To Our Readers (of Magyar Zsidó Szemle)

We are calling upon the Hungarian general public and especially our Jewish coreligionists to support a new undertaking. Our undertaking does not seek to compete with an existing one; rather, it strives to fulfill a need we have felt for many years, regrettably. For who is not aware of the fact that nowadays everything has its own bulletin: all the sciences, parties, and religions. Only Jewry doesn’t have its own organ, even though it seems that we need it the most. We have been living together in this homeland with our fellow-countrymen of different faiths for a thousand years but it is doubtful whether they know us at all. We are not afraid of being known but rather of being misunderstood. We do not wish to obscure our convictions, intentions, ambitions, and the injustices we suffered but rather to illuminate them. But maybe it is Jews themselves who need such an organ above all. Familiarity with our religion and our sages, our ancient literature, and Jewish scholarship has declined incredibly during the past generation; and this decline goes hand in hand with a disregard for our religious interests, indifference to and a lack of participation in everything that once documented Jewry’s unity.

Thus, we feel that launching the publication of Magyar Zsidó Szemle is absolutely necessary; it offers an opportunity for our Hungarian coreligionists to receive guidance and enlightenment in Jewish matters, and allows non-Jewish fellow-citizens to learn about and understand us.

Accordingly, one of our goals is to cultivate and disseminate Jewish scholarship in a clear language. We all know that until recently there have been only a handful of scholars who carried out their work in our national tongue [i.e., Hungarian]. Those who wished to engage in Jewish scholarship did so in foreign languages, and those who wished to read works of Jewish scholarship had to turn to works written in other languages, too. We are the first to present an opportunity to eliminate both of these idiosyncrasies; our periodical will serve as a regular organ for publishing Jewish scholarship in Hungarian.

In order to provide a broad and secure basis for this, we will be monitoring foreign-language works on Jewish topics constantly and will bring in-depth critical reviews of the relevant research results. We will make sure that readers of Magyar Zsidó Szemle are informed of every significant phenomenon that advances Jewish scholarship or concerns Jewry in any other way. In accordance with the aims of our periodical we will also present works written by our coreligionists that constitute significant contributions to the various national literatures.

Our confessional affairs are in a state of disarray, and our social standing is still subject to attacks and assaults. We will not examine here to what extent we ourselves are to blame for this, or the circumstances [that give rise to this]. There is no doubt that the disorderliness that paralyzes every cultural aspiration of Hungarian Jewry and makes our community affairs almost untenable has contributed to the emergence of these unfortunate conditions that severely affect us all. This situation must be rectified right away. One of the main goals of Magyar Zsidó Szemle is to facilitate this process. In this regard our program is exactly the same as the program formulated by Baron József Eötvös, the great protector and friend of our religious community, in the following words: “Members of the Jewish faith living in our homeland as a religious group should be a free, independent and autonomous body just like the autonomous Christian churches.”

Our Review will have a regular column discussing the situation of Jews in other countries as well as the internal life of our local Jewish communities, their institutions, and schools. We will make every effort to ensure that our articles and the reports from our foreign and local correspondents provide a true picture of everything that can be of interest and consequence to our Hungarian Jewish coreligionists.

Thus, we turn to the Hungarian Jewish public with confidence in asking for support for us in our patriotic undertaking that serves the public interest.

The editors.