The running joke among the Beth Tfiloh group in Budapest is that any time I see a dog walking along the street, sitting at a crosswalk, waiting for a traffic light to change or playing in the park, I am going to stop to ask his owner if I can pet him. And since a lot of people seem to own dogs in Budapest, this has happened so many times that my colleagues now shout out, “Halaine! A dog!” whenever they spot one. And while the group patiently indulges my passion for pets, I’m fairly certain that they do not know this: today, I found a dog when I actually needed one.
After three intensive days of teaching adolescents and teenagers at the Scheiber Sandor School, my fellow BT teachers and I shifted gears and visited the residents of the only Jewish nursing home in Budapest, Holocaust survivors who would share their stories with us. Like everyone else, I felt honored to sit in the presence of these survivors, their dignity and resilience evident on their faces and in their words. But a feeling of dread also followed me through the halls of this building: the last time I had been in a nursing home was seven years ago in Baltimore, when my father died in one after a long, sad year of suffering from dementia and then finally succumbing to congestive heart failure.
So as I watched and listened to these gentle senior citizens, clearly so proud and happy to receive their American visitors, my mind kept wandering back to my father and my last conversations with him, moments when I tried to wring out few more precious memories. Pulling myself back into the present as I walked down the hallway to attend a music program at the Israel Sela Disabled Home in the same building, I noticed on the partially opened door of a resident a photo of her dog and, in her room, the dog himself.
Halaine, in her element, with a dog at old age home
“Is there a dog in there?!?” I asked as I poked my head in, and I could almost feel the silent groans of my group, but at this point, I needed to see a dog. An elderly woman motioned me in, and I gestured toward a small black poodle standing in the corner. “Bonifac! Bonifac!” she called to him, and I sat on her floor and began to pet her ancient dog. Despite our language barrier, she was able to gesture that the dog was deaf and very old, but he looked well fed and had food and water bowls and his own dog bed in her room. My heart lifted a little, imagining Bonifac and his owner facing each new day together, commiserating about their aches and pains, but at least not lonely.
Late for our next activity, I hurried down the hallway to the music program, where about 20 adults, all developmentally disabled, gathered to sing and clap along to Jewish songs with a pianist who was also their teacher. When she played Hava Nagila, we joined the residents, one-by-one getting up to dance, our collective experience at b’nai mitzvahs, weddings and Day School celebrations propelling us into the most raucous and lively hora that we could manage, and I danced with abandon as joyful optimism made its way back into my heart.
Later that evening, we came full circle at dinner with Linda Vero-Ban, a Jewish educator who, with her husband, a rabbi, runs synagogue programs for families in Budapest and camp sessions for children at the international Jewish Camp Szarvas, about 80 miles away. As we discussed the state of Jewish education in Hungary, we debated how to meet the need for effective Day Schools and programs to sustain the next generation of Jews. As we talked, my mind returned to the generation we had left only hours earlier, who had both seen and experienced the most unimaginable evil at its most destructive. And yet they continued their lives with meaning and purpose, told their stories with dignity and strength and even shared the company of an old dog with a visitor who needed one. I thought about our holy mission, which we had spent the evening discussing with such passion and conviction, and knew, somehow, that my own parents were watching me with pride.
