A Klezmer Concert Like No Other in Budapest
We had just arrived to our charming Airbnb a few hours before in the midafternoon. My travel companion and I were exhausted after an overnight flight from Boston to Budapest with a stop in the Munich airport. We were headed for a 7-day combination Danube Cruise and visit to Prague on a “Jewish Heritage “excursion with Uniworld Travel. Three days prior to the cruise, we would spend time on our own in Budapest.
This was my first venture into Central Europe and Hungary was a bit of a mystery to say the least. For starters, the language is unique and difficult for outsiders. None of the words are recognizable. It’s hard to even remember how to say “thank you” —“koszonom.” We were told to try “koszi” for short and call it a day.
We are curious and Jewishly engaged world travelers who soak up local culture, so naturally we were going to push ourselves to attend the free outdoor Klezmer concert located in the city’s famed Jewish Quarter where we were staying. I was admittedly a bit cranky feeling very tired and hungry, and could not imagine attending a concert in that weakened state, but push on we did.
From the get go, I was puzzled by the crowd, and the setting. As we approached, we saw hundreds of people—definitely on the elderly side with women easily outnumbering men—sitting on city provided plastic chairs and benches waiting for the concert to begin. Good thing we came a bit early or we wouldn’t have found a seat! The event appeared to have few tourists like us in attendance. It was definitely a local happening.
As the band was gearing up, five of the male musicians (there were two hatless female performers as well) donned gaucho style hats that to me did not suggest Klezmer at all. It felt a bit like Mexico actually. This was the first indication to me that this concert was going to be unique.
By way of background, I have a fair amount of experience with klezmer music, primarily as a listener. In my past, I’ve attended several klezmer festivals which featured the leading lights of authentic klezmer music. I’ve been exposed to more typical Yiddish favorites as well as lesser-known creations.
This concert represented a broad interpretation of the concept of klezmer. Several of the musical numbers were Hebrew and Israeli songs that I was familiar with and thrilled to hear and sing along to. For example, they played the well-known Naomi Shemer Hebrew song “Al Kol Eleh.” They performed Yiddish standards such as “Abi Gezunt” made famous by Molly Picon in the classic 1938 Yiddish film “Mamele” and the song “Oh Yossel, Yossel” which was a family favorite in my youth as we had an Uncle Joe about whom we sang that particular number. They performed a rousing “Tumbalalaika” in Yiddish and “Those Were the Days My Friend” as the finale sung in Hungarian (so far as I could tell). They even incorporated a portion in English of “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from “Mary Poppins” into their version of Tumbalalaika!
The two vocalists (who are actually husband and wife) were terrific performers and the enthusiastic engagement of the audience was contagious. My question throughout as I scanned the audience continued to be: “who are these people?” “And how many of them are Jewish?”
There’s no way to tell for sure, but it appeared to me that the vast majority were not Jewish. Why did I think this? Well, although I had just arrived in Budapest, and knew so little about the relatively small Jewish community there, the concert goers to me simply did not seem Jewish. Of course I could have been mistaken. However, I paid close attention to how few people in the crowd sang along with any of the Hebrew or Yiddish lyrics, so partly I base my conclusion on that observation. But then again, many of these mostly elderly people could be highly assimilated Jews who really had very little knowledge of Jewish culture. Alternatively, they could be Jews who only learned of their Jewish identity later in life and were trying to catch up. I learned very quickly over the next few days that many Hungarians have Jewish roots that became suppressed both as a post-Holocaust response and as a result of Communism’s negative attitude toward religion.
I have to confess I also felt a confusing combination of pride mixed with anger and sadness at the outpouring of enthusiasm for the Klezmer concert which I know to be part of a larger Klezmer revival movement in Europe as a whole, particularly in Germany and Poland, ironically. The pride stems from appreciating that this music that is now so widely popular represents my Jewish heritage. It’s a beautiful gift by Jewish musicians to the world. The anger and sadness of course derive from the knowledge that European Jewry was decimated in World War Two so this music evokes a lost world representing six million lost Jewish souls.
We were informed by a very helpful younger man seated near us that the lead couple of the Klezmer band were indeed Jewish. He himself, by the way, was wearing a cap right out of “Fiddler on the Roof” that indeed aligned with the traditional Klezmer look! He spoke a little Hebrew and told us he had spent time on a kibbutz in Israel some years back.
The song that intrigued me the most on so many levels in the performance was the Israeli number “Habaita” (“Bring them home”) which has become the anthem of those calling for the release of the Israeli hostages. As with each musical number the group performed, the lead singer provided extensive commentary in advance. I so wished I could follow the Hungarian, but no such luck. But his tone in introducing this song was sober. How much of its meaning and context did he explain? Was he seeking the prayers of the audience for the return of the hostages from Gaza? This was clearly the most important melody to him as the transliterated Hebrew lyrics were handed out to the audience so they could sing along. This particular moment was unimaginable to me: having just arrived in Budapest, I was suddenly participating in a singalong with a large group of non-Jewish Hungarians of the poignant song which has become the global Jewish community’s anthem for the return of the (now almost forgotten) Israeli hostages! Was I dreaming? Could I even imagine a crowd of hundreds of non-Jews in the Boston area singing “Habaita” together in the current climate?
