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

מעמיקים מצינו ראשית צמי�-ת �'אולתינו

Our morning began in a progressive Neologue shul in the Buda area of the city called the Leo Frankel synagogue.  (see photos) We arrived in the midst of the preliminary prayers and immediately we donned tallit and tefillin.  Like our prayer experiences before, the melodies were familiar and we fit seamlessly into the small morning minyan.

I personally enjoyed the chanting of the 2nd paragraph of the Aleinu at the conclusion of the service in the melody we use at the Day School and Camp Ramah here on the West Coast.

We are introduced to the young rabbi (which I proudly relate is close in age to me!) Thomas Vero and his lovely wife Linda Vero-Ban.  Linda has written several books in English and Hungarian about basic Judaism for the overwhelming influx of Jews rediscovering their Jewish identity in Budapest. They are colorful and accessible, much like the community they are building here. The Leo Frankel community is a much more conventional looking with a Hebrew School, adult education programs, religious services, and havurot.  We are all swept up in the passionate commitment of this couple to bring vibrant Jewish living to the city.  We will even meet Rabbi Vero at the Ballint JCC later in the day where he will spend his afternoon meeting with young people newly discovering their Jewishness. It is the best practice of Jewish outreach, and from our perspective a great success.

We move to a social hall where we are treated to a delicious breakfast (not catered by Carmel!) and introduced to Janos Fonagy, the Hungarian Minister for Development in the Parliment.  We're grateful to meet one of the few Jewish parlimentarians, especially one who is part of the current coalition of conservatism.  The minister disclosed that his Jewish identity is not important to him, even though he was a child survivor, he was trying to articulate that he is not a practicing Jew.  Once again we pressed him with the concerns over religious recognition and legitimacy in the Hungarian government.  His responses were savvy, including his personal views that the laws were still in draft form and prematurely written and also suggesting that the conversation be tabled for a year to cool off the opposing viewpoints until everyone can sit down to discuss this rationally.  We leave the meeting somewhat disaffected by the government's political approach, especially when the various dignitaries we've been meeting seem to shrug their shoulders when these concerns we've raised are met with responses like, "Let the Parliment work out the concerns," and "the current government won the majority vote." Of course, our goal with this mission is not political in nature, but in our experience with Jewish communal leaders, individuals in the Hungarian Jewish community and leaders of Jewish organizations worldwide, we have concerns that our brothers and sisters in Hungary cannot fully enjoy the freedom to express their identity in their homeland.

We leave the synagogue and head out of town to the large cemetery where some 300,000 Jews are laid to rest.  Dr. Michael Miller toured us through significant tombstones and memorials and led us to the Holocaust memorial, first crudely constructed to immediately respond to the overwhelming sense of loss in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Later, more traditional memorials, with classical verses, poetry, and sculptures are constructed around the space.
Our group participated in a small memorial ceremony filled with poetry, song, and prayers.  We are now witnesses and voices for those silenced so long ago. In the midst of our ceremony, I reflected on a year in my own life when the encounter of harrowing images and so much death caused by insanity of Nazi evil cast me into a small depression.  Eventually, I emerged with a renewed sense of hope and purpose.  But now I rarely, if ever, allow my emotions to overtake me when confronting the deeply saddening facts of such innocent and painful bloodshed.  Today, staring at the columns of names, and the pencilled in additions and corrections of more names - names of memory piled upon names of memory - I allowed myself to cry.   600,000 children, young adults, women, and men perished in the Holocaust decimating one of the most vibrant and affluent Jewish communities in Europe.  Hungarian Jews wanted to be more Hungarian than Hungarians.  And now they are gone. There are 600,000 reasons to visit this country, and 600,000 reasons to say, "Never Forget!" AND "Never Again!"

Our tour offered a reprieve from the Holocaust experience with a scheduled visit to the Hungarian Parliment.  We are extremely fortunate to meet with Eugene Maegyesy, the Hungarian Prime Minister's Foreign Policy Advisor.  Eugene is also an American citizen, living in Denver, when he was called into service for the Hungarian people.  One of Budapest's landmarks is the Parliment building.  It is absoluely stunning to see at night since it is lit up and on the banks of the Danube River.  The interior decorations of the Parliment building are also extraordinary, typical of European cities, and remarkably well conserved during the era of Communist occupation. 

After a very cordial tour, we formally conclude in the old House of Lords space.  There are two identical chambers in the Parliment, and the one we stood in was used for tours. It was impressively ornate and dignified.  Here Mr. Maegyesy allowed us to ask some questions.  Of course we ask him to discuss the relationship with Israel, and now our standard questions about religious freedom and freedom of the press.  As I mentioned before, there is a cool response masked as political spin from the foreign policy advisor.  I suppose its a bit of a disappointment since the leaders of our mission have established such positive relationships through the Hungarian Embassy in the US and our contacts through JFNA, JDC, and JAFI.

We left Parliment for a short trip to the banks of the Danube where we walked to a sobering memorial for the 1000's of Jews who were tied together, shot and cast into the freezing waters of the River in late December.  There is a long row of shoes, bronzed and cemented to the stone pedestrian path along the bank, shoes of all sizes, men, women, children.  The imagery of the memorial is clear.  Our guide also explained that the memorial was at one time vandalized when someone put pig's feet into the shoes, and the times when an occasional shoe gets torn up and thrown over into the water. When the pig's feet vandalism occurred, the Jewish community and local support from the community at large gathered in a show of solidarity as they ritually cleansed the shoes by performing a sort of Kashering (deep cleaning and hot water). 

The air has cooled considerably from the mildly warm and bright weathered we enjoyed on Shabbat.  As we bundled up a little more tightly and return to our bus in reflective silence, the chill of the tragic fate of Hungarian Jews during the Shoah intensified our fragile and conflicted spirits.  Yes we are here to witness and support, but we cannot quite fathom how Jews would ever want to live in a place laden with so much pain and tragedy, suffering and silence.  Never to forget does not mean never to speak about it, or confront the horror. It seems that the attempts to remain silent can no longer contain the quest for identity and meaning among the next generation.  Judaism and Jewish identity are a discovery, even if you have been born a Jew, there is light even in the encounter with oblivion.

After a quick lunch at the Hannah restaurant, one of the other Kosher restaurants able to accomodate our group, the group splits up either for some personal time, or to visit the Holocaust musuem in town.  I chose to visit the museum. The facade is well crafted, with stone unlike the bricks and facades characterisitc of European architecture mishapen and leaning at an angle, as if to show how that which was once straight is now bent. The tour is tastefully done following a theme of gradual deprivation of rights to the eventual mass transit of some 600,000 people from throughout Hungary to the death camps.  The tour through the museum ends in a brightly lit synagogue, that is still used on occasion.  What a powerful message!  The journey into the depths is not complete without a step into the light of redemption.  The rabbinic group affirm the message as we pray the mincha prayers in the synagogue and step out of the museum to a place where Jewish renewal is thriving and inspiring, the Ballint JCC.