July 2010

Dear Friends,

I have just returned from an amazing mission to Budapest and Israel. I was on the 2011 Campaign Chairs and Directors Mission organized by Jewish Federations of North America together with our 2011 Campaign Chairs, Cathy and Buddy Bart and our Federation Development Director, Sherri Tarr.

Close to 150 of us from all over North America walked around the Jewish Quarter of Budapest and heard cantors sing in the magnificent Dohanyi Street Synagogue, which was built over 150 years ago, and is the largest synagogue in the world. We were astonished to learn that the Jewish population of Hungary numbers around 100,000 Jews and is the fourth largest in Europe, with continuous Jewish settlement for at least a 1,000 years.

The Nazis only occupied Hungary late in WWII in March 1944, yet managed to decimate three quarters of its Jewish population. We visited the Shoes Memorial on the banks of the Danube River where tens of thousand of Jews were rounded up by the Hungarian militia in 1944, forced to take off their shoes and shot to their deaths, their bodies falling into the freezing river. Today while Hungarian Jews are able to live meaningful lives, there is a new cloud of nationalist sentiment, racism and anti-Semitism as right wing parties made significant successes in the last election.

While viewing the remains of a 14^th century synagogue we heard the incredible story of when the Austrians invaded Turkish governed Hungary in 1866, the Jews feared for their lives. A prominent and wealthy Jew from Vienna managed to obtain a letter from the Austrian Kaiser and armed with the letter, an Austrian flag and some money he arrived in Budapest hoping to save Jews. He rounded up 250 Jews but the Turkish soldiers refused to recognize his credentials and insisted on a huge ransom. He left the Hungarian Jews together with his wife and brother in custody of the soldiers and proceeded to travel the length and breadth of Europe trying to raise the necessary funds. He returned almost empty handed and found himself in jail together with the 250 hostages. His wife and brother were temporarily released and they too travelled from country to country fundraising for the important cause of pidyon shevuim (release of hostages). They succeeded and all the Jews were released. This is one of the earlier tales of Jewish fundraising and illustrates so well our collective responsibility to take care of both our own Jews in need and those wanting everywhere, whether in Central Europe or Israel.

The highlight of the visit to Hungary was the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) run Szarvas Summer Camp. This camp has up to 2,000 attendees and serves not only Hungarian Jews but is a magnet for families and young Jews from all over Central and Eastern Europe including the Ukraine and parts of the Former Soviet Union. It was a place where Jews from Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia could find respite during the ethnic wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. And significantly it is a place where many young Jews, who only learn in the adolescent lives that they were Jewish, found a spring where they could discover and understand what it means to be Jewish; whether through Israeli songs and dance, through the Shabbat experience or synagogue prayers, lectures of Jewish history, or just by mingling with fellow young Jews from Poland, Slovakia, Russia, Lithuania, Moldovia, Israel and even France and the U.S. For me, Szarvas is the story of the Tower of Babel that works. Despite, the multiplicity of languages, communication is no barrier, and everyone feels a sense of Jewish belonging. When we arrived at the Camp, we got off the busses, moved into the main hall and were instantly hit by a blast of music and singing. Inside people of all ages were dancing and like a vacuum I felt sucked into the thronging crowd. Soon I found myself in the middle of many concentric circles of dancers with a five year old blond boy from Prague on my shoulders. Once the music died down, we all baked challahs together for Shabbat and then sat down to eat. We all understood each other.

We came to Israel three days later and on our first night we celebrated 20 year anniversary of Operation Exodus, that brought over a million Jews from the Former Soviet Union on aliyah to Israel. At the meaningful setting in the Diaspora Museum we were inspired by Natan Sharansky, a true Jewish hero who spent years in Soviet prisons fighting for Jewish freedom. Six prominent olim lit candles including Professor Fridrich Ortenberg, today a leading space engineer in Israel, Alex Averbuch, an international gold medalist in pole vaulting and Silva Zalmanson, who as a young woman plotted to highjack a plane from Siberia to Israel and found herself in prison. We were entertained by the exquisite and mature piano playing of 10 year old Maya Tamir, the rich voice of Ola Binder, today one of Israel’s leading opera stars, and a quartet of 5-7 year old ballroom dancing couples who wiggled their hips and flung their legs with amazing aplomb and professionalism.

Operation Exodus was one of the Jewish people’s finest moments. It was a global struggle of demonstrations and appeals all over the Western World coupled by the heroism of many Prisoners of Zion who languished in the Gulags and helped lead to the freedom of millions of Jews in the Soviet Union, many of whom found their way to Israel. The struggle and subsequent aliyah and successful absorption into Israeli society was realized through the joint efforts of American and world Jewry, the Jewish Agency for Israel, government of Israel , and the special campaign sand fundraising efforts that we were all a part of.

For me this mission was an opportunity to see first hand the great things that are being done in the Jewish world and to understand how important our role here in New Orleans is as a part of global Jewry.

Stay cool in our hot summer and be inspired by these incredibly warm stories,

Michael

Michael J. Weil

Executive director