Jewish Budapest

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In many parts of Europe, you notice the absence of Jewish life in once thriving Jewish neighborhoods. You see synagogues that are now museums. You see graveyards that haven’t been used since before WWII. Prague had only one synagogue, out of at least six, where services were actually still conducted.

Budapest, however, has a visible, living community. Although the current 80,000 Jews in Budapest are about half the pre-war estimates (when they made up nearly twenty-five percent of the city’s population), it is still the largest community of any city in Central Europe today. Walking through the old Jewish Quarter (which also now happens to have a large Roma population), you see Jewish shops, restaurants, and, of course, synagogues - ones still used as houses of worship. Central Synagogue is actually the second largest in the world (the biggest is in New York City), and the almost Art Deco Orthodox Synagogue is just a few blocks away.

Although Hungary was not formally occupied by Nazi Germany (see my previous entry) until 1944, almost at the end of the war, this did not prevent a last ditch effort to deport Hungarian Jews to the concentration camps. Around 70,000 died in that brief span between 1944 and 1945. But perhaps because it came so late, it could not prevent the community from rebounding, at least in part, unlike in many other Jewish centers.

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I took advantage of the neighborhood's liveliness to indulge in some of the best eating I've experienced since leaving Berlin. I found this adorable Jewish-run restaurant on Kauizal Square, a place called Kádár Étkezde. The wide-girthed proprietor, seeing my bewildered face as I perused the incomprehensible Hungarian menu, gave me a fast run down - in heavily accented English - of what was available. Since I probably still looked like a deer caught in headlights, he offered to put together a "menu" for me. I gladly accepted. My starter was a cold cherry soup, my main a hearty beef gulyás (goulash) with mini-"dumplings" with a side of cucumber salad (finally, a vegetable!). Dessert was a heart-attack inducing apple pastry topped with meringue. I left very full, but very happy.

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