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This paper discusses three Hebrew gratulatory poems from the corpus of so-called carmina gratulatoria hebraica composed by 17th century Hungarian peregrines in Franeker (Holland). It introduces the genre and context of this type of poems. As carmina gratulatoria represent a community oriented genre, they offer a wealth of information about their sociocultural setting, in our case the relations of the writer and his addressees, his education in and knowledge of Hebrew in Hungary and in the Netherlands, the writer’s skills of Hebrew and writing poetry. This is the first study of these Hebrew poems from the 17th century.

We are always seeking for the sense of the life, for ourselves and for the place in our family and community. Religion shows a new way to us, according to Jesus Christ’s principles. The son of God not only created a religion, but gave us an example how to live, and sacrifice himself for us. Sándor Karácsony reckons religion as a spiritual behavior, the base of our social contacts. We have to see into our lives and character according to the message of Jesus Christ. The right and appropriate personality can be evolved by individual training.

The views of Sándor Karácsony about religious education can be clearly discerned from his writings. The main task of reformed pedagogy is to activate continuously the divine notions in this continuously changing world. Protestant teachers must accomplish their daily work according to the Gospel of Christ. The Hungarian Reformed Church was a so-called “church of schools” for hundreds of years. This means that even between WWI and WWII it owned more schools than churches. The number of Reformed schools is significant even today. Sándor Karácsony claims that only Reformed people and communities are able to maintain Reformed schools by people who “are ready to serve and sacrifice themselves” for this cause (Karácsony, Sándor: A magyarok Istene. Széphalom Könyvműhely, Budapest 2004, 172).