Jewish Budapest

The Great Synagogue of Budapest - built in the 19th century, badly damaged during World War II and renovated in the 1990s after the fall of Communism:

The synagogue is the second largest in the world (largest is in New York):

 Stunningly beautiful inside:

Outside is the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Garden. This weeping willow memorial has the name of  a Jew from the Budapest ghetto who died in the holocaust inscribed on each leaf:

The tree stands next to the Garden of the Just, where the names of Righteous Gentiles known to have helped and protected the Jews of Budapest are recorded - including Raoul Wallenberg, the Vatican's  Apostolic Nuncio, and the Catholic father of the Jewish lady who guided us round the synagogue:

While the pre-war and present day Jewish community is focused on the district surrounding the Great Synagogue in Pest, in the middle ages there were many Jews living in Buda. We stumbled on this tiny medieval Jewish prayer house, where original wall paintings have been uncovered:

Apples and Pomegranates

As I have at least two readers I know will to be interested, I thought I'd share what we are doing for Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), which starts tonight and finishes on Wednesday evening.

As a mixed Catholic-Jewish family we have always celebrated the major Jewish festivals at home, but although we have a number of family traditions for Hannukah and Passover, nothing has really stuck for Rosh Hashanah. Tevye goes to the synagogue, but at home we haven't done much more than bake traditional honey cake. This year I bought a book from Amazon which sounded as though it would be a good resource to help us make more of the Jewish New Year ... Apples and Pomegranates: a Family Seder for Rosh Hashanah by Rahel Musleah. The "seder" is a simple order of service based around a meal including eight foods that have traditional connections with the festival. Each food has its own section of the book, with prayers, a short story, things to think about and often a related activity. At the end there is an an abbreviated version of the traditional blessing after meals, a few simple songs and recipes. The prayers are given in Hebrew, Hebrew transliterated into the western alphabet and an English translation.

Using the whole seder would be too much for us, but tomorrow night we are going to start dinner with the blessings for Rosh Hashanah and the prayers and stories for two foods (apples and honey, and pomegranates). Depending on everyone's attention span, we may end with the abbreviated version of the traditional grace after meals included in the book. Normally we would aim to do this on the first evening, but outside commitments mean the timing just doesn't work out this year.

This morning Little Cherub and I baked honey cake and honey biscuits (cookies) - sweet foods for a sweet year. The honey biscuits were a serendipitous extra. I had ordered the book Honey Biscuits by Meredith Hooper from the library without making the connection at all ... so there I had, all unplanned, a suitable activity for Little Cherub.

Wishing you all a good year. Shana tova!

The Jews of Penzance

While I am on a Jewish history roll ...

I have loved Cornwall since I was a child, and Tevye and I have been talking seriously about eventually retiring there, probably to the town of Penzance (if you want to know why, take a look at the view in my blog header. Also, who could resist a place with a name meaning "Holy Headland"?). It is important to us that wherever we live there must be a synagogue within reasonable driving distance, so we did a bit of internet searching to check out the local Jewish community. We found that there is indeed a small but active community in Cornwall, but rather to our surprise we also discovered that Penzance itself has a Jewish history.

The Jewish community of Penzance dated back to the eighteenth century, attracted despite the town's remote location by the commercial life of its port. The community's heyday was the first half of the nineteenth century, and a synagogue was built in 1807. By the middle of the century membership was declining, and for some time the synagogue was kept viable only by the large family of the rabbi. It became increasingly difficult to form a minyan (the ten adult men necessary for a full service to take place), and often only scaled down services could be held. The last AGM and the last wedding both took place in 1892. For many years a single congregant - the son of the former rabbi - kept the synagogue open, praying there alone on the High Holy Days. He finally left in 1913 and the building was sold to the Plymouth Brethren. Today, all that is left as a physical reminder of the Jewish past of Penzance is its unusually well preserved Jewish cemetery.

Picture: Gravestone of Jacob James Hart (English Heritage)

A couple of nice snippets of information ... the Jews of Cornwall referred colloquially to London as Makom Lamed - the "L-place"! Also, a Jewish trader from Penzance with the wonderful name of Lemon Hart produced his own brand of rum, which is still available today. You can even buy it online. (Not that I would want to. Loathesome, vile tasting stuff!)