I had not traveled to Europe prior to my current venture in more than nine years. Typically, when Jews talk about the antisemitism we are currently experiencing locally, many say things like “well it’s been like this in Europe for years. Now it’s finally happening to us.” In embarking on my current journey, my sister warned me: “Expect anti-Israel protests in Europe. I saw this in Sweden last summer.” My response was “of course, I know what to expect!” But this is not at all what I actually experienced.
As further evidence of this Hungarian “mystery,” I was likewise surprised to encounter across the street from the concert a kosher Israeli felafel joint that was literally plastered on the outside with hundreds of posters memorializing dead hostages and expressing prayers for those yet to be released. This kind of public display is today unimaginable now on the store shops of Brookline, Massachusetts, the very Jewish town in which I live, where a brick was recently thrown into the local kosher market with “Free Palestine” emblazoned on it. What I have now come to understand is the glaring difference between the anti-zionism and antisemitism so rampant in Western Europe as opposed to a seemingly less threatening environment in Central Europe.
The following night, for Kabbalat Shabbat, we attended a local progressive Jewish congregation called “Sim Shalom.” There we communed with about forty other fellow Jews vigorously singing many familiar and some unfamiliar beautiful Shabbat prayers. One of the highlights was a ceremony marking the occasion of a 16-year-old boy who decided he wanted to choose a Hebrew name for himself. Since his whole explanation for doing so was in Hungarian, it was impossible to understand why this was happening now in his life cycle. What I could glean was that he had not had a bar mitzvah at age 13, and somehow that was relevant to his current decision. This group of Jewish Hungarians were engaged with their Jewish identity and sense of community that for us felt very familiar. We enjoyed the warmth of the modest pot luck dinner that followed the service and stayed to shmooze with those who spoke English.
In the course of the next few days we were introduced to several additional aspects of Jewish life in Budapest. We saw the moving and tragic “Shoes on the Danube Bank” memorial commemorating those Jewish victims who were murdered on the riverbank in the 1940s in Budapest. Attached to the shoes were yellow hostage ribbons commemorating those Israelis still imprisoned in Gaza. Movingly, we saw a memorial to the residents of the Budapest Jewish ghetto (where our Airbnb was located) that indicated the tiny amount of floor space allotted to each ghetto resident after their roundup in 1944. By the end of the Holocaust, some 565,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered, representing 65% of the entire community. Estimates of Jews living in Hungary today range from 54,000 to 130,000, mostly residents of Budapest.
After hearing that information about the floor space in the Jewish ghetto, we realized that the very apartment we were renting in the Jewish Quarter most probably housed large numbers of these victims awaiting deportation. The space that two of us occupied was probably home to dozens of Jewish victims in the not-so-distant past. What a chilling thought.
In the course of my stay, I encountered two other Jewish folks who had no apprehension about wearing a Jewish star openly or in the case of a 32-year-old young man I know, a Taglit (“Birthright”) Israel t-shirt. I had of course removed not only my hostage pendant which I have been wearing daily since October 7, but also my pendant inscribed in Hebrew “Dor l’Dor, “from generation to generation. I wasn’t going to take any chances. Clearly, I had completely misread Hungary.
When we inquired, our Jewish tour guide addressed the issue of current day antisemitism head on. There seem to be two explanations as to why Hungarian Jews do not (for the most part) feel threatened. For one thing, the current right-wing government cracks down on protests so there does not even exist the possibility of the kinds of anti-Israel campus encampments that have been so prevalent in the US and Western Europe. For another reason, Hungary remains a less successful economy as compared with other European countries. As a result, there are fewer immigrants from Muslim countries harboring hostility to Israel coming to Hungary. I only spotted one “Free Palestine “ graffiti post in Budapest.
Our guide also explained that antisemitic attitudes are by no means gone. She cited an anecdote about her own daughter that occurred around age five when her daughter’s playmate first learned that her daughter was Jewish. Apparently, the little girl expressed surprise because she thought all Jews were “mean.” Where would a 5-year-old develop such an attitude? Obviously, antisemitic attitudes are still part of the social fabric of Hungary.
And another thing: many post-Holocaust Hungarian Jews have chosen to deny their heritage out of fears for the next generation. Our tour guide shared that her husband’s young daughter from a prior marriage had never been told that she was Jewish. Her mother was protecting her from this identity. Our tour guide’s stepdaughter was surprised to witness the lighting of Shabbat candles and observance of Jewish holidays at her stepmother’s home.
Getting back to my initial question as to who all those folks were at the Klezmer concert, I now have a deeper understanding of the big picture. Of course, my impressions are entirely unscientific, and I still suspect the audience was primarily not Jewish. But now I’m fairly certain that many more were folks with Jewish ancestry who lost much of that connection both as a result of the Holocaust and the Communist era that lasted from 1945 to 1989. There is deep seated ignorance among the post-Holocaust community, with thousands not even aware of their own Jewish identities. Of course, there is much hope and optimism as well: there are Jewish day schools, preschools, summer camps, Israel programs, etc. There are even two liberal congregations (of course, one was a “break away”) and several others. And unlike in the U.S. right now, Jews seem to have no fears of donning Jewish apparel and plastering store fronts with hostage banners and photos.
Hungary surprised me. Budapest surprised me. It’s one gorgeous city with a tragic Jewish past and a complicated present. And there is definitely a difference in attitude towards Israel in Western and Central Europe, a difference I also observed in Prague, but that’s for another essay.
I do hope that Budapest Klezmer concerts continue to thrive and that future generations might actually know the words! I’ll never forget this enchanting and surprising introduction to Budapest’s Jewish heritage and current reality.
