Abstract
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Khazar ancestry of European Jewry was a popular idea that particularly resonated throughout the discourse surrounding Hungary’s national origin and belonging. One of this discourse’s critical questions concerned whether Magyars and Jews were divided or united by ethnicity or religion: this paper demonstrates how Samuel Kohn (1841-1920), an important rabbi-scholar of the time, participated in this discussion by arguing for a common origin of the two groups. Kohn asserted that the Khazar ancestry of Hungarian Jews comprises both an ethnic and a religious connection. He considered two complementary questions: whether Hungarians and Jews possessed common ethnic origins and thereby belonged to the same race, and whether Magyars converted to Judaism during the Khazar era, i.e., the belief that Hungarians and Jews shared a common religion in the past. The contemporary political atmosphere magnified the significance of Kohn’s contribution.
Highlights
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Khazar ancestry of European Jewry was a popular idea that resonated throughout the discourse surrounding Hungary’s national origin and belonging. One of this discourse’s critical questions concerned whether Magyars and Jews were divided or united by ethnicity or religion: this paper demonstrates how Samuel Kohn (1841-1920), an important rabbi-scholar of the time, participated in this discussion by arguing for a common origin of the two groups
Despite Kohn’s belief in the Khazar ancestry theory, he did not associate all Hungarian Jews exclusively with the Orient, and claimed that there were two kinds of Jews in Hungary: those who had already been living in the Carpathian Basin at the time of the conquest, and those who came with the conquering Hungarians
The Eastern origins of Hungarians became the point of entrance for Neolog Jews into the Hungarian Oriental origin discourses
Summary
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Khazar ancestry of European Jewry was a popular idea that resonated throughout the discourse surrounding Hungary’s national origin and belonging. Kohn was the author who best articulated the Khazar ancestry theory, which posits an ethnic and/or religious connection between Jews and Hungarians due to their shared history during the Khazar Khanate in the Caucasus before the conquest of Hungary.
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