The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology

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Wayne State University Press, 01.07.2015 - 736 Seiten
The Jews of Hungary is the first comprehensive history in any language of the unique Jewish community that has lived in the Carpathian Basin for eighteen centuries, from Roman times to the present. Noted historian and anthropologist Raphael Patai, himself a native of Hungary, tells in this pioneering study the fascinating story of the struggles, achievements, and setbacks that marked the flow of history for the Hungarian Jews. He traces their seminal role in Hungarian politics, finance, industry, science, medicine, arts, andliterature, and their surprisingly rich contributions to Jewish scholarship and religious leadership both inside Hungary and in the Western world. In the early centuries of their history Hungarian Jews left no written works, so Patai had to piece together a picture of their life up to the sixteenth century based on documents and reports written by non-Jewish Hungarians and visitors from abroad. Once Hungarian Jewish literary activity began, the sources covering the life and work of the Jews rapidly increased in richness. Patai made full use of the wealth of information contained in the monumental eighteen-volume series of the Hungarian Jewish Archives and the other abundant primary sources available in Latin, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Yiddish, and Turkish, the languages in vogue in various periods among the Jews of Hungary. In his presentation of the modern period he also examined theliterary reflection of Hungarian Jewish life in the works of Jewish and non-Jewish Hungarian novelists, poets, dramatists, andjournalists.Patai's main focus within the overall history of the Hungarian Jews is their culture and their psychology. Convinced that what is most characteristic of a people is the culture which endows its existence with specific coloration, he devotes special attention to the manifestations of Hungarian Jewish talent in the various cultural fields, most significantly literature, the arts, and scholarship. Based on the available statistical data Patai shows that from the nineteenth century, in all fields ofHungarian culture, Jews played leading roles not duplicated in any other country. Patai also shows that in the Hungarian Jewish culture a specific set of psychological motivations had a highly significant function. The Hungarian national character trait of emphatic patriotism was present in an even more fervent form in the Hungarian Jewish mind. Despite their centuries-old struggle against anti-Semitism, and especially from the nineteenth century on, Hungarian Jews remained convinced that they were one hundred percent Hungarians, differing in nothing but denominational variation from the Catholic and Protestant Hungarians. This mindset kept them apart and isolated from the Jewries of the Western world until overtaken by the tragedy of the Holocaust in the closing months of World War II.
 

Inhalt

The Harsh Years 184959
282
The Moderate Years 186067
302
29 Emancipation Congress and Schism 186769
312
Precursors Founders Opponents 183997
328
31 Istóczy and Tiszaeszlár
347
Economy and Society
358
Explorers and Scholars
387
Literature Criticism and the Arts
403

7 From Sigismund to Matthias 13851490
68
The Mendels 14751531
85
9 The First Scholars and the First Blood Libel Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
108
10 Jewish Physicians in the Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
116
11 Jewish Criminals in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
125
12 Emericus Fortunatus Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
141
13 Transylvania and the Sabbatarians Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
153
14 The Jews in TurkishOccupied Hungary 15261686
162
15 The Jews in Royal Hungary 15261686
182
16 The Jews in Reunited Hungary 16861740
187
17 Jewish Women in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
194
18 Conversions in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
197
19 The Jews Under Maria Theresa 174080
201
20 The Jews Under Joseph II 178090
211
21 The Theben Story Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
226
22 Early Struggles for Emancipation 17901848
230
23 Religious Reform 17981852
240
24 New Horizons 180048
250
25 The Patriotic Imperative 180048
269
26 The 1848 Revolution
277
35 Demography and Occupations 18901920
429
36 Zionism and AntiSemitism in the Early Twentieth Century
442
37 World War I and the Communist Interlude
458
38 The White Terror and the Numerus Clausus
468
39 The Interwar Years
489
40 The First and Second Jewish Laws 193839
535
41 World War II 193945
548
The Beginnings
560
43 The Destruction of Provincial Jewry
568
44 How Half of Budapest Jewry Was Saved
578
45 Liberation
596
46 Old Trends and the PostHolocaust Stance
604
47 Under Communist Rule
623
48 Reconstruction
638
PostHolocaust Jewish Authors
659
Bibliography
675
Index
703
Comments and Corrections by Miklos Szabolcsi
727
Urheberrecht

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Raphael Patai (1911-1996) was a prominent cultural anthropologist, historian, and biblical scholar of international reputation. He was the author of more than three dozen books on Jewish and Arab culture, history, politics, psychology, and folklore.

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