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