Anti-Semitic acts in Budapest stun Habonim congregants

By Nancy Kirsch

Friday, 26 April 2013 02:21

Steve Jacobson, who visits Budapest often, deconstructs Hungarian Jewish life /Some Temple Habonim congregants visit a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, Poland in March 2013. Rabbi Andrew KleinPROVIDENCE – Shouts of “Heil Hitler” and “You [expletive]  Jews, go back to the camps” shocked a group of Temple  Habonim congregants  who visited Budapest in March. The  group visited five cities – Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna  and Prague – during a 12-day trip. In an interview with The Jewish Voice & Herald, Rabbi Andrew  Klein of Temple Habonim, a Reform synagogue in Barrington,  recounted the disturbing anti-Semitic encounter, one that left several individuals  understandably feeling shaken and disturbed. After visiting the Dohány Street Synagogue and a Holocaust memorial, the group was  waiting for their tour bus on a frigid, snowy day. “Behind us was a group of three young men – probably drunk – scaring and intimidating  and harassing us in Hungarian,” Rabbi Klein said. “Our Jewish guide translated [their  words] for us.” As one of the young men gave a “Heil Hitler” salute, several Hungarian passersby didn’t  respond or react to the harassment, he said. “It seemed to be the normal course … no  big deal.” They also heard about anti-Semitism from a cantor in Budapest whose children faced  anti-Semitic atrocities each day, said Rabbi Klein, referencing the cantor’s comments.  The cantor wondered, said the rabbi, how much longer he and his family would remain  in Budapest. Anti-Semitism has become a huge problem in Hungary, since the Communists left  power about 10 years ago, Rabbi Klein learned from the tour guide. Steve Jacobson of the Providence-based Dorot Foundation knows Budapest well.  Vice president strategy and director of the Dorot Fellowship in Israel, Jacobson  leads a five-day seminar in Budapest for Dorot Foundation Fellows who participate  in a seminar to investigate the historical and contemporary experience of Hungarian  Jews in Budapest. He had led these trips for the past decade. Learning about the experience of the Habonimites, Jacobson said, “It must have been  horrific … I have a different story to tell about the nature of anti-Semitism in Budapest.” Jacobson asserted how difficult it is for American Jews to contend with and understand  the nature of anti-Semitism as it exists elsewhere in the world.  Speaking by phone  during an out-of-town business trip, he said, “American Jews are the only Jews in  modern history who have never needed to be emancipated. [In contrast], if you are a  Jew in Budapest, you are a survivor of the [Holocaust] or a child of a survivor.” Hungary, said Jacobson, is a new society – one that begin in 1989 – after years of control,  initially by the Nazis and later by the Soviets. On one side of the ledger, although the current right-wing government is attacking  basic tenets of democratic society, those attacks are not specific to Jews. Jacobson said, “As much as we hear noise about one part of an anti-Semitic government, the government  itself is not anti-Semitic.” He added that Hungarian Jews differentiate kinds of anti- Semitism the way Eskimos differentiate kinds of snowfalls. Hungarian Jews, he said,  most fear official, government-sponsored anti-Semitism, which they don’t see. Nevertheless, Jacobson related a conversation with a friend from Budapest who wondered  whether they are fooling themselves into believing that they are safer than they are. Are  they repeating the mistakes of their grandparents, who continued to tolerate restriction  upon restriction until it was too late? How large is Hungary’s Jewish population? Dov Ben-Shimon, executive director for  strategic partnerships for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)  – which partners with the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island – has visited the  Hungarian Jewish community, which he estimates at 120,000, many times. “Nearly all of these live in Budapest, but only some 20 percent of the population is  actively involved in Jewish life,” he said in an email. “The JDC is working with local  community organizations to increase the participation of the unaffiliated.” Late last year, after Vienna’s mayor issued a blanket invitation to the Jews of Budapest  to relocate to Vienna to avoid anti-Semitism, another friend of Jacobson’s asked the U.S.  ambassador to Hungary if they could expect a similar invitation from the U.S. When she  responded that the U.S. government didn’t believe the anti-Semitic threat warranted such a response, Jacobson’s friend said, sotto voce, “That’s what you told my grandparents.” Although the Jewish tour company warned Rabbi Klein and others of anti-Semitism in Vienna during the trip’s planning stages, the group experienced no such problems in Vienna, he said. “We were never warned about Budapest … it was very scary.” On the positive side, Jacobson spoke of a “huge resurgence on a grand scale” of Budapest’s Jewish life. Two-thirds of the initiatives and organizations Dorot visited this year, he said, probably didn’t exist a decade ago. “There’s a thriving, healthy, vibrant, exciting Jewish life to be lived in Budapest,” said Jacobson, an editorial board member of The Jewish Voice & Herald. With such an energetic resurgence of Jewish life in Budapest, the advice of a Jewish community leader there might be the best approach to address anti-Semitism. Jacobson said that this individual – a good friend of his – recommends Jews in Budapest educate Hungarian society about Hungarian Jews and their celebrations.  Don’t blame, but educate, Jacobson’s friend suggests. “That’s how the people I know in Budapest are dealing [with life there]. … focusing on the opportunities they have within the somewhat new democratic life [by] celebrating being Jewish and doing so with zest,” said Jacobson. “They believe the threats to be serious but not dire.” One of the surprises for his group, said Rabbi Klein, was the Polish perspective of World War II. “[They] look upon [the war] as the Polish devastation and killing. Seventy percent of the people who lived in Warsaw were killed by the end of the war ... some of them were Jews,” he said. “To [the Polish people], it was an issue of Poland’s destruction and devastation – not an issue of murdering the Jews.” Austrians, still in denial about their role in murdering Jews, consider the Holocaust a German problem inflicted upon them. That was what a woman at the Reform congregation in Vienna told the Habonim group. Notwithstanding the ugly encounter in Budapest – and uncharacteristically frigid weather – the 23-person trip, “was a very hard, challenging trip, but a very good trip,” said Rabbi Klein. “It was extremely emotional and powerful” to say Kaddish for Harold Reisner, a survivor of Auschwitz/Birkenau and a past Habonim congregant, at Auschwitz/Birkenau.