So I pretty much love Jewish culture and as such often visit Jewish graveyards and synagogues, but this one...wow!
This is the 'Great Synagogue' of Budapest. It was built in 1859 it is the 2nd largest synagogue in the world!
Here is a pic how the neighborhood looked in 1894 and you'll never guess who lived in the house to the left of the pic....
Yep! The founder of modern political Zionism - Theodor Herzl. I did not know this (that he came from Budapest)...this is VERY significant in my book.
Impressive....(they based it on synagogue designs from North Africa and Spain)...
I asked the tour guide what this says and VERY roughly it says something like 'My people will build a house so I can be among them' (again, VERY roughly, that is what it says in Hebrew)...
Shazam! The architect was Christian and so he just made a 'cathedral' pretty much. Our tour guide said that several things about the synagogue caused quite a stir - an organ; mixed female/male choir; electric lamps (apparently that is anti-Sabbath in some Jewish circles).
But this synagogue was meant as the home for 'Neolog' Judaism (not reformed as we were told). It retains some of the old customs, i.e. prayers are read in Hebrew rather than Hungarian, but then also some of the 'new' is added - like sometimes when it is full, women are allowed to sit on the bottom floors (NOT usually allowed in Orthodox Judaism)....But WOW! WHAT A BUILDING, EH?!
The Torah scrolls are behind there....
Crazily enough the synagogue was one of the few buildings that wasn't completely destroyed during WWII, cuz the GESTAPO had their headquarters here! Can you believe it?! The synagogue served as a detention center and on those two 'back' 'floors' overlooking the detainees the Gestapo had their offices....crazy
If you'd like another view....
This is the garden of a WWI Jewish memorial. During WWII the area was made into the Jewish ghetto, the Nazis closed it off and thousands starved and died. When the Soviets 'liberated' Budapest in 1945 they buried Jewish victims here. So this has become a graveyard/memorial to the slain Jews of Budapest in a way...
Those whose bodies could be identified, their love ones left little plaques...the collection grew and those who simply lost loved ones left plaques of their family's names....
This is a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg. Raoul Wallenberg (August 4, 1912 – July 17, 1947?) was a Swedish humanitarian who worked in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. Between July and December 1944, he issued protective passports and housed Jews, saving tens of thousands of Jewish lives.
On January 17, 1945, he was arrested in Budapest by the Soviets after they wrested control of the city from the Germans, and was reported to have died in March. The exact circumstances of his death have long been in dispute. In 1957, the Soviets claimed that Wallenberg had actually died of a heart attack in 1947 at the age of 35. There had been reports, however, from prisoners in the same facility, that he was seen alive long past 1947. In 1991, Vyacheslav Nikonov was assigned by the Russian government to find out the truth; he concluded that Wallenberg did indeed die in 1947, executed while a prisoner at Lubyanka. In a letter sent to the von Dardel family and later published at Associated Press reported in April 2010, that newly discovered evidence shows "with great likelihood" that Wallenberg was alive after the date the Soviets claimed he died.
Leave to the Soviets to kill a HERO! Oh well....Raoul, what courage and what an example to us all!!
This is the back of the synagogue, back of the WWI Jewish war memorial and then a 'Holocaust' stained-glass memorial....
These were all names of people, I am assuming, who were Jews of Budapest who died...I am not sure, but the stones (placed in remembrance of the dead - my tour guide said 'you don't bring flowers for the dead - you don't bring living things for the dead.') make me think this is a 'memorial' of these people's graves and so people can come and visit them...
This is called 'The Memorial to the Murdered Jewish Martyrs of Hungary'. The Nazis killed over 400,000. The tour guide said that 1/3 Jews in Auschwitz came from Hungary....
And each of the little 'leaves' of the Weeping Willow is supposed to represent a victim. Here is Gyorgy Rethi who was born in 1904 and died in 1944 in Mathausen concentration camp....
Right beside the synagogue is a Jewish museum. I thought it was interesting that even the ceiling lights were in the shape of...
I thought it was good...it didn't just focus on the Holocaust but had parts showing 'Jewish life' in Budapest....
Here's a Seder table (Passover)....
One of the steeples through the window...
The museum has this, their own 'Holocaust memorial'....people left coins there...I don't understand/know the significance of these things....
Read this! I guess that is why they break plates at the wedding! (Maybe that is why the groom steps on a cup during the ceremony as well?....)
Impressive!
Impressive....
One thing that was interesting that our tour guide told us was that several of the Jews in Budapest who were more conservative didn't like the new Great Synagogue! The idea of a mixed female/male choir, an organ (technically you're doing work if you play an organ), etc. was just too much! So LITERALLY an 8-minute walk away there is ANOTHER synagogue that was built around the same time for the more 'conservative'/Orthodox Jews of the city of Pest! LOL!
So interesting, so interesting....and who would've known that Theodor Herzl came from Budapest?!
