A magyarországi zsidó egyesületek fél évszázada (1868–1919)
The Half Century of Jewish Societies in Hungary (1868–1919)

Summary/Abstract: The paper looks at what the organizations that were emerging and developing over a long period of time and disappeared at once in 1944 were like. It attempts to answer this question primarily using data on the Jewish societies established between 1868 and 1919. To do so, the author analyzed and organized into a database the information available on these societies, on the basis of the source collection Györgyi Barabás: Magyarországi zsidó hitközségek, egyletek, társulatok (MTA Judaisztikai Kutatóközpont, Bp. 2007). From the beginnings before the second half of the 19th-century, we have reports of the founding of Chevra Kadishas. The tide turned with the 1867 emancipation law. Of the one and a half thousand societies registered in the database we created on the basis of the source collection, 1,200 were founded in the period following this event. The paper discusses in turn the characteristics of the societies according to their activities (religious, charitable, women’s society, cultural etc.). It provides an analysis for each activity group of the percentage of “sub-denominations” (congressional, orthodox, satus quo ante) that came into being after the schism of the unified Jewish denomination. It quotes examples from documents or the Jewish press of the era to illustrate what life within these societies was like. Finally, it briefly touches on the main subject of the author’s research work, the OMIKE (National Hungarian Jewish Cultural Society).

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