Chabad expands operations in Hungary
RUTH ELLEN GRUBER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
A bold new sign gleams in bright blue letters on one of Budapest's main downtown boulevards. "Keren Or Chabad Synagogue" it reads in Hungarian.
This is the new, high-profile premises of Chabad in the Hungarian capital, a combination synagogue and community center, situated in a building almost directly across the street from the grand Dohany Street synagogue, the historic symbol of Jewish life in the city.
Chabad has had a vital and growing presence in Budapest since the late 1980s, when American-born Rabbi Boruch Oberlander, son of Holocaust survivors from Hungary, arrived as the country's first shaliach, or emissary, just as the fall of communism enabled Jewish outreach and revival.
Chabad runs a yeshiva and other educational programs in Budapest, publishes books and a newsletter. It holds free Friday night dinners after services in the small synagogue in the yeshiva complex, hosts seders and distributes tons of matzo for Passover and - as it does the world over -organizes public menorah-lighting ceremonies and other festive events.
But Chabad aspires to be more of a player on the Hungarian Jewish scene. Some critics go so far as to say Chabad's latest attempts to expand operations amount to a sort of "shell game" aimed at obtaining government funding - charges the group denies.
As many as 90,000 Jews are believed to live in Budapest, but the overwhelming majority are assimilated and many are unaffiliated.
The inauguration of Keren Or in January, with a gala ceremony attended by Israel's Ashkenazic chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, local officials and visiting Chabad rabbis, opened a new chapter in Chabad activities. And the boldness of the new center's sign and the prominence of its location are telling signals of the movement's aspirations.
Chabad is also involved in setting up a new Jewish community that, if its goals are met, will mirror established Jewish communal structures and compete for funding.
Keren Or's reception area holds a large portrait of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and its streetfront sign proclaims it a Chabad institution. But the facility also houses a Jewish entity that was formally registered last year as the Unified Hungarian Israelite Community, known as EMIH - which its organizers describe as the resurrected embodiment of one of Hungary's traditional Jewish streams.
EMIH was registered with Hungarian authorities last May as an officially recognized "church," or religious body, after obtaining the requisite 100 signatures. Chabad was instrumental in this effort.
Such recognition puts EMIH on a legal par with the Orthodox communities, making it eligible for state funding and also for the 1 percent of their income tax that taxpayers may forward to certain recognized institutions.
Critics also suggest that establishing a new community that claims to be the heir of a traditional stream could be a way for Chabad to "turn itself" from a "foreign" movement into a Hungarian movement, thus gaining both standing and adherents.
EMIH's spiritual leader, the 26-year-old Chabad Rabbi Shlomo Koves, who was born into a leftist, non-religious family in Budapest and left home at 13 to study in Lubavitch yeshivas in Israel, Europe and the United States, bluntly rejects the criticism.
Despite the fact that his group shares premises with a Chabad House and a new Chabad synagogue, and that he himself is a Chabad rabbi, EMIH, he says, is an autonomous body.
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