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Szim Shalom community,
Budapest (Hungary):
Rabbi Katalin Kelemen's induction service
Rabbi Katalin Kelemen was inducted as
spiritual leader of Budapest’s Szim Shalom
community during a ceremony held there in 1999 on March 7. Over 200 persons were in
attendance, many of them from overseas. The ceremony was conducted by Rabbi Fred Morgan of
Melbourne, Australia. The Hungarian-born Kelemen, who is the country’s first
Progressive rabbi, was trained for the rabbinate at Leo Baeck College in London. Budapest has a Jewish population of
70,000, many of whom are rediscovering their Jewish heritage following 50 years of
Communist suppression. Here is Rabbi Katalin Kelemen`s address:
In the autumn of 1997, on a clear moonlit
October night sitting in the Pesti Vigado theatre, I was brushed by the spirit of the
Eternal. We all received a unique gift from the uncrowned "king of Klezmer" Giora
Feidmann. The concert ended in such a way that the magic spell remained unbroken: Having
taught the crowd the melody of the last song we had heard, he asked us to continue singing
it. Almost unnoticed, he left the stage, and left us with the gift of the traditional
Jewish melody full of joy, beauty and longing to be passed on further from our lips. With
that gesture, and in that special moment, the song and the moment became part of the
eternal cycle of "passing on, beginning again and continuing."
"Who is that man who desires life,
loves the days, that he may see good?..."
Psalms, 34:13
What is that so binds me in those simple, almost
trivial words? Perhaps it is that in my own personal life journey, it has only been in
recent years that the ties and links of the love of life, the joys of everyday life, have
begun to intertwine and link with the ties and links of religious Judaism. Only recently has
it begun to feel natural for me that this approach to life speaks to me in the words of a
Hebrew Psalm, thousands of years old, and that I consider it my own sacred text.
I belong to the generation born after the Shoah, a generation raised in
an assimilationist spirit, and a generation which, even as grown adults, has experienced
its sole link to its Judaism - by no other channels than - through the almost mythical
stories of those who disappeared in the camps or through the stories of those family
members who miraculously survived.
We know that not only in Hungary, but rather in
all of Europe`s surviving
Jewish communities there were very few who were able to retain their religious faith at
all, and then perhaps only truly after experiencing deep internal crises. But exactly from
among them emerged, following the war, the renewing and ascendant buds and blossoms of
reform Judaism.
One of the very few examples is the charismatic
rabbi Jacob Soetendorp who became the "renascent Dutch reform Jewish movement and the
founder of a rabbinic dynasty leaven" of the One of his rabbi sons, Awraham
Soetendorp, hidden as a small boy during the war with strangers, recounts in the most
recent edition of European Judaism in this way:
"It must have been a year or two after I
was found again and rejoined my family, having been in hiding for two-and-a-half years,
that my father told me that after birkat ha-mazon, when usually it is sung:
"Na’ar hayyiti v'gam zakanti", "I have been a lad, and
I have come of age, but I have never seen a righteous one forsaken whose children had to
roam for food",
that these words would not be said any more, but were to be supplanted by other
words, from Isaiah 26 and Psalm 9):
"Bitchu b'adonai b’adei ad, ki b’yad adonai tsur olamim,
v'yivtechu v'kha yod'e sh'mekha, ki lo- azavta dorshekha adonai". "Trust in
God forever, because He constitutes your rock forever. And those who really know Your name
will put trust in You again, for you have not forsaken forever those who seek You".
A subtle change which I did not understand, and for years did not understand, but felt in
my bones. Never, nowhere in the world has this been done, and it has expressed to us and
to the family the paradox, our anger, our anguish, with God’s presence and absence,
and at the same time the continuation of our faith." (The Teaching of Compassion R.
Awraham Soetendorf European Judaism, Autumn ’98 pp21-22)
In my family it was not like that. For my
parents, following my grandfather’s death from starvation at Buchenwald, religion
went over to the "other side," among those things never to be experienced again.
