture of the history of the Hungarian Jews. When turning the pages of this monumental, two and a half thousand page long work, we have to be impressed and lost in admiration, since we are undoubtedly encountering the opus magnum of an outstanding scholar. We are looking at a work which should be found on the bookshelves of all who are interested in this topic. Most likely there is no one in Hungary who has the same deep and detailed knowledge of the history of the Hungarian Jews as Professor Komoróczy. And rarely can a similar venture be found, where the author all by himself undertakes to treat such a comprehensive subject synthetically. That is why our attention has been drawn and we have thought it worthwhile to deal with this work. The two volumes, each one richly illustrated on approximately 1000 pages, cover the whole history of the Hungarian Jews, from the very beginnings to 1848/49, the year of the Hungarian revolution in the first volume and then, in the second one, from 1849 to recent days.

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.

Modern Judaism, 2017

History in general and the study of religious fundamentalism in particular, as well as the ongoing conflicts between various Muslim groups in the Middle East, teach us not only the importance of religious identity but also about the lengths that those who seek to hold on to a specific identity are prepared to go. This article addresses one minor manifestation of this vast phenomenon. From the mid-19th century onward, Hungarian Jews began to acquire a unique religious and social identity that set them apart from other European Jews. Its single most distinctive feature was the formal separation between Orthodox and Non-Orthodox Jews, almost as if they belonged to two different “Jewish churches.” For the first and only time in Jewish history, the Orthodox Jews were able to administer their own communities in accordance with halachic laws and were no longer forced to compromise with non-Orthodox Jews. Following WWI, Transylvania, a former Hungarian district, was annexed to Romania. Consequently, its Jews were cut off from their Hungarian homeland, which had previously enabled them to establish their own Jewish identity. Reluctant to lose their distinct characteristics, they sought and received governmental permission to establish communities and institutions in accordance with their former lifestyle. This led to the establishment of a religiously and culturally autonomous enclave within which the Jews of Transylvania, many of whom were Orthodox, led their public life differently from all the other Romanian Jews. This article focuses on the development of the separate Orthodox institutions and communities in Transylvania. It surveys the characteristics and inner conflicts of Transylvanian Orthodoxy. It then proceeds to demonstrate how the unique set of circumstances that evolved during the interwar period facilitated the strengthening of Orthodoxy’s radical wing, which I call Extreme Orthodoxy, which sought to establish itself as an enclave within an enclave. This sector’s achievement, however, ended with catastrophic results. The uncompromising leaders of this ultra-conservative, anti-Zionist and separatist camp hampered the efforts of other Orthodox leaders to prepare for the impending Holocaust. This, consequently, led to the almost complete annihilation of North-Transylvanian Orthodox Jewry. Nevertheless, the radical ideas of Transylvania’s Extreme Orthodoxy endured, and after the Holocaust were disseminated throughout the Jewish world by the camp’s best known survivor and its prominent spokesman – Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe.