Behind the Headlines a Tale of 3 Central European Cities

The Jewish community of Hungary, estimated at 80,000,is polarized between the few thousand who are observant and the many thousand who are assimilated. The youth who seek to learn more about their Jewishness, and fit into neither category, are largely ignored by the leadership.

In interviews with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, young people charged that the central Board of Hungarian Jewry (MIOK)’s lack of effort to prevent further inroads by assimilation was due to their fear– “a legacy of the troubled past”– or lack of concern of both.

“George,” a young academic who requested anonymity, said that after the war, many Jews with Jewish consciousness left the country. survivors, he said, either wanted “to keep away from anything Jewish,” or become Zionists or Communists.

WELCOMED INTO THE STATE APPARATUS

While before the war Jews, however wealthy, could hold no government positions, after the war they were “welcomed into the state apparatus,” it being obvious that, as Jew, they could not be suspected of fascist politics. This generation, the children of the “ruined bourgeoisie,” became civil servants, technocrats, academics.

The young Jewish intellectuals of today, George continued, were raised in a Communist culture. Many broke with the Party, but did not want to move away from the left.

The solution for them, he said, would be to “get in touch with Hungarian Jewish culture–the flourishing Jewish secular culture with its Central European Jewish identity and non-Communist leftist Jewish intellectual tradition. “But this tradition, he said, is “very alien to the official Jewish community because it was always critical of the establishment.”

Very few intellectuals have any contact with the Jewish community today. The leadership’s position, he said, is, “if you’re not religious, you’re not a Jew.”

LACK OF COMMUNAL ACTIVITIES CRITICIZED

The absence of communal activities to attract and hold the youth was denounced by a young Jew, “Thomas,” who also insisted on anonymity. Thomas told JTA that there is a “little wave of religious feeling” in Eastern Europe– a phenomenon which also obtains in Czechoslovakia, the World Jewish Congress delegation learned when it later visited Prague. The Catholics and Protestants in Hungary, said Thomas, capitalized on this with meetings and special encampments; they also reportedly have stores where religious materials are sold.

“The Jews,” Thomas said, “do nothing. The leadership doesn’t care about the youth.” In what could only be called a care about the youth.” In what could only be called a cri de coeur, Thomas told JTA that “nowadays there are thousands of young Jews who have some Jewish feeling. But they have no meeting place, no way to do something, to make themselves more knowledgeable.”

The Talmud Torah, he said, is only for the “small circle” of several thousand religious Jews in Hungary. “But what about the other 90 percent of Jews? There is no attempt to catch (sic) them. They will be assimilated in 30 years– there is nothing to turn it around.”

Thomas said there used to be a Shalos Sudos (supper) on Saturday evening for the youth, initiated mainly by them. “It was very popular — lots of people came to hear lectures on the Bible and Jewish culture.”The community stopped it after three such events, he said.

There are he continued, only two large gatherings catering to the youth– the dances at Chanukah and Purim. These used to be held in the old Goldmark Hall, now in need of repairs. This past Chanukah, the dance was held in a Jewish high school classroom which was too small for the 600 people who converged on the place.”Within the first hour, people felt like they were on a transport,” and half had to go home for lack of space, he said.

Thomas and other young people would like to have a meeting place for youth, lectures, camps like they’ve heard the Yugoslav Jewish community maintains, screenings of Jewish films, a modern library.

“The only thing for the youth is Dr. (Sandor) Scheiber’s lectures,” Thomas said. On Friday nights, including the evening in February when the World Jewish Congress delegation visited his Rabbinical Seminary, it was overflowing with youth who had come to hear the rabbi speak on Jewish tradition and philosophy, and hand each individual present a morsel of bread.

Scheiber died in March.

Finding no means within the officially-constituted Jewish community to explore their Jewishness, some young Jews reportedly participate in home study circles, thus risking the consequences of government disapproval of any self-organized activity.

DENIES EXISTENCE OF ASSIMILATION

Ilona Seifert, secretary-general of MIOK, asked what this official communal body is doing to combat assimilation, denied its existence. “There was great assimilation until Auschwitz,” she told JTA, “but no assimilation since the Holocaust,”But she did acknowledge that “there are Jews who are not religious.”

Hundreds of children, she said, attend the Simhat Torah celebration, and there are Bar Mitzvahs and circumcisions in the community. Asked about the youth, she spoke of Chanukah and Purim dances at Goldmark Hall and of the two Talmud Torah classes per week held for adults.

As for the suggestion of summer camps, the idea was broached to the parents who, she said, did not like it as they prefer to have more time with their children during the summer. The young people attending Scheiber’s lectures were mostly “looking for a match,” she said.

Seifert described the social service activities of the community — a day center for the elderly, a 200-bed hospital (supported by the government), three old-age homes (where residents pay, in contrast with Rumania where 94 percent pay nothing), a 60-bed holiday home at Lake Balaton, 200 “meals on wheels” for the homebound, and eight eating places. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee allocated $1,100,000 in 1985 for these services.

She expressed optimism about the future of the Jewish community of Hungary. “Rebuilding is our duty,” she said. “We lost one-and-a-half generations. Very few children survived the Holocaust. But 40 years later, we are over the crisis.” She concluded:

“I am sure the community has a future. Twenty years from now, there will be fewer than 80,000 Jews. But we will be stronger. We will be the greatest community in Central Europe.”

Thomas’ prediction, albeit depressing, seems closer to the mark. “Within 100 years, there will be only 1-2, 000 religious Jews and absolutely nothing else,” he told JTA. “The rest of Hungarian Jews face a dire perspective — to forget everything about the past and about their people. They will not know if they are Jews or not.”

(Next: Prague)