Hungary’s Chabad Opens Two Synagogues in A Single Day
Local residents gawked from doorways and windows on Sunday as hundreds of Jews careened down the narrow cobbled roads of Szentendre, dancing behind two crimson canopies.
A rolling PA system on a makeshift bicycle cart played a series of horas throughout the sleepy town on the banks of the Danube River, situated about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the capital, Budapest. Many locals smiled and bobbed their heads along with the music. Others looked puzzled — fair enough given the odd spectacle in the town where only 300-400 Jews live among its 25,000 residents.
The celebration honored the opening of a new synagogue and community center in Szentendre by EMIH, a Hungarian Orthodox Jewish group affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic sect, along with the dedication of a newly written Torah scroll for the congregation. The complex, in the process of completion, will have a prayer sanctuary, classroom and playground facilities for children, a kosher café, and a small art gallery with Judaica and Jewish art.
The hoopla represented only half of the day’s festivities for the EMIH: Directly following the dedication, revelers packed onto buses which proceeded directly to the inauguration of another synagogue, with a brand new Torah scroll of its own, in Budapest’s 13th district.
The Budapest synagogue is housed in what is planned to be the largest Jewish community center in Hungary — a 2,500 square meter (roughly 27,000 square foot) facility that will include a Jewish theater, a large playground, two kosher restaurants, and an informal study center. Its new rabbi, Shmuel Glitzenstein, moved with his wife from Israel 10 years ago. They now live in the 13th district with their seven children.
“Historically, I don’t think there was ever — certainly not since the Holocaust – a day in Budapest where two synagogues opened on the same day, and two Torah scrolls were finished in one day, so I think this really represents this resurrection of Jewish life that we’re so strongly fighting for,” EMIH executive Rabbi Slomo Koves told The Times of Israel.
