My morning at the Lauder school started off with a concert from a former student of Lauder. Tamas Juhasz was born blind and was determined from very early on to not let his disability define him. He was focused from a young age on doing whatever anyone else did, and not allowing his disability to get in his way. The students were very taken with his presentation and really enjoyed his music. While his presentation was in Hungarian, it was a pleasure to hear his music and to see his passion for music and storytelling.
In the afternoon we went to the Scheiber High School. Scheiber is a Jewish Day School as well, but is a public school, so anyone can attend and they do not have to pay additional funds to attend (Lauder is apparently a public school as well, but the students pay to attend the school, making it a more homogeneous population). We were immediately impressed with the Jewish influence/atmosphere at the Scheiber school. The students all take Hebrew from a young age, they take Jewish History classes and the 10th grade takes a trip to Israel. So while the students are not all Jewish, it is known throughout the community that this is a Jewish Day School. The differences between the two schools was very interesting. At Scheiber, there is not the relaxed, student empowered feeling that there is at Lauder. The students stand up when a teacher enters the room and they call the teacher by their surnames. We talked about the US elections and the students all asked excellent questions, showing a great interest in what happened and why it happened. We compared their political system to our system and their parties to our parties. There were many comparisons to be made with their current conservative government and our incoming government. I was impressed with the students critical thinking skills – one student asked me to present the point of view of a Trump supporter on immigration.
After our visit to Scheiber, we walked to the Jewish Hospital/Nursing home. The Hospital has 350 beds and 9 doctors. The youngest Dr. was over 50 years old. While Hungary has an excellent training program for Drs, the newly trained doctors do not stay in Hungary once they graduate because the pay is not good. You actually need to bribe the Drs to get service, unless you go to a private Dr. The residents at the nursing home are very lonely because their families typically live abroad. All of the residents we saw lived in a hospital room with anywhere from 1-8 other people in the same room. The residents enjoyed visiting and we were delighted to visit with them.
From the nursing home, we went to Hero’s Square. Hero’s Square was built in 1896 to celebrate the country’s 1000th birthday. It was built during the reign of the Habsburg Empire, but was not completed until after WWI, in 1929, when Hungary was part of Austria-Hungary Empire. The monument highlights Hungary’s heros – from St. Istvan – the political leader as well as the leader of the Church to more recent Hungarians like Lajos Kossuth, a revolutionary leader who traveled the world to gain international support for the Hungarian revolution. Kossuth approached the US Congress for assistance with the revoltuion, and today has a statue in the US Capitol, only one of 3 non-Americans in the building.
Behind Hero’s Square is the Wallenberg Memorial. Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat to Hungary who saved approximately 25,000 jews from the Holocaust by putting them in safe houses around the city of Budapest. He was eventually arrested by the Soviets and died.
Not far from the Wallenberg Memorial is a plaque commemorating Tom Lantos.
At dinner we had the pleasure of meeting with Vero-Ban Linda, a local children’s author and organizer of the BBYO Hungary. She shared her story and mission with us – telling us about the Jewish Summer camp she and her husband (a Rabbi at a local synagogue) run. Her story reinforced all the other stories we have heard all week – about young students not finding out until they are teenagers that they are Jewish. And then the big question continues to be, “So what?”. Young members of the Jewish community do not understand what it means to be Jewish – how does that impact their identity? Part of what they are concerned about is that being outwardly Jewish still feels uncomfortable in many places in Eastern Europe. As expressed earlier, one main way the Jewish community continues to highlight their community is through liberalism and education, hence the reason many in the community send their children to Lauder, even though they may not actually tell their children they are Jewish.
One of the main takeaways of today seems to be that the students are very proud of their city, but unfortunately many leave the city/country for University and do not return. This negatively impacts so many aspects of current Hungarian life and stalls the efforts for revitalization of both the Jewish community and the larger Hungarian community.
