After two centuries of persecution, the Sabbatarians, a religious community in Transylvania, converted en masse to Judaism.
When the Hungarian Parliament declared Jewish emancipation in 1867, a Transylvanian peasant community known as the Sabbatarians interpreted the new law as permission to openly convert to Judaism. Until then, it had been illegal in Hungary for a Christian to convert to Judaism.
In the Transylvanian village of Bezidu Nou, the Sabbatarians celebrated for three days. They took time off work and marched to the Orthodox synagogue in a nearby village, circling the synagogue with prayers and songs1. Two older men, Paul Stefan Kovacs and Moses Kovacs, underwent circumcision, setting an example for the younger men2.
However, their celebration proved premature. The church officials had attempted to bring the Sabbatarians back into the fold for the past two centuries, and they were not going to give up so easily. Legal proceedings followed, which lasted for over a year. The Hungarian Justice Ministry sent representatives to Transylvania to investigate the matter. The Parliament debated the issue for many hours.
Finally, the Minister of Religion and Education, Joseph Eotvos, ruled that even though conversion to Judaism was still against the law, those Sabbatarians that had converted should be left alone. That year, 28 families, consisting of 111 people total, converted to Judaism.
Who Were the Sabbatarians?
The Sabbatarian community originated in Transylvania, a green and fertile basin surrounded on three sides by the Carpathian Mountains. Today, Transylvania is part of Romania, but it has changed hands many times throughout history. In the Middle Ages, Transylvania was part of Hungary. In the 16th century, it was transformed into a semi-autonomous principality by the Ottoman Empire, but towards the end of the 17th century, it was again under Hungarian rule. Ethnically, the residents of Transylvania are Szekely, a subgroup of Hungarians.
During the relatively short period of semi-autonomy, Transylvania became a refuge for religious dissidents whose views were considered heretical by the church. In particular, some of these dissidents rejected the trinity doctrine. They espoused belief in one G–D.
Once they rejected Jesus, the dissidents turned to what they called the “Old Testament”, seeking religious guidance. They even studied Hebrew in order to read it in the original. Some began observing the Sabbath and abstaining from forbidden foods.
A local nobleman, Andras Eossi, was influenced by the dissidents. A contemporary chronicle relates3, “this man… read so long in the Bible until he retrieved from it the Sabbatarian religion, which he made many people believe by explaining the well-known passages of the Bible to his simple parish.”
Eossi led his community and authored his own liturgy. Towards the end of his life, he adopted Simon Pechi and designated him as his successor.
A Szekler girl. István Nagy, 1913. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Pechi had worked at Eossi’s home as a tutor for his children. Eossi took note of the young man’s intelligence and sent him to travel the world in order to broaden his knowledge and to learn foreign languages, including Hebrew. Armed with a letter of introduction from Eossi, Pechi spent some time in Constantinople, North Africa, Rome, Naples, Spain, Portugal, and France. As instructed by Eossi, during his travels, Pechi contacted Jewish communities and studied rabbinical literature.
When he returned to Transylvania, Pechi translated Hebrew prayers into Hungarian and distributed his new prayerbooks among the Sabbatarian community. At the same time, Pechi got involved in politics, rising higher on the political ladder. As his influence grew, so did the Sabbatarian community. By 1620, the Sabbatarians numbered around 20,000.
In 1621, Pechi was appointed Chancellor of Transylvania. However, shortly after his appointment, Prince Bethlen ordered that Pechi be arrested and imprisoned. The reason for the arrest, and whether it had to do with politics or religion, is unclear. There was no trial. While imprisoned, he spent his time “in weeping, prayer, and perusing writings,” as he wrote in a letter4.
After almost four years, Pechi was released, but he never returned to politics. Instead, he spent more time studying Jewish texts and writing his own books about religion. Under his influence, the Sabbatarians were moving closer and closer to Judaism.
Hungarian Jewish scholar Rabbi Wilhem Bacher wrote5 that after Prince Bethlen’s death:
Pechi boldly manifested his adherence to the Sabbatarian faith. He held open intercourse with the Jews…, arranged his household… entirely after the Jewish manner, and kept the Sabbath, together with all his domestics, although he would not allow his dependents to work on Sunday either. He likewise observed the other Jewish ordinances, and constrained his family to practice them. He organized a synagogue in his place of residence where service was held every Sabbath, and a portion read from the Torah.
