The New Past and Future

Short summary of articles
The new Múlt és Jövô magazine – as its predecessor – tries to avoid politics. The only exception was the sixtieth anniversary of the Holocaust. That no monument was erected, that there was in general a painful lack of remembrance, was closely connected with the warming up of the “national” business.
Alas, after fifteen years, the dicey endeavor to define Hungarian Jewry as a nationality is haunting us again. In reality, it is meant to compensate for the lack of honest confrontation and genuine mourning. This is the reason why the last issue of 2005 deals with this politically colored phenomenon.
We intend to document the situation of fifteen years ago and today in order to give direction for our future, but also to bequeath material to coming generations of historians of Hungarian Jewry.
This is what the conference held by the Jewish Communal Forum not long ago was looking for. The papers of two of the lecturers, Ágnes Heller and Mária Ormos, are presented in the opening of this issue.
The study by Sidra Dekoven Ezrachi, After Such Knowledge, What Laughter? explores new possibilities of Holocaust representation in the twenty-first century, the moment when laughter may be a way of elaborating the Holocaust.
With the essay on Koestler by Bernard Avishai we commemorate the great Hungarian (German, English and Jewish) writer born a century ago.
Returning to simpler – if not happier – times, i.e. to the 18th-19th centuries, the study by Krisztina Kurdi about the Jews Galicia throws light on the origins of a sizeable part of Hungarian Jewry.
Michael K. Silber’s From Tolerated Aliens to Citizen-Soldiers – Jewish Military Service in the Era of Joseph II. uncovers an important aspect of the same era, tracing the history of the first conscription of Jewish soldiers in modern times and the link to emancipation avant la letter.
Vilmos Voigt gives an interesting picture of the acceptance of Hungarian Jewry in the Reform Era viewed through the lens of folklore and literature.
The short story of Karl Emil Franzos, the famous nineteenth century writer of the Galician ghetto, depicts this same milieu. The essay of Zsuzsa Hetényi and her translation of an extract from the novel of Friedrich Gorenstein who died not long ago in Western Europe, calls the attention of the Hungarian reader to yet another great creative genius.
The poems of András Mezei, our living classic, frame this issue.

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Content

Andor Gábor: In the Cemetery

Ágnes Heller: An opening speech of the conference „A Dialogue about Jewishness”

mária Ormos: About Jewish Mentality

Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi: After Such Knowledge, What Laughter?

Bernard Avishai: The Consolation of Communism (Arthur Koestler)

Michael K. Silber: From Tolerated Aliens to Citizen-Soldiers – Jewish Military Service in the Era of Joseph II.

Krisztina, Kurdi: Galicia and the Jews of Galicia at the end of the 18th century

Karl Emil Franzos: Uncle Bernhard

Vilmos, Voigt: Isaac, the Sympathetic Jew in the Novel of Mihály Táncsics „Wastrel”

Zsuzsa, Hetényi: A Stepson of Russia. About Friedrich Gorenstein

Friedrich Gorenstein: Psalm

János Kőbányai: Documents of a Solicitation of Subscriptions or Two Jewish National Businesses in Hungary (1990–2005). E-mail exchanges, Nationality Observer article and documents

András Mezei: Poems of András Mezei

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