Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia by Rebekah Klein-Pejšová

Author:Rebekah Klein-Pejšová [Klein-Pejšová, Rebekah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Eastern, Jewish
ISBN: 9780253015624
Google: reDuBgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2015-02-12T01:09:57+00:00

The Investigation of Rabbi Doctor Samuel Funk

On October 28, 1926, the eighth anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, the Neolog Jewish Community of Bratislava gathered in the grand Moorish-style synagogue on Rybné Square adjacent to St. Martin’s Cathedral for a commemorative service led by their chief rabbi, Dr. Samuel Funk. They were joined by representatives of the government administration and other religious confessions. Toward the end of his sermon, from his position behind the lectern an increasingly agitated Rabbi Funk turned and pointed with an angry finger at the members of the assimilationist Union of Slovak Jews in attendance. He publicly accused them of destroying Jewish unity and making it impossible for the Jewish Party to win a parliamentary mandate.56 He reproached them for serving their own personal interests rather than those of the community. Rabbi Funk concluded his sermon by recalling a meeting he had recently enjoyed with President Masaryk. The president, he related, regarded it as very embarrassing that in spite of the one hundred thousand votes the Jewish Party had received in 1925,57 it was not able to obtain even one parliamentary mandate. Rabbi Funk reported that Masaryk respected only those Jews who declared Jewish as their nationality.58

The Union of Slovak Jews recounted this narrative of events in the grievance they lodged against Rabbi Funk with the Bratislava police on February 17, 1927. Their action marked the opening of a six-year investigation of Bratislava’s Neolog Jewish community centered on the personality of Rabbi Funk. The state took a keen interest in the complaint, as the dispute was a window through which it could view the swiftly evolving world of modern Jewish politics and attempt to understand the implications of the conflict between Jewish nationalist and assimilationist positions within Slovak parameters. The first report of the Bratislava police correspondingly framed the utility of the incident: “Recently, the Zionist movement in Slovakia has significantly expanded—much greater attention needs to be paid to Jewish movements in Slovakia generally, and from this standpoint the public outburst of Rabbi Dr. Samuel Funk should be evaluated.”59

During the course of the investigation, the state made a dramatic turnaround in its evaluation of Rabbi Funk. From an initial assessment of him as a “magyarophile element” working under the cover of Zionism, the state concluded in 1932 that Rabbi Funk was a “loyal Czechoslovak citizen” and even an advocate of the Jewish lower classes. How and why did this astonishing change occur? The state’s final assessment reflected the changing set of indicators it used to form its perception of Rabbi Funk and to draw conclusions about Jewish political loyalty in the interwar Slovak context more broadly. In the end the state showed greater interest in the ongoing dispute between Rabbi Funk and the leadership of the Neolog Jewish community in Bratislava than it showed in the Union of Slovak Jews. The state found the former conflict to be “not without a certain flavor”—that is, a result of the Neolog Jewish community’s allegedly problematic relationship to Czechoslovakia.60

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