Great Synagogue of Nagykálló

הקהילה היהודית

Jews are recorded in Nagykálló from the eighteenth century, but the organised community took shape at its end, as part of a broader settlement of Yiddish-speaking Jews from Galicia in the region. Many were innkeepers, wine sellers and leather traders; historians connect the spread of Hasidism with the leather and wine trade routes running north into Poland. The community counted 66 Jews in 1785, 693 in 1836, 610 in 1848, 782 in 1900 (out of 6,973 inhabitants) and 1,060 in 1920 (out of 8,117). Its rabbis included Joel ben Zvi Brodi (1655–1755), chief rabbi of Szabolcs county; Yitzhak Isaac Taub (1751–1821); Isaiah Benet (1792–1864), son of the Nikolsburg scholar Mordechai Benet, rabbi from 1840; and his son Bernát Benedikt. From 1882 Menahem Broda (Emánuel Bródy, 1862–1938) headed the yeshiva, which between the wars sometimes had more than 200 students.

אדריכלות ועיצוב

The synagogue was a free-standing, rectangular hall building of the kind built by larger rural Hungarian communities around 1800. The surviving photograph (MILEV, F2023.9) shows plain rendered walls divided by a simple cornice, two rows of windows on the long side, a tall round-arched window in the gable end, and a very steep hipped roof that gave the building its landmark height. In 1924 the building was remodelled and enlarged to plans by the local engineer Dezső Lisser; the details of his changes are not documented in the sources consulted. The catalogue card gives the original date as 1791 and calls the style Baroque.

החיים בבית הכנסת

As the synagogue of Rabbi Isaac Taub's community, the building stood at the centre of early Hungarian Hasidism. Taub's teaching, songs and legends drew followers from the whole region, and the Kálló tradition continues today in the Hasidic courts of Kalov in New York and Kaliv in Jerusalem, whose followers gather in Nagykálló each year on 7 Adar, the anniversary of his death. The yeshiva, led from 1882 by Menahem Broda, made the town a centre of study until his death in 1938, after which no new rabbi was chosen and the yeshiva closed. The painter Imre Ámos (born Ungár, 1907–1944), a native of Nagykálló, drew on memories of the town's Hasidic life in his work; the rooster that recurs in his paintings is linked by art historians to the Kálló song.

הרס

The synagogue survived the Second World War but lost its congregation in 1944. In the early 1950s the town bought the empty building, and in the 1960s, under the Communists, it was demolished. The exact year of demolition is not given in the sources consulted.

גורל הקהילה

After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the Jews of Nagykálló were ghettoised and deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944, where most were murdered. Aser Szegal Lőwy, a descendant of the Nyírtass rebbe who served the community before the Holocaust, died in 1944. Few survivors returned, and the community did not re-form.

האתר כיום

The synagogue has disappeared. Nagykálló remains a place of Hasidic pilgrimage: the old Jewish cemetery holds the grave of Joel Brodi and the ohel of Isaac Taub, and the new cemetery the graves of Mordechai Benet's son and of Menahem Broda. A new Kalov guest house for pilgrims stands in the town. The exact plot of the demolished synagogue was not identified.

שמות בולטים

Yitzhak Isaac Taub

1751–1821Rabbi of Nagykálló and Szabolcs county from 1781; first Hasidic rebbe in Hungary

The great synagogue was consecrated around 1800 during his tenure; the Kálló Hasidic tradition begins with him.

ביוגרפיה או מקור ←

Menahem Broda (Emánuel Bródy)

1862–1938Head of the Nagykálló yeshiva from 1882

Led the yeshiva attached to the community for more than fifty years.

ביוגרפיה או מקור ←

Dezső Lisser

UnknownLocal engineer

Designed the 1924 remodelling and enlargement of the synagogue.

ביוגרפיה או מקור ←