This morning we visited the Hungary Jewish Museum, which is in the process of extensive renovation. The museum wanted us, as typical tourists and as educators, to serve as a focus group and give them feedback regarding an app that is in development. When the museum finishes renovating, visitors will be able to download the app on their phones and walk around both the museum and the famous Dohany Synagogue, which is next door, and receive information about both sites. They wanted us to test the app in its present format and give them feedback so that they can improve it before launching it for the public.
A young woman named Mihaela Groza joined us as part of our focus group. Originally from a small town in Romania, Mihaela is now in graduate school at the Central Eastern University in Budapest studying medieval Jewish history. Mihaela told me about the extensive Jewish community in Romania before the Holocaust. Unfortunately now there is only one synagogue in Bucharest and in the town she grew up in there are only 18 Jews.
After serving as a focus group for the Hungary Jewish Museum, we received a formal tour of the Dohany Synagogue from a young man named Greg. Following the tour, Greg shared his remarkable story with us. Greg did not even know he was Jewish until he was 12 years old, when his grandmother told him he has Jewish after he heard an anti-Semitic remark. After his grandmother died, Greg’s mother started lighting Shabbos candles, something which no one in his family had done in decades. In an effort to assimilate and hide the family’s Judaism under the communists’ rule, Greg’s great-grandfather had burned any identification papers the family
