Rocks and broken glass may have shattered the holiday calm of a Passover Seder in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday night, but according to attendees, it failed to damper their spirits.
Reached Wednesday night, Rabbi Shmuel Raskin, director of the Keren-Or Chabad-Lubavitch Israeli Center, said that about 50 people had gathered in his home for the holiday’s second Seder when, a little past 11 p.m., someone threw a rock into a street-facing window. Although he suspected that someone outside was merely annoyed at the singing coming from the celebration, he summoned security, who in turn, called the police. A few minutes later, another rock came crashing through one pane of the double-thickness glass.
“The police said the second stone was thrown with a slingshot,” said Raskin, who noted that over the course of the week-long holiday’s first two days, about 1,000 people celebrated at Chabad-run Seders across the country and no one else reported any adverse incidents. “We continued with the Seder [and] closed the windows.”
Israeli Embassy personnel investigated the vandalism, and have all but ruled out that the incident was planned, said the rabbi.
“The incident was alarming for some of those present,” Eran El-Bar, a Jewish Agency representative who was at the Seder told The Jerusalem Post. But, “this was one unfortunate incident. … It shouldn’t overshadow the fact that hundreds of young people took part in [Passover] Seders throughout Budapest.”
“The whole thing only strengthened the community,” echoed Raskin, adding that it gave meaning to a part in the Passover liturgy that says that every generation experiences oppressions. “Today, someone came up to me and said that this Seder will not be forgotten, not only that no one was hurt, but also because of the special atmosphere that we were all able to preserve.”
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