Sephardim in Hungarian territory, 1840

I never realised that Sephardim had migrated so far north, to the edge of central Europe. The towns mentioned in Miss Pardoe's book are today in Serbia, but were formerly in the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It had been Ottoman territory for around 150 years until 1699. I have no idea when the Sephardim arrived. In 1840 Miss Pardoe reported that Hungarian Jews were tolerated rather than emancipated. Some of the wealthier had converted to Catholicism and joined the Hungarian aristocracy.

"At Semlin [Zemun in Serbia?] and Pancsova [Pančevo in Serbia] many Spanish and Portuguese Jews still reside descendants of those who were compelled to exile themselves during the persecutions of Torquemada.

These people retain their original language, like their brethren at Constantinople, of whom I have spoken in a previous work [The City of the Sultan, vol. iii. (2nd edition.)], and who fled at the same time from the same evil."

Source: Julia Pardoe. The City of the Magyar, or Hungary and her Institutions in 1839-40: Volume 3. Page 300.

Judeo-Spanish Balkans, 1849

A report from a Mr Parsons, quoted by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1849. I suspect the respondent may be the Rev. Justin W. Parsons who was resident with his wife in Salonica.

The report suggests that Spanish was the Jewish culture in the Balkans, except in those territories that had been long held by the Austrian Hapsburgs.

The Jews of Seres [Serres, Greece], as also those of the other cities of Macedonia, and of the cities of Bulgaria, Servia [Serbia] and Wallachia [more or less southern Romania] seem to have gone forth originally from Salonica. They have the same language [Spanish]; while the Jews of the southern provinces speak Greek. But all have the same blind submission to the rabbies, the same prejudices, the same evasions of the truth, the same subterfuge. “Gold is their god, and traffic is their religion,” one would say who should meet them only in their fair. But in their prayers, and their observance of the Sabbath, the Deceiver causes them to appear, to themselves at least, devout and holy, separate from all the nations, the favorites of heaven.

Parsons perhaps overlooks the former influence of Spanish Jewish communities in what were Venetian enclaves along the Adriatic coast.