Rabbis of the Jewish community of Marcal between 1889 and 1944

Abstract

The 1889 death of Mihály Marczali, the most important and exemplary Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community of Marcali, coincided with the beginning of a new period in the life of not only the Jewish communities of Marcali, but also of Hungary. The education of those of his generation was still characterised by migration and traditional yeshiva training as a bocher, which was supplemented by the acquisition of Protestant schooling and the process of becoming a speaker of Hungarian. The rabbis of Marcal following in his footsteps already studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary, within the framework of a unified educational system, and left the academic world with an additional university doctorate in humanities. During the prosperous period of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, Dr. József Klein served in the district seat between 1891 and 1896, followed by Salamon Weisz chief cantor as deputy rabbi between 1896 and 1910, and Dr. Manó Enten between 1910 and 1915. From World War I onwards, for almost 20 years, it was not possible to find a religious leader to serve as rabbi, so rabbis serving or working in the larger towns of the region (Nagykanizsa, Keszthely, Kaposvár) filled in as deputy rabbis, even in a settlement where the congregation of 400 people had built a new temple (1906). Adolf Lőwy was appointed to the position by the congregation in 1934, when he was still a rabbinical student, who received his doctorate in 1938 upon finishing his studies. (He was ordained rabbi together with, for example, Sándor Scheiber, who later became a famous figure in the Hungarian-Jewish academic world.) Dr. Adolf Lőwy was installed as Chief Rabbi of Marcal on October 23, 1938, with splendid pomp and ceremony. The booming community life and the rabbinical service were torn apart by the Holocaust and the deportation of the Marcal Jews. Although the Chief Rabbi survived the concentration camp, he was transferred as a forced labourer to Günskirchen, Austria, probably in early 1945, where he died on 20 April. The extent of the loss of the Hungarian rabbinate is well illustrated by the fact that of the eight neologue and status quo ante rabbis ordained in 1938, only one survived the Holocaus