Global Jewish Voice

Israel’s pride celebration has just finished. So let’s talk about queer issues. How does Judaism feel about homosexuality? How does it work in Budapest?

Gay life has become much better in Hungary in the past 10 years. Straight people became more open, and their acceptance towards gays has increased. Gay couples are allowed to have open, registered relationships. They can ask a bank for a loan, and they are able to live together in an official way.

There are many Jewish congregations in Budapest, but there are only a few communities in which it is openly allowed to be gay, and where the straight community members don’t care much about it. There is a community, called Dor Chadash (in cooperation with Moishe House), where there are mostly young people praying on Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday evenings, and having Shacharit service a few times on Saturday mornings. Dor Chadash was established 3 years ago, and membership is still growing. Moishe House is located in the city center, and it is very easy to access by public transportation, by car or by a short walk. This young community is organizing a lots of programs together with Marom Association. They always organize a big Rosh Hashanah event, they build a sukkah for Sukkot, they light the candles for Hannukah, and they sing together from the Haggadah on the Seder Eve of Pesach.

During the summer they organize a festival around a lake, what is called Bánki tó. This festival also includes gay-friendly and gypsy- friendly programs for everyone.

No one cares if you are queer in a welcoming community

Another Jewish community, called Sim Shalom, is also gay friendly. They are a member of World Union (WUPJ) and European Union (EUPJ) for Progressive Judaism. Sim Shalom has been serving the reform movement in Budapest, Hungary for almost 20 years. The community has its official synagogue in a flat in the city center. They have the first and only woman rabbi in Hungary. Sim Shalom also offers many programs for their community members, and for people who are interested in Judaism. They study the Torah together, and they celebrate Jewish festivals, Yom Yerushalayim and Yom Haatzmaut together.

It is also good to know that Sim Shalom has its own conversion program, what is acceptable in Israel through Sochnut-Budapest even for Aliyah.

Aside from these reform movements, Jewish communities in Hungary tend not to be gay friendly at all. But if a Jewish gay person wants to to practice active religious life, he can choose to go to these places.

Why? Because both of them are welcoming, friendly, and patient. They have a peaceful atmosphere, where you can study, sing, and pray together. If you have any questions of Judaism, they will be happy to help you.

It is strange to be planning a “return” to a “homeland” I did not grow up in, to study its history – a history intertwined with my own family’s.

The short version is: I am going (“back”) to South Africa this summer on a institutionally-funded research grant for my Bachelor’s Thesis at the University of Chicago. I am doing a comparison of Jewish and Norwegian migration to two towns – Paarl (near Cape Town) for the Jews, and Marburg (120km southeast of Durban) for the Norwegians. I am studying how both groups, through settlement patterns and built structures, integrated themselves and assimilated to white settler and British imperial society. Paarl, as mentioned in my last post, also happens to be my grandmother’s hometown.

Histories of Jews and Norwegians, I find, often have a common nationalist flavor. Suffice it to say for now that the Norwegian history has to do with complex issues of national identity regarding things such as language, and the construction of the idea of what being “Norwegian” means at all. (If you want to talk to me about Norwegian things, contact me!)

South African Jewish history, and, of course, wider Jewish history, is also often written in nationalist terms; specifically, Zionist terms. So many of the communal histories of Jewish institutions in South Africa are written as histories of a given institution’s support for Israel. Think monetary contributions, Yom Ha-Atzmaut parties, and explanatory documents on Israeli policy (a sort of proto-hasbara).

Here’s the thing: South African Jews didn’t – and don’t – always think in these terms.

They didn’t – don’t – want to be Israeli. Sometimes (fairly often, actually), they didn’t – don’t – identify as Zionist, though quite proudly as Jewish. (For two prominent examples, go here or here.)

What did they want to be? In the period I am examining, the late 19^th and early 20^th century, they wanted to be white settlers; to be part of the colonial framework. Yes, this is highly problematic towards the story that we wish to tell ourselves about Jews and oppression; some helped, but many took part too.

They wanted to be part of their new communities, be it the small towns of the veldt or cosmopolitan Cape Town. They wanted to be allowed to bring their families, and fought against anti-Semitic (and already racist) immigration laws in the early 1900 that sought to exclude Jews based on “inability to write a European language.”

