The Great Synagogue of Budapest

School Blog 11

            Good day friends and foes, and welcome to this weeks addition of team JSBP’s excursion review. Last Wednesday was an interesting one for my homies and I. We finally got a chance to visit the Great Synagogue of Budapest, which is an enormous and beautiful building that we’ve been walking past almost everyday of the semester. The Jewish population has experienced major hardship in recent history here, and much of their struggle with racism and persecution was directly felt in and around this place of worship.

The Great Synagogue,
a police officer patrols the front entrance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

            The Great Synagogue of Budapest (a city once labeled ‘Judapest’ by intolerant Magyars and Germans because of its large and thriving Jewish population) is the second largest in the world, and the largest place of Judaic reverence in Europe. During the industrial revolution of Hungary much of the Jewish population in Budapest started factories, and many smart Jewish entrepreneurs capitalized on the mechanization of manufacturing. The Jewish faith and the progression of urbanization became synonymous ideas to much of the feudal and agricultural population of Magyars, especially those who lived outside of the city. There was a strong resentment felt by many Hungarians who had resisted change and been left behind by technology and capitalism towards the Jews of their country.

            In the 1920s, Hungary passed some of the first anti-Jewish laws in Europe under their anti-Semitic leader regent Miklos Horthy. In the 1940s, when Nazi Fascism was spreading like wildfire through the continent, Hungary joined the cause and publically implicated Jews as being an inferior race that had caused much of their nation’s hardship.

Horthy with Hitler

            Throughout World War Two the Jewish population of Budapest was forced to suffer the horrifying tragedies of the holocaust. In the city the Nazis appointed the Arrow Cross (the Hungarian Fascist party) to run their operations. The Jewish quarter of the city was located behind the Great Synagogue. It was turned into a Jewish ghetto when the Arrow Cross took over, in which people endured dire living conditions. Starvation was not uncommon, and there was no escape from the freezing temperatures of Hungary’s harsh winter. By the time that the war had officially ended there were around 2,300 dead bodies lying in the streets of the once thriving Jewish quarter, many of which were buried in mass graves next to the synagogue. There are only estimates of how many Jews were shot into the Danube after being taken from their homes by the Arrow Cross officers.

Hungarian Jews in the Budapest Ghetto,
wearing the yellow Star of David for Fascist identification purposes

            The only reason that the Great Synagogue still stands in the center of Budapest is because of its two massive towers. Due to the fact that the synagogue was constructed so well, and its towers rose up so high, the Nazis chose to use the building as a radio communications headquarter, rather than to destroy it. The survival of the beautiful building is hard to believe, but perhaps more hard to believe is the fact that many Hungarian Jews still live, work, and worship in the area after such horrible atrocities were committed upon them.

Packed House

The numbers of how many Jews that were killed during the holocaust are absolutely staggering. The acts of terror that the Jewish people went through because of their ethnicity and beliefs are even more horrifying. But the beauty that has come out of such maniacal violence is that Judaism and the Jewish people are still here, even after what they and their ancestors have gone through. The man that had given us a tour of the magnificent symbol of Jewish endurance was a young Hungarian Jew himself. He still lives in the city where many of his relatives have been hated for no reason in the past, and yet he wore no anger in his expression, nor spoke a word of resentment. The sins of the holocaust did not destroy the Great Synagogue of Budapest, and did not wipe out its worshipers. I have a feeling that nothing ever could, and that both the synagogue and its people will still be in Budapest as long as time allows.                    

Parliament Funkadelic

School blog 10

            It was a significant Wednesday for team JSBP. Over the past three months there has been a nonstop buzz of chatter and inquiry concerning when we'd finally be able to get all funkadelic in the Parliament building.

Magyar's make good Goulash and rad buildings

It would be impossible to visit Budapest and not stare with awe at the Hungarian Government’s headquarters. The buildings pointed towers and intricate pillars act as massive exclamation pints along the side of the Danube. The golden detail throughout every corner and crevasse give light to the imperial and intimidating history of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. One of our teachers says that the Parliament was built with such extreme effort because of the Magyars desire to bring the capital of the Habsburg Empire from Vienna to Budapest. Another claims that the Hungarians have always felt insignificant in Europe, and have attempted to compensate for this feeling through their huge and over the top architectural feats.

