Jewish Heterodoxy and Christian Denominationalism: Leopold Löw’s Comparative Perspective on Modern Hungarian Jewry

[Corrigendum]

Introduction

The parting of ways between progressive and traditionalist Judaism and the emergence of new forums of communication in the 1830s to 1840s led to increased Jewish political infighting and the formation of Jewish “parties” in Central Europe in Vormärz times (1815–1848). A rabbinic leader and ideologue of the local progressive Jewish movement, and also its first historian, Leopold Löw (1811–1875) was a protagonist of these struggles in Hungary. A correspondent of the progressive German Jewish press on Hungarian Jewish affairs—especially in the 1830s to 1850s, until he established his own German-language journal in 1858¹—he was not only conversant with all segments of Orthodox and progressive Jewry in Central Europe but was also well-informed about Austrian and Hungarian politics as well. He was a respected participant at the reform conferences in Leipzig (1869) and Augsburg (1871). In his writings, he often assessed developments in Hungarian Judaism in light of parallels from the political and religious history of German lands and the Habsburg Empire—sometimes lamenting the cultural backwardness of his country relative to them. On the flipside, he was confident about the superiority of Hungarian Judaism in one respect: Talmudic archaeology (a scholarly field he conceived), which was to be the key instrument of reconstructing Judaism, had more potential contributors in Hungary than in western countries (including Germany and Austria) where Talmudism had already declined.²

After his death, opinion leaders of moderate reform (“Neolog”) Judaism in Hungary cultivated Löw’s memory as a rabbinic cultural hero, a patriotic role model, a champion of Jewish emancipation—in short, a foundational figure of their movement.³ Undoubtedly, he made a lasting impact on Hungarian progressive Judaism and not in vain was he called “the Geiger of Hungary” by many.⁴ Yet, in terms of religious ideology, Löw was not an adherent of any Reform ideology that emerged in German lands nor of “Neolog” Judaism as it emerged in Vienna (from the 1820s) and later in Hungary.⁵ Born in Moravia and equipped with a traditional yeshiva-training, he moved to Hungary impressed by emerging liberal nationalism there, which promised him more freedom than his home country to act out his modernizing program for Judaism. His rabbinic outlook and scholarly work were profoundly shaped by the relatively conservative Hungarian milieu. He did not introduce or support far-reaching reforms in the communities that he served as a rabbi. From the 1860s—the beginnings of Neolog Judaism as an organized movement—he was at odds with mainstream Neolog views on a growing number of issues critical to the Neolog agenda, especially after the so-called “Compromise” between Austria and Hungary (1867). He became opposed to a government-supported plan to set up a centralized nationwide organization for Jews and to the establishment of a Rabbinical Seminary in Hungary; he scorned the Neolog rejection of Reform;⁶ and he was against the Neolog position that Judaism has no “dogmas”⁷—a slogan that sounded good to liberal Calvinist ears but was often used to undermine rabbinic authority. Above all, he opposed attempts to legitimize reforms from within the traditional halakhic-rabbinic system.

Nevertheless, Löw’s moderate religious policies as a community rabbi, and rather centrist expert opinions as an occasional advisor to governmental authorities, should not obscure his radical, anti-rabbinic vision that did not change much from the 1830s to his death.⁸ What did change over time were his practical-political ideas about how to set traditionalist Jewry on a path of “culture” and acculturation.⁹

The ethnic and religious heterogeneity of Hungary was a unique and decisive factor in the historical development of local Jewry in the nineteenth century in general and in the organizational split between Orthodox and Neolog Judaism (between 1868 and 1871) in particular. Policy makers and those involved in religious politics in the Habsburg Empire (and in Hungary and Transylvania in particular) had to face the most diverse religious map in Europe within a single country and had to cope not only with...