Tourists flock to the Klausen Synagogue, one of the popular attractions that make up the Jewish Museum in Prague. Rather than an exhibition in one discrete site, the Jewish Museum is located in four historical synagogues in Prague’s Jewish Town. (Photos by Mordecai Specktor)
In April, I traveled to Prague and Budapest. (I also spent a night in Amsterdam, after my KLM flight back to Minnesota last Sunday was cancelled. There was a snowstorm, I hear.) It was my first visit to these storied cities that are rich in Jewish history.
In upcoming issues of the Jewish World, I will relate some of the stories gathered in these two Jewish communities.
Prague is incredibly picturesque, with its Old Town and Charles Bridge, and the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral looming over the city. I toured the Jewish synagogues, including the Old-New Synagogue, the oldest continually functioning synagogue in Europe and the residence of the Golem, the monster created from clay by Rabbi Yehuda Loew ben Bezalel, the 16th century sage of Prague, to protect the Jews.
In Budapest, I met with a number of Jewish activists and communal officials in the more populous Jewish community. On Yom HaShoah, I visited the Great Synagogue on Dohany Street, and the Raoul Wallenberg Garden, a memorial to the Righteous Gentiles, including many courageous Hungarians, who saved Jewish lives in the Shoah. And I talked with people about the ominous political situation, in which Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose Fidesz Party triumphed again in the April 8 parliamentary elections, is tightening his grip on the levers of power in society.
As soon as the jet lag recedes, I’ll start writing up these stories. In the meantime, here are some pictures. — Mordecai Specktor
The dead are buried in up to 12 layers in Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery, going back to the 15th century — the grave of rabbi and poet Avigdor Kara is dated 1439. Among the luminaries in the cemetery is the previously mentioned Rabbi Yehuda Loew.My spacious and inexpensive apartment in Budapest was directly across the street from the Rumbach Street Synagogue, a towering edifice that is undergoing extensive renovation. The shul is located in the historic Jewish neighborhood of Hungary’s capital, which is now the center of hipdom, with coffee shops, restaurants, galleries, boutiques and clubs on every block. At night the streets are clogged with young and old out for a fun time in this lively city.The Jewish community in Budapest was largely exterminated in a period of several weeks, in Dec. 1944 and Jan. 1945. The victims of the heinous mass murder perpetrated by the fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross are memorialized in an installation called Shoes on the Danube. The memorial, set below the Hungarian Parliament’s sprawling complex on the Pest side of the river, consists of cast iron shoes of varied shapes and sizes, which evoke the herding up of Budapest Jews, who were ordered to remove their shoes and then shot at the edge of the waterway by the Arrow Cross militiamen. The bodies fell into the river and were swept away, and their shoes were left on the embankment.