The church was alarmed by the spread of what they considered Judaizing. In 1631, the heads of the Protestant churches submitted an official complaint to the prince about a new religion that “spreads like a plague6.” In 1635, the Transylvanian Diet, the local legislative body, decreed that those who refused to denounce Sabbatarianism before the next year would be sentenced to death and their property would be confiscated. Fortunately, this law was not enforced.
Things came to a head in 1638, when Prince George I Rákóczi conducted a trial, accusing the Sabbatarian defenders of Judaizing. The prince’s motivations were more likely political rather than religious. Pechi’s nephew, Mózes Székely, a Sabbatarian who held a high government position, had fled to Ottoman territory in 1633. He aligned himself with the Turkish forces in the hopes of defeating the ruling prince. Székely gained the support of the Sabbatarian community, who preferred a prince supportive of their beliefs and practices.
In 1637, the ruling prince defeated the Ottoman forces in battle. To secure his victory, he sought to bring down the Sabbatarian community. He revived the 1635 decree and conducted interrogations to determine who continued to maintain Sabbatarian beliefs.
At the trial, practicing Sabbatarians were condemned to death and loss of property. One person was executed. Hundreds were imprisoned, with their property confiscated. The imprisoned Sabbatarians were promised clemency if they converted to one of the four locally recognized Christian denominations.
Under threat, the imprisoned Sabbatarians agreed to convert. Pechi himself converted to Calvinism. He was released in 1639.
A Map of Translvania and surrounding areas, depicting the distribution of ethnic groups in 1910
Persecution and Secret PracticeFor over two centuries, the Sabbatarians were hunted and persecuted. They were forced to hide their beliefs and observances. The princes issued more decrees against them and sent agents into the villages to interrogate the locals and discover hidden Sabbatarians. The priests forced the Sabbatarians to work on Saturdays and to attend church services on Sundays. If anyone was found adhering to Sabbatarian practices, their property was confiscated.
Over the years, some hidden Sabbatarians managed to leave Hungary and move to the Ottoman Empire, where they could openly convert to Judaism. In 1778, Joseph Kovacs wrote to his parents, who remained behind in Transylvania7:
I received the name of Joseph ben Abraham, and so the priests call me up to the reading of the Holy Law. Every one pays me respect here, even the chief priests. My work, too, is not injurious to my body... I am a bookbinder, and live well, for the bread is beautifully white, just like linen, and I drink the best red wine to my heart's content.
The Sabbatarians who remained in Hungary attended church and lived like Christians, but, writes Rabbi Bacher8:
their connection with Judaism had become closer and closer. The Sabbatarians observed with the greatest strictness not only the Sabbath, but likewise the Jewish dietary laws, and by every possible device they evaded the practice of Christian religious customs… [T]hey preserved and copied the old hymn-books of their sect, and especially the writings of Pechi, his prayer-book and book of rites, works resting entirely upon Jewish sources… The Sabbatarians had become Jews before they openly embraced Judaism.
In 1855, a Christian visitor to Bezidu Nou wrote:
The thirty-eight Sabbatarian families (about 150 souls) outwardly [practice Christianity]. On Sunday they visit the respective churches and listen with wrapt attention whenever the clergymen cite quotations or narrative incidents from the Old Testament. On Christian festivals they keep away from church. On the Sabbath they hold Divine service at home; but on the rest of their Jewish celebrations they meet in the house of a member which is devoted to the purposes of a Synagogue… The service is conducted by one of the members, who is chosen Rabbi, whom, however, they frequently change for another…
They can all read and write. They preserve their traditions faithfully, and boys of eight to ten years old can be heard talking about the history, adorned with legend, of Sabbatarianism and of Simon Pechi… They give their children for the most part Old Testament names, especially the name Moses. At marriages and burials they perform Jewish customs, before the Christian ones demanded by established religion take place...
Landscape in Transylvania. Unuplusunu, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Sabbatarians After the Communal Conversion
After the Sabbatarians officially converted to Judaism, they no longer had to hide their beliefs. They stopped going to church and began attending synagogue.
In 1875, a Jewish visitor described the newly converted Jews9:
The men went barefooted, and had ' harisnyas' on – narrow trousers made of the coarse woollen stuff which is spun and woven in the houses of the Szekelys. As they wore neither vests nor jackets, the ceremonial garment, [tzitzit]… was visible above their shirts. I was especially struck by a young fellow with a brown, almost beardless, face; below his felt cap there waved down upon both his temples the ringlets of hair which, among Polish Jews, are called 'Peies' [sidelocks] and although not so artistically twisted as those of the latter, yet they were sufficiently developed to transform, by a single touch, the physiognomy of a Szdkely into a Jewish one. Allied with this external characteristic was a peculiar expression in the face which I should like to describe as the Jewish revelation of race as expressed by the eyes.
