Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1984. január-június (38. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)

1984-03-08 / 10. szám

Thursday, March 8. 1984.

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO

11.

Hungarian scene: Holy sport9 of throwing challah

(Reprinted from the JEWISH WEEK of New York)

BUDAPEST (JTA) — "Tossing the challah” is an unforgettable highlight of the Oneg Shabbat following Friday evening services at the rabbinical seminary in Budapest. The tosser is Rabbi Alexander Scheiber, scholar, historian and head of the seminary, which is famous throughout Europe.

"This is my holy sport,” he recently declared as he distributed pieces of challah to each of the 300 Jews crowding the room, often pitching the Sabbath bread with unerring accuracy to those some distance from him.

The atmosphere was charged with warm fellowship and religious communion; the effect was that of a large close- knit family.

The Jews of Hungary indeed seem to be living the good life in a Socialist state, and they are the envy of their coreligionists in other Eastern European countries. It is estimated that there are 80,000 Jews in Hungary, with more than three-quarters in Budapest; there are more rabbis and more active synagogues here than in all the other Soviet-dominated nations combined.

Several yeshivas and Talmud Torahs, kosher butchers, old-age homes, a hospital and an orphanage attest to the devotion to Judaism within the country. There are reports. however, that many small synagogues in the countryside are neglected or have been sold and turned into libraries or warehouses, with their contents of priceless Judaica lost or destroyed.

There is a magic that glows like a gem in a simple mail box. Hope lives there, and expectation, and many-faceted promise. If not today, then tomorrow, or tomorrow, or tomorrow...

The mail enclosure perpetually draws you there, perhaps to find something that will work a lift to your drooping spirit.

When I was a small boy, (I remember), thousands of miles from here, past an enormous ocdan and many depths of land, the postman who visited the village where I lived was imbued with stupendous magic. We had no mail boxes there: the mail container consisted of the mailman himself, of the large black bag he carried, flung down from his right shoulder and resting on his left side.

He would come on a horse - no, I should say, steed, horse is too plain for something involved in such a lofty occupation. He would arrive, generally in the afternoon, when the gold of the sun began to wane and the day commenced to turn slightly blue. How the hoofs of his adored horse clip-clopping across the dusty village road excited thumpings in the hearts of the village population!

In many homes of the tiny settlement there were missing members of the family, gone to some distant city or far-away country to find work and earn some sorely-needed pay as an antidote to wrenching poverty. Or young men had been drafted into military forces of the nation. The folks at home daily expected missives from these scattered loved ones, waiting for the postman, watching for his coming. If not today, then tomorrow, or tomorrow or tomorrow!

I remember my mother waiting each day. She may have received a letter from my father in America only a few days before, but already she began waiting for the postman again. At about the time he was expected to arrive, she would stand in

Above all, the seminary is the special pride of Jewish Hungary. It was founded in 1877 by Emperor Franz Josef, and is the only state rabbinical seminary in the world, according to Scheiber, who has been its director since 1950. There now are students from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and, of course, Hungary. They are trained to become rabbis, cantors or teachers throughout Eastern Europe.

Besides the secondary school, there is a center of adult education and well-known choir. It receives financial support from the government, the Jewish community and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture founded by Nahum Goldmann to maintain intellectual life in the Eastern Jewish world.

Scheiber said the Jews of Budapest were relatively fortunate during World War II. The ghetto in the center of town, containing 200,000 Jews, was not blown up. Before 1944, he said there were 250,000 Jews of the population of one million in Budapest, and anti-Semites called it "Juda- pest.”

By a quirk of fate, the ghetto, which the Nazis planned to destroy Jan. 20, 1945, was liberated by Russian forces just two days earlier, and many of the inhabitants were so grateful that they turned communist. Some 2,300 Jews were killed in the ghetto, many by Hungarian fascists.

Scheiber indicated that relations with the government were ""excellent” and that Hé deals'most aYnic'ably with'its

front of a window, or go out to the side of the nearby road, and wait.

