Jewish Hungarian Orthodoxy: Piety
and Zealotry (Routledge, 2024) by Menachem Keren-Kratz
Reviewed by Rabbi Reuven Chaim
Klein (Rachack Review)
Like the terms Poland and Lithuania,
Hungary in the Jewish historical consciousness is not coterminous with Hungary
in the geo-political sense, but rather encompasses a much vaster area than is
included in the country known as Hungary. The Hungarian Jewish community of
modern times began in earnest in the 1700s, with Jews flocking to the Kingdom
of Hungary from many different directions. But as they developed, the Jewish
communities in the different parts of Greater Hungary had different flavors: Northwest
Hungary (closer to the city of Pressburg, now known as Bratislava) comprised
mostly of Jews from Germany. These non-Hasidic Orthodox Jews — whom the author
calls “Ashkenazim” in line with the pre-Holocaust nomenclature — followed the lead
of Rabbi Moshe Sofer (the Chasam Sofer), who served as the Chief Rabbi
and Rosh Yeshiva at Mattersdorf (in modern-day Austria) before assuming the
mantle in Pressburg. These Jews differed from the mostly Hasidic communities in
the northeast, which were comprised of Jews who mainly came from Galicia.
Finally, the Jews in Southern Hungary were more accultured, and that region
served as the bastion of the Neolog Jewish community, but was also home to a
relatively-small number of Orthodox Jews and communities.
Menachem Keren-Kratz’s Jewish
Hungarian Orthodoxy: Piety and Zealotry tackles the complex make-up of
Orthodox Judaism within the historical boundaries of "Greater Hungary.” To
understand the topic of this book, one must be familiar with the kehillah system
that dominated Europe, whereby Jews belonged to semi-autonomous communal
organizations to which they paid dues and from whom they received religious and
civil services. A crucial development occurred in the mid-19th century,
when Austro-Hungarian policy in Hungary allowed for multiple kehillot in
one locale. In Neolog-dominated areas, Orthodox Jews often seceded from the
official kehillah to form strictly traditional communities adhering
to Halacha. Communities refusing alignment with either the Orthodox
or Neolog were deemed "Status Quo," and were often ostracized by Extreme
Orthodox groups.
This book thus explores the
intricate, often fractious relationships and surprising alliances between these
communities — Orthodox, Neolog, and Status Quo — both pre-WWI within Greater
Hungary and post-WWI after Hungarian Jewry was fractured across new national
borders. For example, following the first World War, Maramureș and the rest of
Transylvania became part of Romania, Slovakia and the Carpathian Ruthenia
became part of Czechoslovakia, the Burgenland became part of Austria, and other
pieces of Greater Hungary were annexed to Italy and the newly-created
Yugoslavia. Keren-Kratz also details the umbrella organizations representing
these communities to the government and notes the frequent disconnect between
a kehillah's official stance and the personal practices of its
representatives. For example, he made note of the phenomenon of non-observant
Jews serving as officials in the Orthodox community.
But more than that, Keren-Kratz focuses
on intra-Orthodox conflicts: the friction between non-Hasidic
"Ashkenazim" and Hasidim; disputes between Orthodox and Status
Quo-affiliated Jews; and even Hasidic secessions forming "Sephardi"
communities (called so because the Hasidim pray a kabbalistically-infused form
of the Ashkenazi rite known as Nusach Sefard, which is somewhat similar
to the Sephardic tradition).
Zionism was another major
flashpoint. While Orthodox Jews obviously shunned secular Zionism, pragmatic
arrangements with Mizrachi (Religious Zionists) sometimes occurred. Agudas Yisrael,
originally non-Zionist but supportive of religious settlement in Palestine,
held the mainstream anti-Zionist position pre-1948. Yet, Extreme Orthodox groups
in Hungary even rejected Agudah itself as too accommodating. The book tracks
how communities navigated this issue, with pragmatism sometimes overriding
ideology and — as the author argues was the case regarding the Holocaust —
ideology sometimes prevailing over practicality.
