Unterlander Jews (Yiddish:אונטערלאנד,romanized: Unterland,lit. 'Lowland';Hebrew:גליל תחתון,romanized: Galil Takhton,lit. 'Lower Province') were the Jews who resided in the northeastern regions of the historicalKingdom of Hungary, or present-day easternSlovakia,Zakarpattia Oblast inUkraine, and northwesternTransylvania, inRomania.[1] Like their kindredOberlander Jews, the term is a uniquely Jewish one, and is not related to "Lower Hungary".[2] Unterland, or "Lowland", was named so by the Oberlander, in spite of being topographically higher: It served to reflect the scorn of the educated westerners to their poor and unacculturated brethren.[2]
Refugees from the 1648Khmelnytsky Uprising were the first Jews to settle in these regions. However, the vast emigration from adjacentGalicia, following its annexation by EmpressMaria Theresa in 1772, shaped the character of the Unterlander, in addition to the area's backwardness. Throughout the 19th century, the northeast remained under-developed by any parameter. While hundreds of modern Jewish schools, teaching in German, were established by the authorities in 1850, there were only 8 in the entireKaschau school district, which covered most of Unterland. The linguistic shift from Yiddish to vernacular, which was over in the rest of Hungary by the mid-19th century, was little felt in the province.[3] Other Hungarian Jews derisively called them "Finaks" or "Fins", based on their pronunciation of the phrase "Von [fin in Unterland accent] Wo bist du?" ("From where are you?");[1][4] InFatelessness,Imre Kertész recalled the Yiddish-speaking, devout "Fins" in Auschwitz.[5] The boundary which separated Unterland from the rest of Hungarian Jewry ran between theTatra Mountains and Kolozsvár (present-dayCluj-Napoca). It paralleled the linguistic demarcation line of Western and Middle Yiddish.[6] While the locals' dialect resembled the Galician one, it was laced with Hungarian vocabulary, and more influenced by German grammar.[4] Itssibboleth was the pronunciation of R as anApical consonant. Unterland Yiddish is conserved today mainly by theSatmarHasidim's educational network.[7]
The influence ofHasidism was strong in the region, though its adherents never constituted a majority. They were known as "Sephardim", owing to theirdifferent prayer rite, while the non-Hasidim were called "Ashkenazim" in Hungary. Many of the locals belonged to Hasidic sects from outside the region, likeBelz orVizhnitz. Later on, native courts sprang up in Unterland, mainlyKaliv,Sighet-Satmar,Munkatsch, andSpinka. While there were tensions between the Hasidim and the Ashkenazim, they never reached the levels of hostility which characterized the LithuanianMisnagdim, both due to the movement's local nature and the lack of opposition from Hungary's most important rabbi,Moses Sofer. He did not approve of the sects, but refrained from action. In the 19th century, any discord between Sofer's disciples and the Hasidic rebbes was marginalized by the need to oppose the progressive and modernizedNeologs. The Unterlander, who were poor and traditionalist, had no inclination toward Neology: Only two such communities existed in the region, in Kassa (present-dayKošice) and Ungvár (present-dayUzhhorod), the largest cities.[8]
