Keeping up the separatist tradition: Hungarian Orthodoxy in interwar Austria, Yugoslavia, and Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent decades several studies had reviewed Hungarian Jewry and its unique characteristics, especially the official separation between Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities. Throughout the ages, despite having individuals who were lax in their religious conduct, the Jewish community was always regarded as a cohesive body which was willing to readmit its deviant members who repented. This was known as the concept of Klal Israel. The Orthodox–non-Orthodox separation meant that this historical principle was abandoned in favour of a new one: communal separation. This meant that Orthodox Jews concentrated on self-preservation by increasing religious standards, while allowing their former brethren to drift away from Jewish traditions and to adopt more modern ideologies. Scholars have traced these processes in the major Hungarian-speaking territories in Hungary itself, and also in Transylvania, Slovakia, and Karpatorus. Little attention was paid to the former Hungarian Jews in the territories that were annexed to Austria, Yugoslavia, and Italy, where the number of Jews was smaller and the proportion of the Orthodox Jews among them was lower. This article shows how Orthodox Jews in these territories also sought to maintain their religious legacy, through the formal separation between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox communities.