The difference between Orthodox Judaism
and Neolog Judaism centered on whether one was willing to undertake to continue
observing halacha as Jews had traditionally done since time immemorial.
While there were always heretical Jews or deviants, Neolog was like a Reform
Judaism in its rejection of halacha as an officially binding concept.
That essentially made them a non-nomian, and sometimes even an antinomian,
movement. The reviewer observes that while the author frames Orthodoxy's
rejection of Neolog as innovative, the true novelty lies in a
Jewish community officially abandoning traditional Jewish practice yet stubbornly
claiming a Jewish identity. Orthodoxy, apart from its necessary response to
this new phenomenon, simply maintained the age-old Jewish way of life.
Although one of the common
requirements of Orthodox communities was affirming fealty to the dictates of Shulchan
Aruch, this book overlooks the nuance that many individuals and
rabbis within Neolog communities also remained personally
observant (to varying degrees). Non-Hungarian parallels to this sort of
traditional Jewish observance that was still in tune with secular (in this
case, Hungarian) culture can be seen in German Neo-Orthodoxy (à la Rabbi Samson
Raphael Hirsch) or contemporary Modern Orthodoxy, which are totally
halachically observant but suffused with (German/American) culture. This stands
in stark contrast with the contemporary Reform or Conservative movements that
have essentially jettisoned the notion of halacha altogether.
In that vein, the author could
have stressed how even in one family, brothers might have been affiliated with
different communities, even if their personal level of religiosity were more or
less the same. For example, Rabbi Yaakov Koppel Reich served as the Orthodox rabbi
of Budapest, while his brother Rabbi Chaim Yehuda Reich was the rabbi of the Neolog
community in Bonyhad. Similarly, Rabbi Moshe Blau was a leader of the Agudas
Yisrael movement in Jerusalem, while his brother Rabbi Amram Blau was a co-founder
of Neturei Karta in Jerusalem. [Speaking of Neturei Karta, this reviewer feels
that the author gave too much prominence and weight to a group of organizations
that at best represent a handful of families and individuals, most of whom
suffer from mental illness. Moreover, that group is not necessary a Hungarian
Jewish phenomenon, as Rabbi Amram Blau’s co-founder, Rabbi Aharon
Katzenellenbogen, was actually of Litivsh extraction.]
The narrative presented by this
book provides accounts of prominent Hungarian rabbis and their activities — for
example, it talks about Rabbi Moshe Schick of Chust (who was an “Ashkenazi” Jew
who served as the rabbi of a community in Northeast Hungary), Rabbi Yosef Tzvi
Dushinsky (rabbinic leader of the Orthodox community in Galanta, before he made
aliyah and became the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem), and Rabbi Chaim Elazar
Shapiro of Munkács (an anti-Zionist rabbi who was an important Talmudic scholar
and Hassidic Master). The book also gives special attention to the illustrious Teitelbaum
dynasty from Sighet/Satmar. They came on to the scene in the late 1700s when
Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum (author of Yismach Moshe) assumed the rabbinate
of Ujhely, and reached their peak with their most famous descendant Rabbi Yoel
Teitelbaum of Satmar in the late 1900s. In offering these accounts, the author analyzes
the political dynamics governing inter-communal relations before and after the
post-WWI territorial dismemberment and the rabbis’ roles in those dynamics.
The author presents this history
by synthesizing information from many secondary (scholarly) sources, as well as
original research from primary sources (through contemporaneous Hungarian
Jewish press). These sources are copiously referenced in the endnotes after
each chapter. The author focuses more on the political and polemic aspects of
this history, but not so much about the ideas. Thus, the book's strength lies
in its political and polemical history.
To that end, even though the
author discusses the rabbis much, he rarely cites their own works and what they
said about their own positions (although the book’s conclusion chapter is
somewhat of an exception to this). This reviewer sees it as a significant methodological
flaw to not engage with those primary sources written by the rabbis themselves.
