ORTHODOX KOSHER MASS CULTURE? FOOD INDUSTRY, HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY, CHILDREN’S HOLIDAYS AND OPEN-AIR BATHS IN THE WEEKLY PAPER OF ORTHODOX JEWRY IN HUNGARY, 1925–1944
ORTHODOX KOSHER MASS CULTURE? FOOD INDUSTRY, HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY, CHILDREN’S HOLIDAYS AND OPEN-AIR BATHS IN THE WEEKLY PAPER OF ORTHODOX JEWRY IN HUNGARY, 1925–1944

Summary/Abstract: Orthodox Jewry in Hungary received the trends to modernity with reservations. It subjected the phenomena trickling into the urbanising, modernising communities to strong community control. Nevertheless, it adopted many customs of the bourgeois and later the mass society. A special example of this alternative integration is the question of the Orthodox kosher adaptation of mass catering and the cult of the body. This involved keeping pace with new industrial technologies, creating a market for kosher food industry products, community supervision and the provision of food to suit the changed way of life of urban Orthodox Jewry. The cult of the body provides an example of mass culture that was to be incorporated or excluded: while children’s holidays and holidays were a religiously re-interpreted phenomenon, fashion in clothing and mixed-sex open-air bathing were to be sanctioned. Behind this lay the subordination of natural science to religion and the suppression by the community of modernity affecting religious life. Through the example of Orthodox Jewry in Hungary we can observe an alternative strategy for dealing with the emergence of mass society.

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