Behind the Headlines the Jews of Hungary

— The Central Board for Hungarian Jews (MIOK) coordinates most of the Jewish activities and institutions in Hungary. MIOK, the national body which speaks for all Hungarian Jews and also conveys official government policies on religious affairs to all Jews, has 300 elected members who elect a 47-member governing council.

Perhaps the most important Jewish institution in Hungary is the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest, the only one in Eastern Europe. The seminary not only trains rabbinical students from Hungary, but also from other Soviet Bloc countries. There are currently four Soviet students, one from Czechoslovakia and two from Bulgaria.

Rabbi Sandor Scheiber, head of the seminary, is Hungary’s leading scholar and historian. He is an expert on the rare volumes in the Jewish library housed in the seminary, and also on the Kaufman collection in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. (The Kaufmann collection contains illuminated Hebrew manuscripts dating back to the 13th Century.)

JUDAISM IN PRACTICE

Every Friday evening after Kabbalat Shabbat services at the seminary sanctuary, Scheiber hosts an Oneg Shabbat for some 200 people and discusses Jewish history or philosophy. Since adult religious education and most ethnic cultural activities are discouraged by the government, these popular lectures are a time for both socialization and learning.

MIOK leaders describe the seminary and synagogues as “Conservative,” but they are more traditional than American Conservative congregations. Men and women sit separately, divided by the middle aisle. There is no female participation on the bima.

The Dohany Street Synagogue is the largest in the world, with 3400 seats and four balconies. The American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which administers a $1 million per year social welfare budget in Hungary, is seeking donations earmarked for the repair of this 122-year-old structure.

Because it costs too much to heat the huge synagogue during the winter, the 200 Shabbat morning worshippers meet in the adjacent Heroes’ Synagogue. This small sanctuary was built in 1931 to honor the Jewish heroes of World War I.

THE ‘GHOSTS’ OF THE HOLOCAUST VICTIMS

Both synagogues are part of a complex of buildings that were in the center of the Budapest Ghetto during World War II. MIOK headquarters and the Jewish Museum are also here, as is a courtyard cemetery for 200 to 300 victims found dead on the ghetto streets on the day of liberation, January 18, 1945. In this courtyard is a special plaque commemorating native Hungarian Hannah Senesh, the 22-year-old Jewish heroine shot by the Nazis as a spy. In 1943 she parachuted into Yugoslavia from (then) Palestine in a vain attempt to organize resistance and rescue Hungarian Jewry.

The JDC official responsible for Hungary spoke of a Yom Kippur he spent in the Dohany Street Synagogue as “my most moving experience as a Jew.” In addition to the 6,000 people crowded into the synagogue, “there were also 600,000 ghosts” of the Hungarian Holocaust victims. “You could virtually feel them,” he said. “Everyone in this country over the age of 50 lost first degree relatives in the Holocaust.”

At the Jewish old age home, the Jewish hospital and the kosher kitchen for the poor and elderly, there were also the “living ghosts” of solitary Holocaust survivors. These victims, mostly women, are impoverished, old and alone. They lost their families, homes and money over 35 years ago, and continue to live a solitary and nightmare-filled existence.

FACILITIES FOR THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The kosher kitchen, which is 90 percent subsidized by the JDC, prepares 250,000 meals a year for these survivors. In June, 1981, a $650,000 modern facility will replace the outmoded kitchen now in use. (JDC will provide $300,000 for the project.)

Food from this central kitchen is delivered to various depots throughout the city, free of charge for people unable to pay. Unlike most institutions in Hungary, the kitchen is totally Jewish-operated, with no government subsidy or control (except for hygiene standards). The JDC representative explained this was a government “concession to the Jews,” because of the large number of survivors who are in need of the service.

Relief and welfare services are technically the responsibility of the Central Committee for Social Assistance (KSB), rather than MIOK. KSB’s social welfare activities are totally supported by JDC, and even MIOK funds from JDC are allocated by way of KSB. Dr. Mihaly Borsa, 75, administers such KSB programs as the kosher kitchen, winter relief, free clothing and medical equipment. Borsa seems to rule his domain with an iron fist, afraid of neither MIOK nor government officials.

Charismatic and feisty, Borsa was interned in Auschwitz and Dachau, and holds the highest rank in the Hungarian anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters organization. After the war, he was for a time the Secretary of Economic Affairs for Hungary. When the 2500 elderly Holocaust victims now serviced by KSB are no longer alive, Borsa said he expects that the organization will cease to function. Normal welfare problems will then be assumed by the state.

In addition to MIOK and KSB, there is a separate Orthodox community of some 3,000. The Orthodox group has its own chief rabbi, yeshiva and synagogue. This community operates the Budapest kosher restaurant, and also separate meat and poultry shops, kosher salami and matzo plants, and the mikveh. Matzo and other kosher products are exported to other Communist countries, including the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Tomorrow: Part Three