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Published: 2001. 09. 17.
Price: EUR 2,09
 Short summary of articles
No journal, wether of Jewish culture or of any other interest, can be published nowadays without dealing with the phenomenon of terror which, since 11 of September 2001, has revealed itself in new dimensions, shifting from quantity to quality. And like so many other problems of the world, this, too, has clung fatefully to the faith of the Jewish people and its land, the State of Israel. Past and Future is indeed fortunate to count the great philosopher Ágnes Heller among its friends. Her essay, “Terror and Modernity” is not only a profound analysis, but also a powerful impression of the third millennium’s ominous beginning promising very little that could be considered uplifting.
An apocalypse, of similar roots, was the great theme of Imre Ámos, whose story and life work we wish to bring to the public in Hungary and throughout the world. (The current success of Károly Papp, Ámos’s twin-star in time and concepts, tells us that this is possible.) The mini-essay and introduction to an Ámos exhibition by Zoltán Rockenbauer the Minister of the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage (Nemzeti Kulturális Örökség), and János Kôbányai’s essay, “Marc Chagall and Imre Ámos” both serve this purpose. (We hope that the exhibition, held at the Institut Fran¸cais in Budapest, which the Minister of Culture so generously and devotedly supported, will find its way to many countries.)
One of the seminal figures of Jewish historiography, Jakov Katz, receives an appropriate commemoration from his student and successor, Michael K. Silber. It is very gratifying that we had a chance personally to enjoy the master’s friendship, teachings and ideas. Hungarian Jewry is especially lucky that at the end of his life Jakov Katz focused his attention on the problems of the Hungarian Jewish history. The first version of the resulting work, A House Divided; Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-Century Central European Jewry, was written in Hungarian and first appeared in Past and Future. In our current issue we are publishing his equally essential and fundamental study, “Uniqueness of the Hungarian Jewry.”
Several other pieces of the current issue, in other genres, are also tied to the same history; first of all, the parts of Mária Ember’s reminiscences. It was Ember’s by now classic work, Hairpin Turn, that with a resounding bang broke the silence over the Hungarian holocaust thirty-one years ago. Recently, she has completed the book’s complementary volume in an even more intimate and more painful tone, reaching even deeper down into the roots of the tragedy. (We published the book in its entirety as well, under the title: Be Still Alive in 2000?)
The study-interview by Éva Kovács and Júlia Vajda (who with the means of sociology and psychology seem to have created a new genre that straddles science and literature) examines the effects of Hungarian Jewish history in our days, and on our souls. Similar attempts are made in the studies by Ágnes Boreckys and Sándor Bacskai.
The short stories by Giorgio and Nicola Pressburger plow the same field, using the means of literature. These stories, written in Italian and describing Jewish life in the eighth district of Budapest, clearly prove that the Hungarian Jewish experience and art are limited neither to place nor to language.
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