1899

Meir Avraham Munk / Adolf Munk on a bumpy road to find his mate

“Respected members of the kehila in the city [Großwardein] sent their matchmakers for me to get married. They spoke about dowry, one promised more, the other less, but I was unwilling. Because I had set my eyes on a girl who lived in my building. This girl knew how to manage a household … and she seemed to return my feelings. …She was still young, naïve and unexperienced, and she was as uneducated as the village girls. …She did not learn how to read or write, neither in German, nor in Hungarian, she could not read Hebrew, hence she could not even pray. She conversed only with the maids all day. What could she possibly expect from her relatives when in need? …I was very concerned about it, although the girl had a lot of advantages. She was as beautiful as the moon, beautiful and healthy, there was nobody like her in the whole town. (…)

These matchmakers schmoozed me; then came another one who was sent by the father of a girl who made a great impression on me because of his father’s good and trustworthy conditions. … He offered to give me accommodation and board for three years, and that he would introduce me into the business in which he is engaged – he was a wine wholesaler, and that he had a warehouse in his house where his customers walked in and out all day. He would give me five hundred silver florins in cash that I could use for my purposes in his shop. …

I could not choose between a love marriage and a marriage of convenience.  Had Rabbenu Gershon not prohibited it, I would have chosen two wives.”

(Source: Meir Avraham Munk, Életem történetei (The story of my life) (Budapest, 2002), pp. 229-231)

The revolution and freedom fight of 1848, as seen by Meir Avraham Munk

The revolution started with violence, looting and transgression committed by the village people against the Jews in  Vágújhely, Brezova, Miava and Szobotics, and also elsewhere. Gangs attacked them and looted everything that was Jewish property, and they claimed that they acted on the permit of the King who allowed them to loot and to scare off the Jews and send them to Jerusalem. Jews in this neck of the woods have had a very stressful life …. they forced my grandfather [Moses Felsenburg], who was a municipal clerk, and was 77 years of age, to write a petition on Saturday to the army corps command in Pressburg (Bratislava), requesting to send a troop for their defense.  … I will never forget the day when he returned from the offices of the community on that Saturday with me walking beside him. How he was crying, bitterly, all the way, and complained why God made him live this long only to be lured into to temptation he could not resist.”

“I returned to yeshiva after Passover and I spent another half year there, through the end of summer of 1848  …my parents sent for me to return home and continue to study with Gaon Reb Yechezkel Baneth. The reason for this was the great revolution that spread across the country. My parents and grandparents felt uneasy about me. Soldiers were recruited enthusiastically in the country, with pipes and drums and dancing, and a lot of wine and handshake, to fight for the freedom of the country … And the masses rejoiced and put on armor and helmet, there were also yeshiva students among them, who were different inside and out. My parents and grandparents agreed that they’d better watch me through the end of these viral times. Once it’s over, I can go as I please.”

(Source: Méir Ávráhám Munk, Életem történetei  (The story of my life) (Budapest, 2002), pp. 152-154)