JEWISH COMMUNITY OF MUNKACS FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO WORLD WAR I |
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Eighteenth Century to World War I The first synagogue was founded in 1768, and Hasidism took root and flourished in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. Rabbi Hayyim Sofer, a disciple of the renowned Rabbi Moses Sofer (known as Hatam Sofer) and non-Hasidic leader of Hungarian Orthodoxy (later rabbi of Pest), was succeeded as communal rabbi in 1881 by Rabbi Shlomo Shapira (1832-1893), founder of the Munkacs Hasidic dynasty. Rabbi Spira, along with his son and grandson, Rabbi Zevi Hirsch (1850-1913) and Rabbi Hayyim Eleazar (1872-1937), was a fervent opponent of any kind of compromise with modernity or modern Jewish movements, especially Zionism. |
As a result in part of the late-nineteenth century official policy of Magyarization (assimilation to Hungarian culture) and in part to the enthusiastic response of some Hungarian Jews to the adoption of Magyar culture, many Jews learned Hungarian in state schools and some even began speaking it at home. Many also had a basic knowledge of Ukrainian, which enabled them to communicate with their neighbors and customers. However, the vast majority of Jews continued to speak Yiddish into the interwar period. Munkacs in the aftermath of World War I |
In 1920, the region became part of the new Czechoslovak Republic as a result of the Treaty of Trianon. The Jews of Munkacs were granted official minority status along with all other Jews in Czechoslovakia. Munkacs was the second largest Jewish community incorporated into the Czechoslovak state. |
During the period of reconstruction after World War I, Munkacs served as headquarters for relief efforts organized and funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the JDC or "Joint"). A reconstruction conference held in Munkacs in 1922 was attended by 28 representatives from the Jewish communities of Subcarpathian Rus. |
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