VENETIANER, LAJOS

VENETIANER, LAJOS (1867–1922), Hungarian rabbi and historian. Venetianer, born in Kecskemet, attended the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau (1888–89) and was ordained at Budapest's Landesrabbinerschule. Venetianer became rabbi in Csurgo (1893), rabbi in Lugos three years later, and from 1897 to his death chief rabbi in Ujpest and professor at the Landesrabbinerschule.

A versatile scholar, he was interested in the history of religion, in the common elements in Roman Catholic liturgy and Judaism, and in Jewish literature and history. His profound knowledge of the Christian liturgy and his scholarship were evident in his publications in this field: Ursprung und Bedeutung der Prophetenlectionen (in: zdmg, vol. 73, 1909) and Juedisches im Christentum (1913). He edited the publications of the first Jewish medical writers in linguistic and medical-historical respects: Asaf Judaeus (1–3, 1915–17), a work of pioneering importance despite the sharp criticism that Immanuel Loew leveled against it. On a more popular level, Venetianer wrote about the organization of Jewish communities, A zsidóság szervezete az európai államokban ("The Organization of Jewry in the European States," 1901), a unique work on the subject and about the history of the Hungarian Jews, tending toward the apologetic, A magyar zsidóság története a honfoglalástól napjainkig ("The History of Hungarian Jewry from the Beginning of Hungarian History to Our Days," 1922).

bibliography:

S. Halpert, in: Magyar Zsidó Szemle, 40 (1923), 3–10; N. Katzburg, in: Sinai, 40 (1957), 174–6; K. Ödön, Venetianer Lajos emlékezete (1928).

[Alexander Scheiber]