Azoj ví in der álter hájm : a hátrahagyott otthon közösségi kereteinek rekonstruálása az elvándorolt magyarországi chászidoknál

The Hasidic communities of Hungarian Orthodox Jews living in emigration have recreated the world they left behind – that has since disappeared – by making it the frame of their communal life in big cities elsewhere in the world. The study examines how religious life in a small country town could become the yardstick for their everyday lives and feast days in a big city environment. Among the Hasidic Jews of North-eastern Hungary and Galicia, emigration to Western Europe or North America meant loss of the individual member for the commu-nity. In the knowledge that under the pressure of his lifestyle and the expectations of the environment he would abandon Orthodox Jewishness, the family left behind mourned the emigrant as though he were dead. However, following the Second World War mass migration began to Western Europe and North America – in part to escape the new social system – bringing with it the demand to recre-ate the old home in unchanged form in the new environment. The principle of “as it was in the old country” (azoj ví in der álter hájm) became a continuous point of reference that required no particular justification in the life of communities that emigrated from Hungary. The big cities brought the communities formerly from small country towns, now in the process of reorganisation, face to face with a radically different way of life. They were obliged to incorporate the new way of life – although with restrictions – into the life-worlds they were reconstructing according to the earlier patterns. The article examines this reconstruction in the areas of education, technology, language use, media, dress, diet and the material environment