Summary
The Indispensables
We wanted to emphasize right in the title of
the book as well the particular situation the Jewish women occupy on the
pages of my study. The complex observation of a group of people and the
description of the individual reflection of the observer – feminist in
this essay constitute the essence of the research into culture. The
description is authentic if man is apprehended in his peculiar
existential situation. In respect of the social statuses this lifestyle
was characterised by men’s dominance. The women’s layer discovered
within the men’s society was though far from being homogeneous, but of
uniformly marginal situation as it can be detected on the level of the
Society.
Although the Jewish society achieving middle-class status readily
accentuated the importance of women, but the acceptance of the bourgeois
values led to the quick change in the old role casting of the sexes that
resulted in the reinterpretation of the social structure of the whole
Jewish Society.
Reviewing the major tendencies of the Jewish and non-Jewish feminist
literatures at the beginning of this book, I found a place in the
culture science also for our concept.
In the part following the Introduction are reviewed the historical,
sociological, demographical and philosophical works on the settlement of
the Jews of Pest, the establishment of the Jewish cultural and social
structures in Hungary and on their operation after the settlement in
Pest.
All the authors we made to speak – Sámuel Kohn, Sándor Büchler, Zsigmond
Groszmann, János Kósa, Vera Bácskai and others – were striving for
scientific truth and completeness. The could not achieve necessarily the
latter, since they excluded from their description the Jewish female
social layer, fixing thereby, as a matter of fact, the discriminated
social situation of women.
It, however, is a mistake to think that this work does not do anything
than merely criticising – under the pretext of the settlement in Pest -
the Jewish social relations. Efforts were made to represent the Jewish
woman in the first place as an independent human being. Restricted even
to the margin, the women were vital and socially creative. If demanded
by the situation, the women – for example as widows – managed the family,
the business independently and took a stand for their interests. The
women were able to turn even the least economic chance to their
advantage; they were pleased to create communities (including the
peculiar religious tradition as well).
The layer of the maid servants figuring in a separate place in this book
did not escape the attention of Vera Bácskai either. The authoress
summarised this so that keeping servants had been characteristic of the
Jews of Pest. The number of male servants was less, but maid servants
could be found in every third household. Although the situation of the
servants was characterised by the defencelessness, several women used
this situation for widening their living space. This too is addressed in
the chapter discussing the Christianization of “women”. In the same
place mention is made of cases when the women took independent decision
on withdrawal of the religious community or conversely: they did not
follow their husbands in becoming Christian.
Similarly to Vera Bácskai, I tell a few family stories, and not only
about women, I mention a new type of qualified entrepreneurs speaking
Hungarian as well, while the nameless, unknown peddling, begging women,
family mothers and single mothers occupy the centre of attention. Slowly
another Jewish world evolves from this before us, the main characters of
which are women. The women do occupy the first place in history even if
always men occupied the first place in the community documents forming
the source of research.
A special place is ensured in this description to the linguistic
analysis of the research sources, in the course of which I present the
handwriting of the tax-books written in the official Yiddish language of
Pest as well. The detailed description of the conditions of Pest is
preceded by the short presentation of the Jewish community of Óbuda and
the environs, which was one of the major human sources.
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