In the beginning, the transition to Judaism was difficult due to a lack of funds and of sufficient Jewish education. In 1885, Rabbi Dr. Moritz Beck of Bucharest visited the community and helped them establish a school for their children.
By the next generation, the descendants of Sabbatarians integrated into the Jewish community. They married other Jews and raised their own families. Their children were indistinguishable from descendants of local Jews.
The Holocaust
When the Holocaust devastated the Eastern European Jewish communities, the descendants of Sabbatarians met the same fate. Very few of them survived.
George MantelloA Catholic priest in Bezidu Nou, István László Ráduly, attempted to rescue the descendants of Sabbatarians. He gathered documents about their families and brought them to the Gestapo, convincing the Nazis that these people had no Jewish blood. When proper documents were missing, Ráduly forged birth certificates. After several days of pleading with the Nazis, he managed to take about 70 people out of the ghetto, saving their However, some descendants of Sabbatarians, married to Jews and parents to Jewish children, refused to leave the ghetto. They chose to stay with their families, despite Ráduly’s pleas. Later, they were deported to Auschwitz.
Among known descendants of Sabbatarians during the Holocaust was Irene Mantello, nee Berger. Her husband, George Mantello, rescued many Jews through his diplomatic efforts. Irene’s grandfather had converted to Judaism in the 1860s, and her father attended a yeshiva in Bratislava10. The couple had one son.
After the war, the survivors did not return to Transylvania. Some of them immigrated to Israel, and others settled in the West. Most of their descendants are not even aware of their courageous ancestors, who practiced Judaism in secret for centuries until they were able to openly join the Jewish people.
Sources:
W. Bacher. The Sabbatarians of Hungary. The Jewish Quarterly Review , Jul., 1890, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Jul., 1890), pp. 465-493. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Gyorffy, Gabor & Tibori-Szabó, Zoltán & Vallasek, Júlia-Réka. (2018). Back to the Origins: The Tragic History of the Szekler Sabbatarians. East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures. 32. 566-585. 10.1177/0888325417740626.
Réka Tímea Újlaki-Nagy. Christians or Jews? Early Transylvanian Sabbatarianism (1580–1621). Academic Studies Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis In co-operation with Christopher B. Brown (Boston), Günter Frank (Bretten), Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Bern), Tarald Rasmussen (Oslo), Violet Soen (Leuven), Zsombor Tóth (Budapest), Günther Wassilowsky (Frankfurt), Siegrid Westphal (Osnabrück). Volume 87. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2022.
Újlaki-Nagy, Réka. (2018). Judaizing and Identity in the Earliest Transylvanian Sabbatarian Writings (1588–1621). Wrocławski Przegląd Teologiczny. 26. 41-60. 10.52097/wpt.2029.
Shay Fogelman. Discovering Europe's non-Jews who kept the faith. Haaretz, September 28, 2011.
- Shay Fogelman. Discovering Europe's non-Jews who kept the faith. Haaretz, September 28, 2011.
- W. Bacher. The Sabbatarians of Hungary. The Jewish Quarterly Review , Jul., 1890, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Jul., 1890), pp. 465-493. University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Réka Tímea Újlaki-Nagy. Christians or Jews? Early Transylvanian Sabbatarianism (1580–1621). Academic Studies Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis In co-operation with Christopher B. Brown (Boston), Günter Frank (Bretten), Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (Bern), Tarald Rasmussen (Oslo), Violet Soen (Leuven), Zsombor Tóth (Budapest), Günther Wassilowsky (Frankfurt), Siegrid Westphal (Osnabrück). Volume 87. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2022. Page 40.
- Quoted in W. Bacher’s The Sabbatarians of Hungary, The Jewish Quarterly Review , Jul., 1890, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Jul., 1890), pp. 465-493. University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Ibid.
- Gyorffy, Gabor & Tibori-Szabó, Zoltán & Vallasek, Júlia-Réka. (2018). Back to the Origins: The Tragic History of the Szekler Sabbatarians. East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures. 32. 566-585. 10.1177/0888325417740626.
- Quoted in W. Bacher’s The Sabbatarians of Hungary, The Jewish Quarterly Review , Jul., 1890, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Jul., 1890), pp. 465-493. University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- David Kranzler. The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland’s Finest Hour. Syracuse University Press, 2000.
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