Organized Jewish life returned to the Obuda section of Budapest Sunday as Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen presided over the rededication of the neighborhood’s historic synagogue. More than 1,500 people took part in the celebration, which saw the Jewish community take control of the synagogue after a half century of disuse.

“It was amazing,” said Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Shlomo Koves, who will serve as the Obuda Synagogue’s religious leader. “Aside from Holocaust Remembrance Day observances, it was probably the biggest event in 20 years for Hungarian Jews.”

Obuda was once home to the bulk of the Jewish population of Budapest, which historically forbade Jews from permanently residing in the inner limits of the city. But during World War II, Nazi forces murdered 600,000 Jewish Hungarians, and the fate of the synagogue fell to orphaned children. In the 1960s, the building became a textile museum; in the 1970s, it was used as a television studio.

RELATED

For the thousands of Jews who remained in the neighborhood, the lack of a synagogue meant that for decades, they went without regular prayer services. Koves, who maintains contact with the estimated 3,000 Jewish families that live in the two districts neighboring the synagogue, said that until now, residents have made do by attending Torah classes in the section of Pest across the river. Some send their children to Hebrew school there, and others have been receiving Chanukah candles and Passover Haggadahs each year.

After securing the support of Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice-chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, and philanthropist George Rohr, Lubavitch of Hungary director Rabbi Boruch Oberlander and Koves decided to rent the synagogue on behalf of the Jewish community.

Echoing the sentiments of other attendees, Peter Rajnai said that Sunday’s reopening brought back fond memories.

“When I came back to the synagogue this week, the hairs on my back stood on end,” Rajnai, 66, told The Canadian Press. “This is [an important] building for me. It is where I was Bar-Mitzvahed, but I never went inside after it was no longer used as a synagogue.”

As the community resumes prayer services in the historic building, Koves has turned his attention to renovations. Plans call for new furniture for the sanctuary and the addition of classrooms.

“We’re looking forward to developing a full Jewish community,” said Oberlander, who opened Hungary’s first Chabad House in 1989.

For Metzger, the new start is symbolic of the continuity of the Jewish people.

“This is the best possible answer to what the Nazis did,” said Metzger. “An era has ended and a new era is beginning. Fifty years after the last time Rosh Hashanah was celebrated here, it will be celebrated here once again.”