Zsidó kulturális egyesületek a dualizmus korában

Absztrakt

The study provides and overview of the history of the Israelite Hungarian Literary Society (est. 1894) and the National Hungarian Israelite Association for Public Education (est. 1909), both Hungarian Jewish cultural societies, from their foundation at the turn of the nineteenth century until 1914.The period between the second half of the 1880s and the outbreak of World War I was an extraordinary time in the pre-Holocaust history of emancipated Hungarian Jews. At this time, the intelligentsia of the integrationist Jews were more concerned about the disintegrating identity of the acculturated and secularised Jewish middle class than about external threats, that is, anti-Semitism. Jewish cultural societies were established to halt this process, which was perceived as disastrous at the time. Their founders were inspired by their conviction that the Jewish identity of the middle class can be sustained or reanimated by the presentation and laudation of their cultural heritage rather than of their religion. While the two associations felt the continuous need to proclaim their usefulness for patriotic purposes, they repeatedly delved into discourses which defined Jewishness on an ethnic and ‘racial’ basis. This was in stark contrast both with the official standpoint which aimed to reduce Jewishness to a religious category and with the Hungarian-Jewish assimilation ideals in general.