Source of information: JCR-UK

A Little Jewish History

A colleague of Tevye's recently spent a few days in Budapest, where she discovered an unusual tourist attraction - the Great Synagogue, reputed to be the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest in the world. Anticipating Tevye's interest, she brought him back a postcard, and I have been meaning to find out more about it ever since.


Built in the nineteenth century, it is an extraordinary mix of architectural styles (Moorish, Byzantine and Gothic), and is impressive both inside and out. It was badly damaged by bombing in World War II and was restored in the 1990s, with the restoration largely funded by the cosmetics queen, Estée Lauder, herself a Hungarian Jew.


In the early 1940s the Jewish population of Budapest was 246,000, or whom nearly half died in the holocaust. The number of survivors was much higher than elsewhere in Europe because Hungary sided with Germany and was not occupied until March 1944. It was only after this that the Jews of Budapest were forced into a ghetto and subjected to the murderous attentions of the Nazis. Many were protected by the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who issued them with Swedish identity documents. Today the Jewish population of Budapest is around 80,000, the largest Jewish community in eastern Europe.

Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was born in a house next door to the synagogue. The house no longer exists, but the plot is now the site of a Jewish Museum.

Party time

Last night was Hannukah party time. This has become a favourite annual tradition, when we invite our neighbours over to celebrate Hannukah with us. Tevye reads the story of Hannukah to everyone, we light the candles, play dreidls for sweets, and eat latkes and salt beef (if we can get it, or slices of roast beef if we can't) followed by doughnuts. Then the children disappear to make noise while the adults sit around drinking tea, coffee or wine and engaging in (slightly) less noisy conversation. At the end all the children get "hannukah gelt" - chocolate money - except that last night I forgot to give it to them and nobody noticed!

Playing dreidl at Hannukah is a highlight for most Jewish children. As a child Tevye attended a children's synagogue where they always supplied a sack of monkey nuts to use as chips. We usually opt for Smarties (similar to chocolate M&Ms). A dreidl is a four sided spinning top, with a Hebrew letter on each side. To start, each player puts two sweets (or nuts, or whatever ...) into the pot. Then everyone takes turns to spin the dreidl and follow the instructions for whichever letter lands face up:

• נ (Nun) - Do nothing
• ג (Gimel) - Win everything in the pot
• ה (Hay) - Win half the contents of the pot
• ש (Shin) - Put two into the pot

After a gimel each player puts two sweets into the pot. The game continues until everyone is out of sweets (there tends to be a certain amount of attrition during play) or the players get bored.

I usually skip the dreidl playing to grate potatoes and fry latkes (you can find the recipe on my Cookbook blog). Every year I make more than the year before, and every year the bowl ends up empty.

Overheard yesterday afternoon:

Star: It's Hannukah tonight
A-next-door: Hannukah! I love Hannukah!
Star: That's weird. You're not even a bit Jewish ...

Hag Sameach!

In our mixed bag family festive seasons and holy days tend to pile on top of each other. The girls and I are already knee deep in Advent and looking forward to Christmas, and we are now also celebrating Hannukah, the Festival of Lights, with Tevye. This evening Angel, Star and I went out to sing and play Christmas carols. We then came home to join Tevye in the prayers for the beginning of Hannukah, to light the menorah and to exchange Hannukah gifts. Christmas and Hannukah coincide most years, as do Easter and Passover, and we have learned to take double celebrations in our stride. Even though they make what would in any case be busy seasons busier still, it is worth the extra effort to be able to enjoy the richness of both strands of our family heritage.

On the way home from our carol trip, I asked Angel and Star if either of them could remember the Hebrew greeting for Hannukah. "Yes" piped up Star, confidently ... "sheket, b'vakasha!" Er ... not quite! Sheket b'vakasha is Modern Hebrew for "quiet, please!" (or more colloquially, "shut up"). Tevye remembered this snippet from a trip to Israel, and taught it to the girls long enough ago not to expect them to remember it. Odd things stick in Star's brain. And yes, the monkey did know what it really meant! What she should have said was ...

Hag sameach! Happy holidays!