The distant clip-clop of the horse - a wretched-looking nag, yet the noblest (we thought) animal on earth! - was like an approaching spring. When the postman finally became visible, came close, and had something white in his hand, it was like a dove bringing peace to the whole

world; the sun rose and darkness was splintered into diamond shards and fragments of rainbow.

Here, in America, no horses deliver waited- for mail. Here I found individual little holes in the walls of buildings in which a postman, on foot, delivers whatever he has for each particular tenant. Tiny holes into which not even a pigeon could fit,

but how much hope reposes in these spaces! (For aren't people everywhere the same? Don't they all across the earth have the

same dreams, the same yearnings, the same needs, the same desires?)

The postmen delivering mail on different streets, in different buildings, come at

different times of the day. These different times are known to the inhabitants of each house, each dwelling. And, if you are observant, you can see little clusters of tenants assembling in the lobbies of busy structures awaiting the mailman. What will he bring for me! What will he bring for me! each one think$. A letter from a friend, perhaps, from a child, a sister, a brother, a beloved, each in some faraway place. A manuscript may have been sent to some editor, and a reply is awaited. Will it be an acceptance or a rejection slip! A piece of music sent somewhere, a poem. Or a love letter. What will come back! What will come back!

Sometimes people wait and don't know, even, what they expect, or from whom.

But they wait, the little mail box holding an ever continuing dazzling magic: Maybe,

bureau of religious affairs. He said that this year, the 40th anniversary of the deportation of Hungarian Jews, the government will, for the first time, permit many thousands to visit Israel and will also welcome Israelis of Hungarian descent.

One of the largest synagogues in the world is the Dohány Synagogue in the center of town, which has a seating capacity of 3,300 and attracts on major holidays an overflow audience of more than 5,000. The 124-year-old edifice is flanked by a smaller synagogue, which attracts some 200 congregants for the regular Sabbath services.

In the Jewish cemetery in the suburbs is an impressive memorial to Holocaust victims, 75 feet high, 40 feet wide broad and flanked by a stone pergola with nine columns listing the names of Hungarian Jews exterminated during World War II.

The memorial bears the inscription: "They were killed with hate; they will be remembered with love.” Apparently, this tribute to the martyred has not been visited by government leaders, but foreign dignitaries like Helmut Schmidt have come to pay their respects.

Despite restrictions imposed by an atheist government and the daily deploring of Israel and Zionism in the media, it appears that the average Hungarian Jew has made the best of it. The Jewish community, as an entity and primarily through its unique rabbinical seminary, plays a role of central and far-reaching significance throughout the entire Eastern bloc. ■

Maybe, they think, when they will open its little door something will glow in there, like a diamond, like a ruby, like a chunk of sun, and gladden their warmth-needing hearts!

(Abraham Schenck is a friend and supporter of the Magyar Szo.)

AMERICAN HISTORY QUIZ

Who said what and when?

Can you identify the statesmen and the statements?

1. ) Guard against the impostures of

pretended patriotism;

2. ) I feel more anxiety today then even

in the midst of war. As a result of the war, the corporations have now been enthroned, and an era of corruption will follov in the high places. The monied powers will endeavor to prolongue their reign on the prejudice of men, until all wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed...

3. ) I can hire one half of the working

class to kill the other half.

4. ) If jit takes a bloodbath... let's get

it over with.

Here are the answers:

1. ) George Washington, Farewell Address.

2. ) Abraham Lincoln, at the end of the

Civil War.

3. ) Jay Gould, one of the robberbarons,

in reference to the Knights of Labor Strike, 1886.

4. ) Ronald Reagan, when Governor of

California; cited by Kenneth Lamott: "Ahti-California. Report from Our First Parafascist State" (Boston, Little Brown, 1971.)

Cite the two statements with the most striking Similarity!

The cbrrect answer: 3 and 4, that is Jay Gould and Ronald Reagan.

(Contributed by William Brandt)

Abraham Schenck:

THE MAILMAN