The conflict between Orthodox and progressive Jews in Hungary was
far more tempestuous. Sofer, after fleeing from a triumphant Reform in
Frankfurt around 1820, settled and founded a new Orthodox yeshiva in
Pressburg (Pozsony in Hungarian, today Bratislava, Slovakia), from where he
preached his message of complete non-innovation. Following his death in
1839, he was replaced, after a twelve-year vacuum of religious leadership, by
Esriel Hildesheimer in 1851. Hildesheimer was a colleague of Hirsch and a
proponent of Hirsch’s Neo-Orthodoxy. During the 1850s, he won many sup-
porters, partly because his competitive approach – in contrast to his
predecessor’s condemnation of religious reform – was regarded as a more
effective means of containing religious innovation in Hungary.
Circumstances during the 1850s and 1860s in Hungary, however, paved
the way for a renewed conflict, and eventually drove Hildesheimer out. In
1851, the Habsburg regime passed the National Education Fund Act, which
created a network of state-sponsored dual-curriculum schools for Jews – rem-
iniscent of those of Joseph II, which, in Hungary, had been closed down
following Joseph II’s death in 1790 – and required all Hungarian Jews to
obtain a secular education. In addition, Hungarian Jews were increasingly
embracing German or Magyar as their spoken language, and, after 1860,
becoming generally more acculturated.
Most important, perhaps, synagogue reforms were becoming more prevalent
by the 1860s. To be sure, these innovations were much like those in Vienna:
changes in decorum with none of the ideological changes. Hildesheimer, sens-
ing an opportunity to stem the spread of Neolog Judaism, proposed the
creation of an Orthodox rabbinical seminary to train Orthodox rabbis who
would be as impressive and au courantas their Neolog rivals.
The notion of a modern Orthodox rabbinical seminary, however, caused a
split within Hungarian Orthodoxy between Hildesheimer and his Modern
Orthodox followers, and the disciples of Moses Sofer, who defined them-
selves as Ultra-Orthodox. Ultra-Orthodox Jews were even more rigid than
Sofer himself. Whereas the principal target of Orthodox condemnation had
been Reform Judaism, Ultra-Orthodox Jews regarded Hirsch’s and
Hildesheimer’s Modern Orthodoxy as the gravest threat to Judaism. In some
sense, this reorientation was not entirely new. Sofer, after all, had been con-
tending with Neolog more than Reform Judaism. Neolog, although
advocating a much broader range of religious innovations, shared with
Modern Orthodoxy the need to justify innovations in terms of Jewish law.
Thus, both Neolog and Modern Orthodoxy were regarded by the Ultra-
Orthodox as giving the same false impression that certain innovations were
acceptable according to Jewish law.
During the 1860s, the central Ultra-Orthodox organization, Shomrei
Ha-Dat(Guardians of the Faith), launched a polemical attack on the propo-
nents of all other points of view: Neolog, Modern Orthodox, and traditional
162 The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880