Historic Budapest Synagogue Reopens as Youth-Led Jewish Community

Religious activity stopped more than 10 years ago following his death and the congregation’s decline.

By Shula Rosen

A 150-year-old Budapest synagogue has reopened after more than a decade without religious services, becoming a Jewish center where teenagers will lead the community and organize its activities.

The Dessewffy Street synagogue now serves the youth community of the C-teen movement, with Chabad emissary Rabbi Tzvi Bassman, who is in his early 30s, its oldest regular worshipper.

“This is a groundbreaking community and educational initiative. Our goal is not simply to establish another minyan or a place of worship for young people under 18, but to create a place that is entirely led and run by them. The officeholders, community leaders and organizers of daily activities are the teenagers themselves,” he told Arutz Sheva.

“We want every young person who walks through the door to feel that this is their home, that they are not merely passive participants but take full responsibility for shaping their own Jewish lives and those of their friends,” Bassman added.

Jewish porters and coachmen from the “red hat” neighborhood established the congregation in 1870 in a building that had previously been a stable.

A cheder, or traditional Jewish elementary school, and youth programs later operated at the site.

Orthodox Jewish life continued there for decades under the late Laszlo Herzog, who brought local young people into the community.

Religious activity stopped more than 10 years ago following his death and the congregation’s decline.

The reopening is part of a wider effort by the Association of United Hungarian Jewish Congregations, or EMIH, led by Hungary’s Chief Rabbi and Chabad emissary Rabbi Shlomo Koves, to restore synagogues abandoned, confiscated or repurposed during the Holocaust and Communist era.

Dessewffy Street is the sixth historic synagogue to resume religious services through the initiative. Another is the approximately 250-year-old synagogue in Óbuda.

Most recently, the historic synagogue in Budapest’s Rakospalota district was rededicated on the eve of Yom Kippur following four years of work and extensive renovations.

Founded by the late Rabbi Michael-Yitzhak Dushinsky, it was confiscated during the Holocaust and later served for decades as a storage facility for books and newspapers belonging to the Hungarian National Library.

“Wherever there was darkness and silence, we are bringing back light and life,” Bassman said.