   

            Upon entering Parliament it was quite clear that the interior of the colossal legislative center was going to exhibit the same feeling of fascination and disbelief that the outside does. There’s a story to be told about every detailed inch of the building. The meticulous stained glass windows had been removed and hidden in the basement during World War Two. The paintings and symbols that cover every corner and wall represent different aspects of Hungary. Its fifteen hundred year history is portrayed on the ceilings. The main dome of the building is 96 meters high, representing the fact that Arpad founded Hungary in 896. The symbols of various Kings from the country’s royal past are subtly portrayed in the edgings of rooms. The Royal Crown of Saint Stephen, which is arguably over one thousand years old, sits in the middle room of the building, between its two legislative halves. At the top of the crown there is a tilted cross. Legend states that because of the amount of turmoil that the crown has gone through (traveling from place to place to be kept from invaders, being buried after wars, etc.) and because of the various hands the crown has been passed between, the cross became skewed.

Holy Crown of St. Stephen, Founder of the Kingdom of Hungary

             We were also lucky enough to sit in on the Wednesday session of Parliament. The Hungarian legislature has over three hundred members (perhaps too many for such a lightly populated country), of which only about twenty were present. And to be honest the twenty who were there didn’t seem like they wanted to be. As various speakers took the floor most of the public officers sat indifferently, surfing the web and talking on their cell phones. It was interesting to see government in action, even though not much action was taking place. People often complain about how slow moving democratic governments like this are at getting anything done. It wasn’t to hard to understand why action is so slow to arise after seeing this particular Hungarian Parliament session.

 

Parliament Funkadelic- One Nation Under Groove

            Yet, in any regard the Parliament building was truly epic and beautiful. I can’t quite capture its brilliance in words, but I’d absolutely say that it was a pretty funkadelic spot. 

                   

US Spending for Social Change

School Blog 9

            
            For this weeks adventure the JSBP crew and I visited the International Law Enforcement Academy, located on the Buda side of the river. And while I very rarely enjoy any interaction with a bunch of cops, this place was pretty cool. ILEA is an organization that is run by the US Government, with the help of Hungarian law enforcement, to teach and, with any luck, establish a more western rule of law and way of thinking in the emerging countries of the former eastern European Soviet bloc.

ILEA's cafeteria was filled with coffee, doughnuts, and silly cartoons

The International Law Enforcement Academy is funded through US taxpayer money, with the goal of promoting positive relationships between the US and these emerging countries, as well as supporting the relationships between the law enforcement officers of these countries. While many Americans would have walked onto this campus in the middle of Hungary and wondered why the heck they were paying for its existence, ILEA has proven itself a very worthwhile endeavor through its promotion of a safer and more amiable eastern Europe. But perhaps more importantly, the academy has quite brazenly attempted to foster an open sense of understanding between ethnicities that have extremely deep seeded hatred for one another.

ILEA is run by various officials from every sector of the American and Hungarian justice systems (ie the Department of the Interior, the FBI, the CIA, etc.). These men and women run five programs a year, and in each session they instruct a number of law enforcement officers from three different emerging countries. In an attempt to create a more unified central eastern Europe, ILEA officials in both Budapest and Washington pick three countries that have historical tensions with one another. Some of these combinations have been extremely volatile (in one case a man murdered another with an axe, and let me say the murder may have been justifiable.. the Turkish government still refuses to admit that they massacred over one and a half million Armenian’s less than a century ago), while most sessions have caused close friendships across nationalistic and cultural boundaries.

