It is difficult to convey the impact of Beth Tfiloh’s partnership with Scheiber Sandor this past week. Picture Alessa Elbaum and Margot Jay teaching girls from Hungary how to say the blessing of al netilas yaddim at Shabbos dinner. 
Picture Louis Myers teaching a boy from Hungary how to put on tefillin. If you can picture those scenes, you have a small sense of the impact that our Beth Tfiloh’s students have here.
Friday night after Shabbos dinner Rabbi Furman, Joel Monroe, Zsolt and I gathered the boys for a discussion. We went around the circle and each person was asked to share what made being Jewish challenging for them and what made being Judaism rewarding for them. Several of the boys from Hungary said that anti-Semitism made being Jewish challenging for them. They said that they hide their Jewishness from people. Bali said that if he did not go to Scheiber Sandor but attended a public school in Hungary instead, he would lie and tell people he is not Jewish. Gabor, a tall, athletic boy who plays on a youth American football team here, said that he is afraid of being beaten up if people find out that he is Jewish. Simon, a skateboarder, told of when he mentioned to a fellow skateboarder that he is Jewish. Another skateboarder happened to overhear this conversation. Simon realized that this young man stopped speaking to him, but he could not figure out why. Then one day Simon noticed a newspaper article about a neo-Nazi rally in Budapest. In the center of the picture accompanying the article was a picture of his fellow skateboarder who had stopped speaking to him, raising his arm in a Nazi salute.
But every Hungarian boy also said that what they find rewarding about being Jewish is the sense of community. That is what the students from Beth Tfiloh bring to Hungary. They bring a spirit of community, friendship and solidarity that is vital to the Jewish teenagers here. That cohesiveness reaches across oceans and continents, languages and levels of observance. It is an eternal bond.
