Rabbinical Seminary (Budapest)
The Budapest Rabbinical Seminary ( National Rabbinical School in Budapest ) was founded in 1877 and is the oldest still existing rabbinical seminary in the world. It was created several decades after the establishment of the first rabbinical seminaries in Padua, Metz, Paris and Breslau , but is the only one of these early seminaries to survive to this day.
history
The rabbinical seminar emerged from the tension between traditional Judaism in Central and Eastern Europe, which was shaped by the world of the shtetl and the enlightenment currents of Western European Judaism ( Haskala ). Both cultures met in Hungary: at the beginning of the 19th century, many Jews from Poland had fled to Hungary. Refugees from Germany, Austria and Moravia came later. As the Judaist and seminary graduate Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger writes, "the struggle within the Jewish communities over the question of the rabbinical seminary " intensified.
The Orthodox rabbis tried to prevent the rabbinical seminary and moved to Vienna with a delegation that included Emperor Franz Josef . Franz Josef, however, not only spoke out in favor of the rabbinical school, but also took care of the financing: he returned the money to the Hungarian Jews that Austria had imposed on them as a war tax 30 years earlier after the failed revolution of 1848 . The seminar was finally opened in 1877.
claim
The demarcation from Orthodox Judaism was one of the defining features. At the same time, it defined itself as a national, ie Hungarian, institution. The seminar therefore saw it as its task to promote the assimilation of the Jews in the country. Its graduates shouldn't just teach Judaic Studies . They should also promote the Hungarian patriotism of their co-religionists by spreading the Hungarian language and culture among them. The term “neology” was created for this particular mindset.
The basic idea was to familiarize the future rabbis with worldly knowledge. Anyone who trained as a rabbi at the seminary therefore had to complete a scientific degree at the university at the same time. At the beginning of the 20th century, the rabbinical seminary housed Ignaz Goldziher, one of the most important Islamic scholars of his time, who was only allowed to participate as a lecturer.
The seminar under the German occupation
On March 19, 1944, German troops marched into Budapest. One day later, the rabbinical seminary was confiscated by the SS and converted into a prison. From there, Adolf Eichmann had thousands of Hungarian Jews and a number of political prisoners deported to the extermination camps, mainly to Auschwitz .
The seminar leaders had brought the most valuable manuscripts in the library to safety in a basement vault in good time before they marched into the area. A large part of the inventory was in turn confiscated by the Nazis. “Adolf Eichmann paid a visit to the seminar. He went straight to the library, got an overview, then locked the door and took the keys with him, ”writes Carmilly-Weinberger.
3000 volumes came to Prague, where Eichmann wanted to present European Jewry in a “museum of an extinct race” in the former Jewish quarter . It was not until the 1980s that the books were found in the basement of the Prague Central Museum and brought back to Budapest in 1989. Since then the library has been considered the most important Jewish theological literature collection outside of Israel.
post war period
After the defeat of the Nazis, the rabbinical seminary resumed operations and opened its doors again two months before the German surrender. But the number of students was no longer enough to maintain the high school branch. Instead, a pedagogy was set up to train religion and Hebrew teachers. You were supposed to be doing reconstruction work on the grassroots, so to speak.
Despite the hostility to religion of the communist leadership, the rabbinical seminary in Budapest remained alive - the only one in Eastern Europe. The price was a relatively large adjustment to the authorities. Religious life was directed by the state. There was a specially created Ministry of Religions for this purpose, which was responsible, among other things, for filling rabbi positions in Hungary. The rabbinical seminary was also dependent on the goodwill of the state. The lessons had to conform to socialist politics.
As the only training center for rabbis east of the Iron Curtain , Budapest had a special task during the communist era. Because students from all over Eastern Europe, even from Israel, came here to train as rabbis or cantors. They lived, some with their families, in the small, spartan boarding rooms.
From 1950 until his death in 1985, Sándor Scheiber was the director of the Rabbinical Seminary, which has made a name for itself through numerous publications of Judaica from the Middle Ages to the modern era.
After the turn
After the end of the communist era, donations from abroad were used to renovate the building of the rabbinical seminary, modernize the library and start restoring old books. At present the rabbinical seminary only trains rabbis and cantors from Hungary.
structure
Originally the rabbinical seminary consisted of a "lower level", which included the upper classes of the grammar school, and a university "upper level", at which the prospective rabbis and cantors studied.
Despite the modern basic orientation, the high school level of the seminar was open to students from all Jewish backgrounds. In this way it was also possible for poorer provincial Jews - who often came from orthodox backgrounds - to be accepted. The Abitur examination took place at the end of the 14th grade.
After the Second World War, the high school level had to be closed. Today the seminar is officially called “University for Jewish Studies” and is also open to students of Budapest University who want to take Jewish Studies as a minor.
literature
- Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger (Ed.): The Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, 1877–1977. A centennial volume, New York 1986. ISBN 0-87203-148-9 .
- János Paál: Hunted by goblins. 40 Hungarian years 1916–1956. Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 3-8334-4341-3 .
Web links
Teacher at the seminar
Coordinates: 47 ° 29 ′ 36.5 ″ N , 19 ° 4 ′ 12 ″ E