The Portion of my Inheritance

The Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest Hungary is the largest Synagogue in Europe, and it ranked number one on my list of things to do.

The book tells that the facade of the synagogue plays tribute to the Temple of Solomon as the 19th century imagined it. It was indeed a beautiful sight. It was so massive that I could not get it all in one picture

These are pictures that I took at one side of the synagogue.

The inside of the temple literally took my breath away. Beautiful beyond imagination, filled with splendor and every single nook and cranny held a delight to the eye. I could not take it all in and I scrambled around with my camera trying to capture what my eyes were beholding, but it is not possible to relay the beauty through the lens of a camera. Everything was so rich in color, texture and history.

We spent several minutes taking pictures and touching what we could lay our hands on. It was an amazing feeling being there. There was a very sweet, reverent atmosphere filling the temple and my heart longed to sit in on one of the services that were once held here.

The ceilings are covered with the star of David, and there is a room of stained glass windows, each tells a story from the bible.

The synagogue touched me deeply and completely changed me forever. It is one thing to live an ocean away and hear stories of the horrors or WWII, but quite another to actually see the destruction, and repercussion of it. To walk on the same soil that is mingled with the blood, pain, and tears of it’s victims. The evil  has left it’s mark there and it sends chills up your spine and leaves you shaken.

The museum was divided up into several parts, each showing past lives of the Jewish people. The first part was of the Jewish temple.

The second part was things used in the Jewish holidays and festivals.

The 3rd showed items from the ordinary, everyday lives of the Jewish people.

One part of the museum was of the holocaust and it was painful to see. The whole atmosphere changed as we entered that part of the museum, we could feel it hanging thick. Our guide told us stories that ripped at our hearts and we toured in a silent  and despondent state.

As she told stories and explained pictures we swallowed hard, and the tears feel freely. Still . . so hard to understand.

She explained the list, the one that Hitler had, keeping a census of all of the Jewish people in the surrounding countries, years before the holocaust!

And a picture of a young woman had been discovered many years later, it had been taken of her by the Nazis, all part of the census.

But even through the evil of it all, the Lord had His people there, and there are pictures of some of these heroic people that bravely stood up and did everything they could do to help.

We were then led down a stairwell, concrete, tunnel like, out into the courtyard. The beautiful courtyard had it’s own horrors to tell, and our guide lead us on a journey back in time to the very pit of hell.

This courtyard is now a mass grave. It took them a long time to find the names and place the markers of each person that now lays beneath this courtyard soil.

Pictures line the walkway that wraps around, and I took a photo of one, standing so that you can see the exact spot of the courtyard, then and now.

At the back of the courtyard is a memorial for it is the burial ground of 2,281 people who had died in the ghetto. The ghetto is located just directly behind the synagogue.

The Heroes Temple stands at the very back of the courtyard, just beyond the memorial.

And another section behind the synagogue was Jewish graves, and little rocks lined each grave.

The American actor Tony Curtis gave in honor of his daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis the symbolic weeping willow, and also that of the upside down menorah, the work of sculptor Imre Varga. The silver leaves on the lightly gleaming tree bear the names of thirty thousand Jewish martyrs. The Weeping Willow stands as a reminder of the six-hundred thousand Hungarian victims of the Holocaust.

In front of the courtyard, at the side of the synagogue starts the barricade, holding the Jewish people within the confines of the ghetto area.

Across the street and beyond are the beautiful apartment homes that once belonged to the Jewish people and is now part of the Jewish Quarter. We did not tour the ghetto area but did walk through some of the Jewish Quarter.

I purchased a memorial of my time here at the Dohany Street Synagogue.

“Consider now, for the LORD has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be courageous and act.”  1 Chronicles 28:10