blogs/rabbi-joshua-hoffman

From February 23 to March 1, Rabbi Hoffman is travelling to Hungary and Israel on a mission with 30 rabbis from all across the US.

Out of the Depths We Find the Light of Our Redemption - Sunday, February 26th, part 2

מעמיקים מצינו ראשית צמי�-ת �'אולתינו

We have learned on several occasions that the JDC, the Joint Distribution Committee, is not involved in sustaining Jewish communities; rather its goal is to empower and ensure that Jewish communities and Jewish people all over the world can thrive autonomously. It is a successful model around the world and certainly here at the Ballint JCC.

The Ballint JCC is a community center with a modest budget, around $350,000 which is astonishing for what it accomplishes.  It charges memership dues to cover a significant portion of its expenses, but support from the Hungarian Jewish community and the JDC cover the rest.  It's even more remarkable when we learned that the Sarvasz summer camp administration is a part of that budget too!

Like most JCC's there is a gym.  But this JCC also has a cafe, a computer center, a large social space where concerts and dances take place, and a kids area.  The JCC is housed in a restored apartment building and each inch is used for classrooms, office space, social space.   The constraints of the space are exacerbated by a VERY busy Sunday when they have an open house to encourage new memberships.  Something extraordinary was happening when we entered the building.  There was a clamour for seats in the cafe, a small group of elderly playing and singing music from 'the old country'.  When we walked upstairs, we saw small children jumping up and down and screaming with delight in an inflatable bouncer.  Other children are sitting around a table as a teenager designed shapes with henna paint on their arms.  Our group of 30 stand crowded on the edges of this room taking pictures of a bouncer as if we had never seen small children play before!  The positive and life-affirming image was a necessary sight following our morning tours through the depths of hatred and destruction.
We met the directors of the JCC who shared with us the active calendar of programming for the JCC and what impact it is having on the community at large.
As Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the JAFI, will relate to us later on, it is simply miraculous to discover that in a short 6-7 years, this sizable population of approximately 100,000 Jews suddenly appeared in Hungary.  It is a case of "If you build it, they will come" of Jewish identity and life here.
The infectious enthusiasm of the director, who is a trained Jewish Educator, inspires us to learn more as we are broken up into smaller groups and led in round-robin style throughout the facility.  Like a good lesson plan, we are exposed to the very best of what the JCC offers while sharing conversations with the young staff who facilitate a wide variety of cultural and social programs.

Our group is led by former staff of the Sarvasz camp, who spent a great deal of our time together talking about the single most impactful phenomenon of the resurgence of Jewish life here .  The Sarvasz camp attracts young adults from all around the region, and the number of kids who get off the bus at this Jewish camp and learn at that moment for the first time they are Jewish is astounding!  They describe these moments in detail, but we were utterly speechless listening to story after story after story of young adults who are learning about their Jewish identity at age 13 or 16 or 23. One young woman recalls coming home from school one day to share with her parents all she learned about WWII Europe and the Holocaust.  When she asked about. The Jews and why there was so much animosity and prejudice againt them, her parents revealed to her that she was Jewish too.  It is hard to imagine that moment of revelation, and yet the awareness of one's Jewish identity as one with a unique destiny at age 13 brings new meaning to the Importance of Bar/Bat Mitzvah in our communities ithe United States.  Many of these young adults choose Judaism despite the fears and concerns of their parents that they will somehow be endangered when they express their connections to this ancient and sacred tradition.

In the context of recent history, these 'inverse marranos' have stories that make a lot of sense.  The previous generation suffered through Post-Holocaust Hungary and the occupation by Communist regimes until 1989.  For the next twenty years, those parents who begin having children at the time of democratic liberation, are now reaching a time when they can speak about the past openly without feeling the real threat of reprisal or recrimination.  Plus, the energy surrounding the Sarvasz and JCC experiences have compelled parents to allow their children to discover their roots in a safe place. 

As we concluded this tour and story sharing to make our way for a special presentation, we saw the rabbi from this morning, Thomas Vero.  He was sitting on a sofa welcoming individuals young and old to "Ask the Rabbi" questions about their own Jewish identity and what belonging to the Jewish community is all about. The message of Jewish outreach is strong here, and a model many of us hope to bring back to our own communities. 

The last presentation of our visit at the Ballint JCC was an intergenerational program that matches up young adults, 18-25 with Holocaust survivors.  The young adult and senior pair share their stories of identity and experience and have the unique opportunity of visiting Israel together!  The young adults participate in a kind of Birthright program, and the survivors have their own tour.  Their respective tours overlap in certain points.  But, the details of the program and even the trip to Israel are not the most relevant outcomes of this program. When asked what they didn't expect to gain from this profoundly meaningful experience, it is the sense of relationship building that they take with them; that young adults now have grandparents they may never have had before, and that survivors are not only sharing their stories for posterity on a video  recorded by the Shoah Foundation, but with someone who will share the burden of their history and legacy.  Listen to the video recordings of both the survivors and the young women.  What is happening in Hungary is the beginning of an authentic healing process.  What will happen in the next 20 years to this community is still uncertain, but through the lens of the Ballint JCC, the future looks radiant.

We leave the JCC for our final event of the evening and the concluding program of our visit to Budapest, a reception sponsored by the American Embassy.  U.S. ambassador Eleni Konkalis and her husband Mark greeted us with warmth and graciousness.  The Ambassador addressed the group by describing her experience as a diplomat to the country. She shared her challenge with learning the Hungarian language.  Sensing the difficulty in acquiring the complex colloquialisms and seemingly impossible-to-pronounce word constructions, she chose to read a wealth of Hungarian literature in translation to best understand the cultural development of her constituency.  She noted the profound impact the Jews of this country have had on the influence of ideas and values of the Hungarian people and remarked how many of the country's best writers were also Jewish themselves.  Her reflections were a testament to our experience these few short days of our visit here. The influence of the Jews here was both positive and reactive.  Jewish values and wisdom are evident in the very best the Hungarian people have come to offer the world, and the collective guilt and ongoing commitment to take responsibility for the harrowing truth of some 600,000 lives cut short, families and communities, industrialists and entrepreneurs, musicians and artists.  They are trying to rebuild a new national identity. Somehow this new journey the country will take will reaffirm their links with the past and forge strong and lasting relationship with Israel and the Jewish people in the years to come. 

So may it be for the Hungarian Jews and for all of Israel.