Oberlander Jews
Oberlander Jews(Yiddish:אויבערלאנד,translit.Oyberland,"Highland";Hebrew:גליל עליון,translit.Galil E'lion,"Upper Province" ) were the Jews who inhabited the northwestern regions of the historicalKingdom of Hungary,which are contemporary westernSlovakiaandBurgenland.
"Oberland", in this context, is a Hungarian-Jewish historiographic term, unrelated to the territory ofUpper Hungary(Oberungarn, sometimes Oberland).[1]Its origin lies in the immigration pattern of Jews into the country during the 18th century. Those arriving from Austria andMoraviasettled in the adjacent counties of the northwest, mainly fromTrencséntoSopron,and gradually spread further; however, a large swath in the center of northern Hungary, betweenSzepesandHajdú,remained closed for Jewish settlement until all residential limits were lifted in 1840. Thus, a demarcation line separated the Austrian and Moravian Jews from theGalician Jews,who emigrated to the northeastern territories. Those west of it were known as "Oberlander" (highlanders), and the Galicians were "Unterlander Jews"(lowlanders). In rabbinic sources written in Hebrew, it was translated as the Upper and Lower Provinces (Galil E'lion,Galil Takhton).[2]The designation was coined by the former.[1]After 1840, the geographical boundary dividing Oberland and Unterland was the linguistic one betweenWestern Yiddish and Middle ( "Polish" ) Yiddish:It stretched from theTatra Mountains,between Poprád (present-dayPoprad) and Liptószentmiklós (present-dayLiptovský Mikuláš), Nagyszabos (present-daySlavošovce) and Rozsnyó (present-dayRožňava), continuing just north ofDebrecenand south ofMiskolc,until reaching the Hungarian border in Kolozsvár (present-dayCluj-Napoca).[3]While sometimes applied to all western Jews, like those inBudapestand beyond, it came to denote the Orthodox ones who resided in contemporarySlovakia,west of the boundary detailed above, and in contemporaryBurgenland.[4]Their ancestors arrived in two waves: The first, comprising Austrians, came after the expulsion of the Jews from Vienna in 1670. They were welcomed byPaul I, Prince Esterházy,who allowed them to settle in Burgenland and to form theSeven Communitieson his lands.[5]Another, much larger, wave entered Hungary in the wake of an Imperial decree from 1727, which limited the number of Jews allowed to marry in Moravia to 5,106. It remained in effect until 1848.[6]
Oberland also followed anacculturationpattern of its own, as its Jews tended to embrace the German language and culture.[7]In spite of undergoing thorough modernization, they remained largely Orthodox, and were primarily influenced by theHatam Soferand his disciples in theyeshiva of Pressburg,the province's largest city. However, they were mostly more moderate and educated than the Unterlander, and the differences betweenNeo-Orthodoxand Ultra-Orthodox in the country paralleled geographic ones. WhileHasidismwas rampant in Unterland, it had never reached the northwest.[8]During the 19th century, Hungarian Jews were roughly divided into three cultural groups: theMagyarized,Hungarian-speaking and heavilyNeologones in the center of the kingdom; the modern Orthodox, non-Hasidic, German-speaking Oberlander; and the Unterlander, who were strongly influenced by Hasidism.[9][10]
The Oberlander shared a common dialect of Western Yiddish, mixed with Hungarian and Slovak vocabulary.[3]Theircustomsresembled those of pre-emancipationGerman Jews,like donningprayer shawlsbefore marriage and layingphylacteriesin theweekdays of the Pilgrimage Festivals.Following World War II, some integrated in East European Ultra-Orthodox groups, while others joined Hungarian Hasidic sects likeSatmar,Nitra,Vien,Puppa,andKashou.Several congregations that self-identify as Oberlander and adhere to such customs are present in Israel, New York, in London'sStamford Hill,and inAntwerp.
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^abMenahem Keren-Kratz.Cultural Life in Maramaros County (Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia): Literature, Press and Jewish Thought, 1874-1944.Ph.D dissertation submitted to the Senate ofBar-Ilan University,2008. OCLC 352874902. pp. 23-24.
- ^M. E. Gonda, Yitsḥaḳ Yosef Kohen, I. Márton.Yehude Hungaryah: meḥḳarim hisṭoriyim.ha-Agudah le-ḥeḳer toldot Yehude Hungaryah (1980). OCLC 16130215. p. 128.
- ^abJechiel Bin-Nun.Jiddisch und die Deutschen Mundarten: Unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung des Ostgalizischen Jiddisch.Walter de Gruyter (1973). p. 93.
- ^Yeshayahu A. Jelinek, Paul R. Magocsi.The Carpathian Diaspora: The Jews of Subcarpathian Rus' and Mukachevo, 1848-1948.East European Monographs (2007). p. 5-6.
- ^Peter F. N. Hörz.Jüdische Kultur im Burgenland: historische Fragmente, volkskundliche Analysen.Institut für Europäische Ethnologie (2005). p. 187.
- ^Wilma Iggers.The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: A Historical Reader.Wayne State University Press (1992). p. 57.
- ^Michael Brenner.Kleine jüdische Geschichte.C.H.Beck (2012). pp. 214-215.
- ^Michael K. Silber.The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of Tradition.In: Jack Wertheimer, ed. The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity since Emancipation (New York-Jerusalem: JTS distributed by Harvard U. Press, 1992). pp. 41-42.
- ^Robert Perlman.Bridging Three Worlds: Hungarian-Jewish Americans, 1848-1914.University of Massachusetts Press (2009). p. 65.
- ^Bernard Spolsky.The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History.Cambridge University Press (2014). p. 212.
