Between Minority and Majority

On May 4-6, 2011 in cooperation with historians from Hungary and Israel, the Balassi Institute organized a conference entitled “Between Minority and Majority” on the history of the Hungarian and Jewish diaspora and the shifting meanings of notions of Hungarian and Jewish identity. The conference had the support of Deputy Prime Minister Tibor Navracsis and József Pálinkás, the president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Aliza bin Noun, at the time the Israeli ambassador to Hungary, gave an opening speech. An exhibition of a selection of the pictures of photographer Doron Ritter was also held in connection with the conference. The exhibition, which was entitled From the Old Country to the New Home – Hungarian Speaking Jews in Israel, was held again in October the same year, in Zagreb, Croatia.
This book contains essays based on the presentations given at the conference.

CONTENT

Preface (Pál Hatos – Attila Novák) - 7

Levente Salat
The Notion of Political Community in View of Majority–Minority Relations - 9

Tamás Turán
Two Peoples, Seventy Nations: Parallels of National Destiny in Hungarian Intellectual History and Ancient Jewish Thought - 44

Viktória Bányai
The Hebrew Language as a Means of Forging National Unity: Ideologies Related to the Hebrew Language at the Beginning of the 19th and the 20th Centuries - 74

Victor Karády
Education and the Modern Jewish Experience in Central Europe - 86

Raphael Vago
Israel-Diaspora Relations: Mutual Images, Expectation, Frustrations - 100

Szabolcs Szita
A Few Questions Regarding the Return of Hungarian Deportees: the Example of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp - 111

Judit Frigyesi
Is there Such a Thing as Hungarian-Jewish Music? - 122

Guy Miron
Exile, Diaspora and the Promised Land – Jewish Future Images in Nazi Dominated Europe - 147

Tamás Gusztáv
Filep Hungarian Jews of Upper Hungary in Hungarian Public Life in Czechoslovakia (1918/19–1938) - 167

Attila Gidó
From Hungarian to Jew: Debates Concerning the Future of the Jewry of Transylvania in the 1920s - 185

Balázs Ablonczy
Curse and Supplications: Letters to Prime Minister Pál Teleki following the Enactment of the Second Anti-Jewish Law - 200

Attila Novák
In Whose Interests? Transfer Negotiations between the Jewish Agency, the National Bank of Hungary and the Hungarian Government (1938–1939) - 211

András Kovács
Stigma and Renaissance - 222

Attila Papp Z.
Ways of Interpretation of Hungarian-American Ethnic-Based Public Life and Identity - 228

About the Authors - 259