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Donuts, hot tea, sing-along, and festive candle lighting await those celebrating in Pest and Buda on December 28 and 30, 2024. The fourth flame of Hanukkah will be lit together on Jászai Mari Square, and the sixth flame of the holiday on Lövőház Street. Dr. Tamás Verő, Chief Rabbi of the Frankel Leó Road Synagogue, welcomes everyone to the festive flash mobs.

This year, the International Cantor Convention is being held for the sixteenth time, with the participation of about 60 world-renowned cantors, including Shmuel Barzilai, Chief Cantor of Vienna, and cantors Isidoro Abramowicz and Netanel Baram from Los Angeles. The prestigious event is hosted for the second time by the renovated Rumbach Sebestyén Street Synagogue.

The Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary (Mazsihisz) considers the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Galant to be a mockery of law and a violation of justice.

The Dokuforte Photo Archive is looking for family photo archives related to our Jewish past, including Holocaust survivors, for digitization and publication. The digital photo library does not keep the photos of documentary value but returns them to their owners after digitization.

In the second article of our Olympic series, we remember Ilona Elek, our first Hungarian female Olympic champion, who fought hard battles both on the piste and in life. Our two-time Olympic champion (1936, 1948), Olympic silver medalist (1952), six-time world champion, five-time European champion and ten-time Hungarian champion fencer Ilona Elek was born on May 17, 1907, in Budapest.

On Friday, 26 July, the 2024 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad began in Paris. In the articles published on our website during the games, we will celebrate the greatest Hungarian Jewish Olympic champions of the past, reviving their achievements and immortal spirit. In our first article, we pay tribute to Alfréd Hajós, who excelled in both architecture and sports.

Hanna Szenes was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Budapest on July 17, 1921, with the name Anikó Szenes. Her father, Béla Szenes, was a journalist, stage writer, and translator. Anikó studied at the Baár-Madas reformed high school for girls, already writing poems and displaying her talent in literature.

Sofia, Bulgaria - As anti-Semitism continues to rise worldwide following the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, the theme of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) National Community Directors' Forum was to share experiences and to outline next steps. Hungary was represented by dr. Péter Kunos, managing director of Mazsihisz-BZSH, and Dóra Bálint, head of foreign relations at Mazsihisz.

The support of Hungarian Jewry and the Hungarian government is very important to us, stated Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on an official visit to Budapest on 17 June. He had talks with Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó and discussions with the representatives of the Hungarian Jewish denominations.

„After 80 years, the perpetrators of the mass murders are no longer here, and no Hungarian alive today is responsible for the actions of their ancestors. But all Hungarians alive today are responsible for ensuring that the atrocities never happen again, under any circumstances.

“Imagine, I am standing here in the Parliament and in my speech, I am recalling what happened then. In the Parliament, in which the Jewish laws were born, with a kippah on my head. Which meant that you, the one I loved the most, were legally murdered” said Chief Rabbi Péter Kardos, a Holocaust survivor, in the Upper House of the Parliament on April 16. Below is the full text of the speech.