Engaging with the rabbinic writings themselves could have helped shed light on
the nuances of the exact positions taken by those very rabbis it discusses
(e.g., Rabbi Moshe Sofer, Rabbi Moshe Schick, Rabi Shaul Bruch, Rabbi Chaim
Elazar Shapiro, the Teitelbaums, Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Halberstam of Cluj, etc…).
These sources, addressing issues like separation from Neolog communities,
educational policies, and ideology, are crucial for understanding the rabbis'
own positions and motivations. For example, Halachic responsa literature from
Hungary deals with questions like to what extent Orthodox Jews ought to
separate from Neolog (and Status Quo) Jews, inasmuch as whether, for example, they
would need to build a separate mikveh. As this book makes clear, the
question of general education was a flashpoint issue, but the author fails to
notice that Rabbi Moshe Sofer — the hero of Hungarian Jewry — himself already
wrote about when studying the maths and sciences (beyond what it is required
for understanding Torah) is appropriate.
It is probably because of this oversight
that Keren-Kratz sometimes oversimplifies ideological differences. For
instance, he reduces the Orthodox-Neolog schism primarily to disputes over
secular education and the knowledge of foreign languages, with the more
hardline Orthodox rejecting such liberal educational policies and the Neolog
pushing for such policies. While relevant, especially in certain regions, this
characterization does not capture the full theological, cultural, and halachic
depth of the divide. No doubt the author addresses these issues in greater
details in his numerous other articles and books on the subject of Hungarian
Orthodoxy, but these issues were not fully fleshed out in this work.
There are also minor historical inaccuracies
or misstatements peppered throughout the book. For some quick examples, despite
what the book records: Rabbi Bengis’ personal name was Zelig Reuven (not
Reuven Zelig), Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman was not from Brisk, Gateshead is
not a city, and an eiruv is not symbolic. The author also confuses
rabbinic ordination with rabbinic appointment over a certain
jurisdiction, but that is just a matter of semantics.
The author frequently speculates,
particularly about the motives behind the actions of organizations and rabbis.
These unsupported assertions, especially concerning Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum's
supposed political maneuverings/machinations and the motivations behind his
moves, are often identifiable by the absence of endnotes or references. Despite
sometimes presenting the author’s own opinion as facts, in general, this book is
otherwise a reliable work of historical research and should serve as an
important resource for future research.
Most of the political moves and
community-building detailed in his book was unfortunately rendered moot by the Holocaust,
which quickly devastated Hungarian Jewry in a few months in 1944, destroying almost
everything that was built. After the war, some Orthodox and Neolog communities
were re-established in Hungary, but they never achieved the same glory as
pre-war Hungarian Jews, which were but a shell of themselves.
The final chapters of this book
discuss how some of what was found amongst Hungarian Jewry was transplanted abroad
— mainly, to New York, Israel, England, and Belgium, but also to Montreal, Melbourne,
Los Angeles, and elsewhere. The truth is that the discussion in the
contemporary context is largely irrelevant because the kehillah
structure has all but disappeared nowadays. To that end, contemporary Orthodox Jews
tend, for example, to pray in whatever Orthodox synagogue happens to be most
convenient for them, regardless of ideology. For instance, when the
contemporary Satmar Rebbes vacation in Palm Springs, California, they have no
qualms about praying in a Chabad synagogue, despite the wide ideological gaps
between Satmar and Chabad.
This book is very personal to me
because all four of my grandparents are from Greater Hungary and were native
Hungarian speakers. My paternal grandfather was from Munkács in the northeast,
my paternal grandmother was from Bonyhád in the south, and my mother’s parents
were from the Galanta area near Pressburg. Despite my lifelong interest in
Hungarian Orthodoxy, I gained significant new understandings of the complex
political dynamics within and between Hungarian Orthodox Jewish communities.
While the book provides valuable historical research, particularly on communal
politics, its avoidance of primary rabbinic sources and occasional
oversimplifications represent missed opportunities for a deeper exploration of
the "Piety and Zealotry" promised in its title. Ultimately,
Keren-Kratz provides a crucial, detailed map of Hungarian Orthodoxy's fractious
political landscape, offering profound insights that helped me contextualize my
own family's diverse roots within this complex world.
