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| Olde Tyme Religion | |
| Hungary's abandoned synagogues are finding new life ‐ and attracting new congregants | |
| 2026-10-24 | |
| [Times of IS] While the Hungarian Jewish community was celebrating the reopening of its 100-year-old Rákospalota Synagogue last month, a local woman approached Rabbi Shlomo Köves. "She saw the crowd around the synagogue and came over to me and said, ’I don’t know what’s going on here, but can I join?'" recalled Köves, the head of EMIH, a Hungarian Jewish organization affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. "I brought her inside, and then she told me she’s Jewish. It turns out she lives there with her children, and she hadn’t been to synagogue before. Now, she comes every Friday night." That story reflects the mission of Köves, whose organization says it has helped reopen eight synagogues in Hungary over the past 15 years. During Synagogue Week in September, an annual Budapest festival held around the High Holidays, two historic synagogues were rededicated after being stripped of their sacred functions for decades. The massive Rákospalota Synagogue, designed in neoclassical and Art Deco styles, was reconsecrated after being used as a National Library storage warehouse for 60 years. A second synagogue, dating back to 1870, was reopened as a prayer center exclusively for Jewish teens. "There are many old synagogues around Hungary, including many that still look like shuls from the outside," Köves told The Times of Israel on a video call. "We have a historical responsibility to reclaim them. Most of the Jews here don’t have an active affiliation to religion, but this is what connects them to their roots."
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| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2026-10-24 07:14 |