Századok – 2016
2016 / 3. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Konrád Miklós: Zsidók magyar nemzete. A nemzeti múlt zsidó tudományos ábrázolása, különös tekintettel a kazárelméletre
ZSIDÓK MAGYAR NEMZETE 665 acceptance led the (self-appointed) representatives of Neolog Jews, rabbis, scholars, intellectuals, journalists, politicians to develop a scientific discourse that might foster their integration. Similarly to the representatives of the Wissenshcafl des Judentums in Germany, they spared no efforts in trying to convince their Christian fellow-citizens of the ever-changing nature of Judaism and of the Jews’ natural inclination to assimilate to the host nation, in this case, to become true Hungarians. Yet the main object of this discourse was not so much Judaism and the Jews, than rather the Hungarians, and no so much the present, than rather the Hungarian national past. The integrationist discourse and, in particular, the Khazar theory elaborated by rabbi Samuel Kohn in the early 1880s, reveals that Neolog Jews felt the need to sustain their efforts at gaining full equality and admission into Hungarian society with their own construction of the national past, one of which the Jews were a constitutive part. The Neolog scientific discourse intended to serve Hungarians’ and Jews’ common present with the elaboration of a common past, the historical construction of a common origin. The aim of the Khazar theory, according to which the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin was in fact a joint Jewish-Hungarian operation, was to offer Hungarians an interpretation of their national past whose logic would commend them, unless they betray the heritage of their ancestors, to recognize their Jewish fellow-citizens as their equals and brothers. As the reception history of the Khazar theory reveals, apart from Jews, this image of the Hungarian past hardly convinced anyone. Nevertheless, it allowed for those Jews who believed in it to accommodate, even in times of antisemitic duress, their Hungarian and Jewish identities.
