Building Bridges: A Week of Jewish Unity and Learning in Budapest
Sam Rose recently attended the Partnership2Gether Horizons Young Adults Seminar in Budapest, Hungary
I was given the opportunity to represent our great Jewish community at the Partnership2Gether Horizon Young Adults Seminar in Budapest, Hungary, for a whole week in September. The main focus of this seminar was to bring young Jewish adults from the US, Israel, and Budapest together to deepen the connection between all of our communities through discussions about our own individual Jewish identities as well as learning and experiencing the deep Jewish history of Budapest.
For our seminars and discussions, we mainly used the space provided to us at the MERKAZ, which is the world’s first Israeli Cultural Institute. Our icebreaker discussion was about Jewish identity and how each of us view our relationship to our religion. A lot of the participants quickly bonded during this discussion. Next, we had guest speakers at the MERKAZ who spoke to us about their organizations or areas of expertise. Some of these speakers were Eran Berkovich—Regional Director of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Dr. Assaf Shemesh—CEO of the Jewish Charity Hospital, and Adam Schonberger—Director of Marom Hungary. We also had a photo exhibition followed up with roundtable discussions with our Israeli participants regarding their experiences on and following the tragic events of October 7th. Learning about their firsthand experiences was very emotional for all of us. Another day, we had a new guest speaker come in named Dr. Aniko Felix—CEO of Haver—to provide a lecture and activity on Jewish Identity and Antisemitism. Our final activity at the MERKAZ was a roundtable discussion with just the participants regarding the important topic of increasing participation among young Jews. This seemed like a very common issue among all of the participants’ communities. Everyone brought interesting ideas and viewpoints to the discussion, and it occasionally got heated with differing viewpoints, but we all agreed that a major cultural shift needs to happen within our communities if we want to bring in and retain young Jewish participants. A lot of them were very interested in what our NextGen was doing because we seemed to be currently having the most success out of our communities.
When we weren’t at the MERKAZ, we were out exploring the beautiful city of Budapest with a focus on Jewish sites. We visited the HDKE, The Holocaust Memorial Center. While there, we heard from their historian who told us about the tragic Hungarian Jewish experience during the Holocaust and the Hungarian Government’s participation in the events, from initially being reluctant to deport Jews to facilitating the largest Holocaust killing since 1942. We also got to explore the HDKE’s museum as well as their on-location synagogue. We got to visit many Jewish places of worship while we explored the city. Some of them were the Rumbach Synagogue, Teleki Flat Synagogue, JCC Budapest Balint Haz where we had Kabbalat Shabbat, and the Dohany Street Synagogue which is the largest in Europe and second largest in the world. We visited Mozaik, which is a Jewish Community Hub where we learned how they support local Jewish professionals in their own projects to help Budapest’s Jewish community. We toured the beautiful Salgotarjani Street Jewish Cemetery which opened in 1874 and is filled with unusually large gravestones and monuments not normally seen in Jewish cemeteries. We also had a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter. This was where the ghetto was located but was eventually revived into a very popular part of the city filled with nightlife, food, and a few Judaica stores.
All of these wonderful experiences really helped me create strong bonds with the other participants, building a stronger bridge between all of our communities. I hope to continue reinforcing these bonds through participating in future partnership events. It meant so much to me that our great community trusted me to represent them in this amazing opportunity and I hope to continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
Sam Rose
Community Contributor