South African Jews who fought apartheid did not consider Israel their country. They considered their land to be South Africa.

Simply put, in the early 20^th century and later, South African Jews did not think in terms of shivat tziyon –  a return to Zion.

All history is political, admittedly. But I think that the linear “stranglehold” of a certain brand of Zionism on Jewish history is harmful. When we say a community is “dead” because everyone went to Israel, we condemn the community that still exists to some sort of death. When we orient histories around Israel, we lose the color our communities have at home. We exclude fellow Jews with inconvenient opinions – and gloss over inconvenient opinions of our own.

 Jono David

Perhaps most importantly: not all of the rich heritage of the Jewish people in the modern era is connected with the Zionist project. In South Africa alone, witness the stunning literature of Nadine Gordimer, the beauty of the “Gardens Shul” in Cape Town, and the synagogues of Oudtshoorn (pictured), known as the ‘Jerusalem of Africa.’ In the wider world, the astonishing literary corpus of pre-WWII Iraqi Jewry is an example that comes to mind – here is an ardently non-Zionist, but fully Jewish piece of our heritage that we would miss in Zionist teleology.

As a religiously observant, albeit non-Orthodox Jew, I do not think Zionism is bad. As critical as I am of her, I do hold Israel in a happy place in my heart. But I think I might be a post-Zionist - I think Israel, next to an independent Palestine, should be a fully secular and liberal-democratic state without ethnic privilege, that happens to have a Jewish majority (which would stay in such a state). Let’s discuss that opinion elsewhere, though. Because identification aside, I think that to take true pride in our Jewish heritage, we must remember that Zionism is not the core of Jewish history. Rather, it is just another facet in the long, complex, and utterly magnificent history of our people.

On April 28th, the first-ever Yidishtog (“Yiddish Day”) took place at the Miles Nadal JCC in downtown Toronto. The event, presented by one of Toronto’s Jewish arts and culture nonprofits, Ashkenaz, was an exciting novelty for the city’s Jewish community, whose Yiddish-speaking population (as has been noted by such publications as the Globe and Mail) is in decline. However, on that chilly, overcast day, a respectable crowd had come out to hear lectures presented in Yiddish on such topics as “Ashkenazi Culture in Canada: Yesterday and Today,” “Soviet Yiddish Culture in Post-Soviet Jewish Life,” “The Post-Holocaust History of Yiddish,” and a reading and discussion of original Yiddish-language poems by the poet himself.

Di Kats Der Payats and George Der Naygeriker, trans. Dr. Sholem Berger.

As a member of Prof. Kalman Weiser’s 2012-2013 Yiddish language class at the University of Toronto, I and several of my classmates were privileged to attend free of charge. My roommate had expressed some interest in attending, since I made her aware of a reading of two Yiddish translations of children’s books – Di Kats Der Payatz (The Cat in the Hat) and George Der Naygeriker (Curious George) – but was, unfortunately, unable to attend. (Perhaps just as well, since the reading in question was attended mostly by those under the age of seven.)

It was, in all honesty, a rather didactic day, and the lectures tended toward the dryly academic. However, the quality of the scholarship was impeccable (though this should be no surprise, as each lecturer teaches at one prestigious university or another). But it was a thrill for me to listen to lectures in Yiddish and be able to follow the sense of them, even if the content wasn’t always the most compelling.

A few local Yiddish cultural organizations had brought promotional materials for display. The Toronto Arbeter-Ring (Workmen’s Circle), in its own words a “100 year old Toronto organization promoting social and economic justice, Jewish culture and the Yiddish language,” was present, as was the Toronto Committee for Yiddish (“Yiddish Lebt!”). Friends of Yiddish, a conversation club dedicated to maintaining spoken Yiddish, also had flyers and pamphlets available (unfortunately they do not have a website, but can be reached by email here).

An attendee peruses books for sale at Yidishtog.

The event was a success— with a turnout of some seventy-five Yiddish speakers, Yidishtog was well attended and its organizers can be proud of its inaugural function. It is my hope that there are more Yidishtogs to attend in future years!

It’s worth noting that, collectively, my classmates and I brought down the average age of those in attendance by about 25 years, but this was remarked upon by one octogenarian in the audience as proof of something she hadn’t thought possible: that younger generations did indeed care about Yiddish language and culture, and – even more incredibly – that future ones might as well.