The Turks actions were an original inspiration for Hitler, and sparked his fascination with ethnic extermination

I found it interesting that the hierarchy of ILEA was not shy to admit that social understanding had been one of their central goals, even perhaps a more chief focus than the literal teaching of law enforcement strategies. The widespeard effects of the former Soviet Union weren’t only economic and political, but were also very cultural. Many countries and communities that could have flourished into more liberal and tolerant ones have been forced to stagnate socially. One example that Thomas E. Stocking (the Deputy Director of ILEA) shared with us was that in many of these countries the style of thought is that “a wife unbeaten is like a house unkept”. 

Wife beating is still a norm in many eastern european countries

Social backwardness has been promoted through the closed Soviet system rather than corrected by it. Changing social norms and fostering understanding can only take place in a culture that allows an open and free exchange of ideas. If programs like ILEA can use US money to change the way that cops in these countries feel about wife beating, racism, or freedom of speech, than perhaps their cultural norms will start to evolve. It was nice to finally hear a positive way that the US is spending money abroad, rather than the usual tales of our militant and coercive foreign policy.

Keep it keeping homies,

And use that vote to promote progress.

Love,

Mama’s Boy   

Has the World Ended Yet?

Who knows if China will let its currency float, Or if Greeks will cause the EU to fail... 

All that seems clear now is I better enjoy my home-made cookies before they're outsourced... or fed to me via Ipad

Europe's a Mess

School Blog 8

Last Wednesday my fellow JSBP gang members and I got the pleasure of having a discussion with Andras Baneth. Baneth is a Hungarian that has spent such an enormous amount of time working within the EU that he literally wrote the book on the subject.

The Book

I couldn’t have asked for a more ideal time to meet with such an European Union expert. The current turmoil that is taking place throughout Europe (and the rest of the world) due to the Euro zone’s financial condition has owned newspaper headlines for quite some time now, and won’t be disappearing from the public discourse anytime soon. It’s quite palpable to everyone that the alliance of the twenty-seven sovereign European nations is on the brink of extinction. The wide array of cultural, linguistic, and most notably economic differences between the countries of the EU has begun to chip away at the great ‘European integration’ that many had hoped would solve much of the continents problems.

Greek Protests

Baneth and many of his colleagues had believed that the EU would put an end to the possibility of any future wars in Europe, and it was clearly established to bind countries like France and Germany, who throughout their long and storied histories have never quite cared for one another. The way that Baneth talked about the current and future problems that the Union is facing was gloomy and somewhat pessimistic, but certainly understandable. He voiced the opinion of many Europeans in his inquiring over whether or not the Union will last. It would certainly be a major tragedy if it were to fail. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel even made the statement (which Baneth agreed with) that Europe will break out into war if the Union were to fall apart.  

Angela Merkel, Powerful Lady

Baneth described the EU as being somewhere between an international organization and the united stated of Europe. Much of the rationale behind the EU was to combine the small markets of European nations into one large market more capable of competing in the cutthroat world of globalization. A major part of the problem that the EU has however, is that even though they have established a currency in their member states and have the power to determine much of the trade and immigration policies within the Euro zone, they have no ability to tax the individual citizens in any country. They also have no control over the financial policies of any member state, which means they can’t determine the public benefits or the retirement age in a nation like Greece. Thus the problem has arisen that some countries in the EU (such as Germany) have done a much better job of controlling their national debt and producing high numbers in terms of Gross Domestic Product, while countries like Greece and Ireland have done just the opposite.

The result is that German taxpayers are being forced to bail out Greek citizens. These types of improprieties could be reduced if the EU had more control (as if it were a federal government, ie the US of Europe) and could take away some of the member states fiscal autonomy.

GDP by country

Unfortunately, as this problem undergoes more public scrutiny, and as Europeans become more impatient with the Euro, countries are much less likely to sacrifice power to the advisors of the European Union. Baneth, and many other well-informed thinkers alike, is not overly confident that the EU will last into the distant future. This pessimism makes me sad, but is certainly understandable. I think that a more unified Europe would be an impressive accomplishment for nations that have constantly fought with one another in the past. I also sense that the more the average citizens of Europe become aware of the shortcomings the EU’s current establishment however, the less likely they will be to concede their own national independence for the good of the continent.