Századok – 2005

TANULMÁNYOK - Konrád Miklós: A neológ zsidóság útkeresése a századfordulón 1335

A NEOLÓG ZSIDÓSÁG ÚTKERESÉSE A SZÁZADFORDULÓN 1369 THE NEOLOG JEWRY'S SEARCH FOR A NEW IDENTITY AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY by Miklós Konrád (Summary) Until the end of the 1890s, the Neolog ideal-type of the Hungarian Jew was based largely on a rejection of - to use a contemporary expression - "ghetto Jewry". The vigorous condemnation of the Yiddish language, of Jewish orthodoxy, and above all of Hasidism, was the outcome both of the internal evolution of Reform Judaism and of the compulsion to satisfy the expectations of the majority population. By the turn of the century, however, Neolog Judaism was experiencing an internal crisis. The countless articles on the growing detachment of Neolog Jews from their religion and from their community, demonstrated a disarray all the more severe given that none of the proposed institutional antidotes proved effective. By the turn of the century, the young generation that gathered around Egyenlőség, the most important neolog weekly of the period, had come to the realisation that, in its current form, Neolog Judaism was incapable of ensuring lasting bonds to Jewish identity, still less pass it on. This realisation raised doubts concerning the path taken by Neolog Jews, a feeling of "having gone too far" which directed the attention of Neolog opinion-formers towards those Jews who manifestly adhered more closely to their Jewishness. However, external political and social factors imposed severe limits on the public expression of this inner intellectual evolution. It was these limits, as well as the self-censure that it entailed, that collapsed at the turn of the century. We still tend to regard the Neolog opinion-formers as a group who professed unchanging and unshakeable views throughout the half-century of Dualism and who adhered even more stubbornly to their positions in the face of Zionism. In fact, however, their search for new ways of strengthening Neolog Jewish identity and, as a result of this search, their new perception of Orthodox and even ultra-Orthodox Jews — who continued to exhibit profound and undisturbed bonds to their Jewishness — led to a radical change and a conscious re-evaluation of previously condemned practices and phenomena. By the end of the Dualism era, mainstream Neolog writers, with few exceptions, were referring in eulogistic terms to rabbinical and Hasidic Orthodoxy, offering long, appreciative, often dithyrambic portraits of the best-known Hungarian and Galician rabbis. They wrote in captivating tones about the beauty of the Yiddish language, which, they argued, expressed more faithfully than any other language the Jewish soul. They praised, translated and published, in denominational publications and special editions, the works of modern Yiddish literature. In other words, they praised aspects of Jewish life whose very rejection had been until the 1890s a fundamental feature of Neolog Jewish ideology.