Jewish Budapest

 Exterior Great Synagogue

Interior Great Synagogue

Ever since we arrived in Budapest I’ve been haunted by a sense of lost Jewish history, which is surprising to me since this is not something I normally think about a lot.  Maybe it’s because our friends who come from Hungarian-Jewish backgrounds have spoken so proudly of the rich heritage of their families or maybe it’s from half remembered stories of heroic efforts, unsuccessful for the most part, to save Jews in the land of Liszt and Bartok.  For whatever reason I’ve felt a sense of cultural loss since we arrived here.  This feeling became overwhelming today when we visited the Great Synagogue here.   This magnificent building, which can seat over three thousand people in its soaring sanctuary, is today not a working place of worship but a museum.  It’s true its open part of the year for services and it can be used for weddings and bnai mitzvah but it’s not a real congregation.  It’s an artifact.  Lovingly restored, mainly with American money, but not a real place of worship.  The museum sponsors guided tours and our guide, a middle aged Jewish woman, tried to put the best gloss on the depressing story of the Hungarian Jews, but all that came through to me was the terrible sense of loss of what must have been a large, wonderful, culturally rich community that could never be resurrected.  It was like seeing the remains of a dead culture, like the ancient Etruscans or Pompei, not a living, vibrant religion as we know it in the USA.

I’m sorry if this is a total downer but this is really the first time I’ve had this personal, visceral feeling about Holocaust events.