MISSION STATEMENT

Throughout its 122-year history the Jewish Theological Seminary of Hungary has considered it its most fundamental mission and goal to keep alive and promote every area and aspect of Hungarian Jewish religious life; to be an intellectual-spiritual center that trains rabbis, highly qualified scholars and religious leaders who are able to answer the challenges and needs of the age and society they live in. The University aims to train such leaders therefore, who are able to give shape to Hungarian Jewish intellectuality while providing answers to problems of quotidian and universal import taking tradition into account.

The establishment of the Jewish Theological Seminary of Hungary, the only one in Middle and Eastern Europe to this day, was first proposed by David Friedhausen, a scholar of Bavarian descent in 1806, then Lipót Lőw made the proposal again at a time when a number of similar institutions were founded throughout Europe. After an extended period of planning the Jewish Theological Seminary of Hungary opened its doors on October 4^th, 1877, in response to a ministerial decree passed earlier that year. The Seminary’s goal then was to insure preparation for Jewish studies at the secondary school level and, based on this preparation, rabbinical education at the higher faculty of theology. 320 rabbis have taken degrees at the Seminary to date.

The increasingly right-wing politics of Hungarian internal and foreign policy during the years preceding the second world war, rising anti-Semitism, the so-called Jew-laws, deportations, the Holocaust and the ravages of war caused immense suffering and destruction, making communal life (including Jewish education) all but impossible for the small Jewish community left after the war. Following nationalization only the Jewish Theological Seminary of Hungary, one boys’ and one girls’ school in Budapest remained of the nearly forty Jewish educational institutions which had been attended by approximately 13 thousand students.

The main objective of our institution is to train highly qualified Jewish leaders with a strong sense of commitment. The emphasis in our educational philosophy is on quality, not quantity.

The political changes of the years 1989-90 brought an advantageous turn in the life of Hungarian Jews. Many realized they can now openly acknowledge their religious heritage, and enrolled their children in old and new schools of the Jewish community. The training profile of the Jewish Theological University of Hungary was also expanded. Two specializations are offered in 1999 at the institution’s college-level faculty: at the Paedagogium: Teacher training in Judaism, Jewish Community and Social Work.

The Specialization in Teaching Judaism

Following the political changes of 1990 the leaders of the Jewish community felt it was time to start new degree specializations which are not entirely without antecedents but which have not been operational for nearly fifty years. One of these is the specialization in teaching religion. In the previous form of the specialization the Teacher Training Institute, established in 1859, trained many thousands of teachers throughout the decades who fulfilled their vocation excellently in both the capital and the country.

The Degree Specialization in Teaching Judaism was started in 1990 and the first degree holders graduated in 1994. This was a historical step in the history of religion as well, because it furthered the cause of rescuing Hungarian Jewish spirituality from oblivion. Without pedagogues the Jewish community would not be able to survive today. These pedagogues are workers in the most beautiful sense of the world, trying to plant into young souls the treasure that no one can take away: the intellect and Jewish spirituality.

The most important goal of the specialization in teaching Judaism in Hungary is to transmit knowledge in Hebraic and Judaic studies both within and outside the educational system. This is the only way we can achieve that, in addition to high-level education in the humanities and natural sciences, young people finishing high school receive a grounding in Hebraic and Judaic studies which the previous generation did not have.

Students enrolled in the specialization in teaching Judaims will become highly qualified pedagogues who are also qualified to teach Hebraic and Judaic studies and who will be able to conduct educational work amid changing historical-social conditions in the three already working Jewish schools and in the existing Torah schools as well as in various informal educational centers in Budapest and in rural areas. Their training rests on the foundation of Hebraic and Judaic studies, on modern pedagogical sciences and proficiency with computers and foreign languages. The goal of the four-year degree specialization in teaching Judaism is to train teachers who have received strong preparation in Judaism and pedagogy; in universal and Hungarian general knowledge, who speak foreign languages, are proficient with computers and are able to use the repertoire of the Internet.

Specialization in Jewish communal-social work

Leaders of the Jewish community who founded the specialization in Jewish community and social work were guided by the historical situation. Not only the first, but the second and third-generation survivors of the Holocaust suffer from its trauma and in some cases from related psychological problems. Training in Jewish communal work involves basic training in general social work and basic training in Judaism which we supplement with preparation in caring for members of the traumatized generations. This primarily means the care of the patients at the Jewish community’s own 300-bed hospital and those living alone in communal homes as well as the care of mentally challenged members of the community, of those at the fringes of society and other socially endangered individuals.

Students enrolled in the specialization will thereby not only fulfill a religious role but contribute to the reperation of a hiatus in society.

Degree holders will have the task of easing the traumas of minority existence, first and foremost the psychological traumas of people living a religious life, and to help them solve everyday problems. Students will already be involved in the work of these institutions during their training.

The openness of the Institute

Because of the existence of the dually identified Hungarian and European Jewish community the University considers it its main task that it become a spiritual center – in the purest, original sense of the word – attracting everyone interested in Jewish culture, whether they are Jewish or not, Hungarian or not. The University wishes to gather together intellectuals and professional researchers who have been or are occupied with Judaism; artists, scholars, media specialists and computer scientists, etc. active in disparate areas of life and society and for whom Judaism – as one of the spiritual foundations of humanity – is a spiritual background, sedimented at the bottom of their consciousness and penetrating their works, in which Jewish ethics appears consciously or unconsciously and of which Jewish thought is the most important component. All this can be observed among representatives of Hungarian culture who are tied to Judaism with religious, family or emotional ties and in whose works Jewish roots create a special atmosphere, lending them a unique coloring. (Ferenc Molnár, Ferenc Karinthy, István Örkény, Tibor Déry, Zoltán Zelk, Géza Hegedűs, György Moldova etc.)

The University is an open institution which does not practice any form of discrimination, everyone can study Judaism in its halls without regard to religious affiliation. The University believes that only the spreading of knowledge and awareness about Jewish religion, culture and traditional values are effective weapons against anti-Semitism. The Jewish religion is not conversion-oriented but we are happy if more and more people become acquainted with millennia-old Jewish traditions and systems of thought, everything the Jewish religion and people have given the world, to great religious world orders as Christianity and Islam in their five-thousand-year existence, and everything they have received from their adoptive cultures and integrated into Jewish systems of thought.

OUTSIDE CONNECTIONS OF THE INSTITUTION

THE SEMINARY’S PLACE IN THE HUNGARIAN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM

The Seminary maintains regular and continuous connections with partner institutions, both with the institutions of the so-called historical churches and the smaller churches (e.g. the Methodist church), and with state-owned higher education institutions where Hebraic and Judaic studies are taught. (With the Jewish Studies department of the Eötvös Loránd University and the Berzsenyi Dániel Teacher Training College of Szombathely.) We also maintain a close working connection with higher education institutions whose students participate in partial training specializations at our university. (Hajnal Imre College of Nursing.)

We have a wide range of international connections with large parochial and state universities and colleges where Judaic and Hebraic studies are taught, among others with the world’s three most distinguished such institutions: the NewYork Yeshiva University which has an enrollment of 18,000 students, with the world’s largest neologian rabbinical seminary, the Jewish Theological Seminary (in New York) and the Machon Sechter rabbinical seminary in Israel.

We promote and support the participation of our rabbi and secular professors at as many Hungarian and international academic forums and in as many postgraduate extended training programs as possible.

We are regular participants of the American Rabbinical Assembly (a conference of several days held in the United States) and are also present at the yearly assemblies and postgraduate conferences (each held in conjuction with a concert series) organized by the International Cantors’ Association.