All of the Hungarian synagogues were filled to capacity today when Hungarian Jewry celebrated the centennial of the birth of the late Emperor Francis Joseph, who was a great friend of the Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Government representatives and a delegation of Jewish army officers led by the Jewish General Zoeld, attended the services in Budapest.
In the various memorial services it was recalled that Hungarian Jewry owed much to the great monarch for equality of rights and religious recognition as well as for the creation of a public Jewish fund for cultural institutions, particularly the rabbinical seminary.
It was on February 18, 1860, in the reign of Francis Joseph that legislation was promulgated giving the Jews of the Empire the full right to hold property. In December, 1867, the new constitution adopted with the approval of Emperor Francis Joseph, removed all disabilities under which the Jews labored.
He also did much to raise the intellectual and moral status of the Jews, establishing Jewish schools in the large cities and aiding in the opening of the rabbinical seminary in Vienna in 1894.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
