Sziget Festival Counts Losses, Chabad Counts Gains

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Organizers of one of Europe’s largest summer events report the weeklong pop music and cultural Sziget Festival which ended last week a major flop. Not so, says Chabad of Hungary.

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The rained-out Festival, held on Margaret Island in the Danube, came up short 15,000 visitors, and will be posting losses. But with more than 350,000 who did come to hang with rockers and artists, Chabad isn’t complaining.

An unusual venue for Jews to gather, dance and daven, Rabbi Boruch Oberlander, Chabad’s representativee to Hungary since 1989, sees it as a chance to reach thousands.

“We set up a tent there and had separate dancing and a stand we call ‘Ask a Rabbi.’ Rabbi Shlomo Koves and I saw thousands of people every day,” Oberlander says of this Woodstock-like event. Chabad rabbinical students, and graduates of Chabad’s women’s teaching colleges were there as well.

As Oberlander seeis it, it’s an important step in helping the Hungarian community get used to a Jewish presence again. Chabad’s tent with separate dancing and singing makes a lot of noise, enough to sometimes compete with the heavy metal bands playing on the main stage.

Despite the pouring rain, “the line of people waiting to ask us questions was huge.” Oberlander grins. “Some of them waited with their question all year long knowing they’d meet us here!”

Chabad has worked hard to revive Hungary’s Jewish community, and is brimming with stories of young men and women unaware of their Jewish roots until recently.

Adam Lunger, a young Hungarian architect had never been to a Shabbat service.

One Friday evening a few years ago he walked into Chabad’s shul where Koves and Oberlander are rabbis, in the old Jewish ghetto, now the Jewish quarter. A stranger invited Lunger to sit with him in the front row, and that night proved a turning point for Adam, who would return to Jewish tradition in both name and practice.

“Chabad has a positive relationship to Judaism,” Lunger explained. “Hungarian Jews are sad and base much of their relationship to Judaism on the Holocaust and then Communism. But, Chabad has recreated Judaism here since the war.

“No one else tried. Chabad has created a positive environment for Jews who are scared to be Jews here. Now we are looking forward now, not just backward.” Lunger spent a year and a half studying with Rabbi Sholom Hurwitz at the Chabad-run “Pesti Yeshiva” and will soon be studying at a yeshiva in Israel.

Article Continues (Lubavitch.com)