When he wrote these words in 1904, Béla Vajda, a late nineteenth-century Hungarian Jewish historian, captured the love affair between Hungarian Jewry and the great Hungarian romantic novelist Mór Jókai (YO-kah-ee). For more than a century, Jókai has been singled out as the Magyar philosemite par excellance. Jókai himself reinforced this view by extolling his own camaraderie with Jews, whom he regarded as fellow Magyars.

In the larger context of European philosemitism, however, Jókai is somewhat of an anomaly. His attitude toward Jews betrays little or none of the allosemitic tone that pervades the outlook of other philosemites, and nothing whatsoever of the missionary tone evinced by many English millenarians and comparably minded philosemities.