It took me decades of my life before I was able to feel that, in the context of a
traditional prayer I could express my deepest feelings. Barely seven years ago, after
twenty four years I was able, for the first time, to say Kaddish for my father and mourn
his premature death. I was able to do so in a synagogue in a small English city, and it is
my greatest joy and privilege that five of those having shared with me that event are
celebrating here with us today. Rabbi Fred Morgan, who has symbolically passed to me the
Holy Scripture, the Torah, on that morning called me up to read from the Torah for the
first time with the Hebrew name I had chosen: Sarah, so that with that reading I could
become Bat Mitzvah, Daughter of the Law. This happened between the walls of a reform
synagogue, and the name of the city was Weybridge, the "Way," and the
"Bridge." My path or "Way" to my Judaim, and to becoming a rabbi led
through Reform Judaism.
What does Reform Judaism mean
to me?
- It means the simultaneous experience of the spirit of
tradition and renewal, and the linking together of the personal and the universal. It
means the freedom with which rabbi Jacob Soetendorp, of his own accord, changed the text
of the liturgy in order to acknowledge and pay tribute to the tragic turn of fate and
history, while at the same time remaining true to the faith and in so doing giving new
strength and reaffirmation to that faith within the traditional religious context.
- It means the „Seventy Faces of the Torah," about
which I heard for the first time at the Leo Baeck College, Europe’s only Reform
Jewish Seminary. The „Seventy Faces of the Torah," that is to say the unlimited
possibilities for interpretation of the Scripture, in particular as reform Judaism asserts
that every member of every new Jewish generation has the opportunity to encounter the
Revelation.
- It means an attitude of openness to paradox in the Jewish
sprit which takes into account the complexities and ambiguities of life, and serves as a
true reflection thereof.
- It means belonging to a small community seeking spiritual
values and meaning, in which women and men, consistent with the practices (or at least the
expectations) of modern society, participate on an equal basis.
We established this community, the first
Progressive Jewish community in Hungary since World War II, in 1992. We chose our name,
Sim Shalom, from the lines of the Amidah
prayer. Sim Shalom means: Grant us peace.
The path which led us from those first meetings
of a handful of friends to today was not always peaceful. It has been filled with every
day obstacles, demanding sacrifices, tiring, unimpressive and inglorious efforts, but it
has also been filled with those special moments, the memories of which warm our hearts and
give us the strength and motivation to go forward, and which will give us the strength and
motivation to carry forward in difficult moments in the future as well.
I give my most heartfelt, honest and deepest
thanks to those founding members who nursed and cared for Sim Shalom at its birth, and who
subsequently, not untiringly but overcoming their fatigue again and again and rising
phoenix-like with new energy and renewed vigour continue to find the way forward.
I also thank those members who have joined us
subsequently for their support and for the growing commitment with which they take part in
the joys and the difficulties of involved in building the community.
It is of great joy and honour to me that so many
representatives and rabbis of the World Union
of Progressive Judaism are celebrating with us today. Without their moral,
spiritual and financial support we would not be here today. Neither a dynamic, vital
congregation, nor I, the newly inducted rabbi of that congregation would be here were it
not for that support.
What is my vision for the
future of Sim Shalom
and for my work and task therein?
To continue on the path on which we have begun,
but in our own synagogue, enriched and strengthened with many new members, with a Cheder
for children and many more inspiring learning possibilities for adults as well.
The continuation of such moments like that, when
in our Torah study circle we consider ourselves Jacob - Israel; like Jacob the
"crooked", like he who struggles with G'd, and like Israel
"straightened" by G'd as well.
The continuation of moments such as that in
which one of our members tenderly placed the tallit he had inherited from his grandfather
on the shoulders of a grieving member of the community so that we could say Kaddish together.
The continuation of moments such as our first
celebration of Simchat Torah, when one of the guiding spirits of our community, an older
member, renewed as "b’reshit kala", "the bride of the beginning"
begins the new annual cycle of the reading of the Torah while at her feet our youngest
members scrambled and crawled on the floor delighted with their flying paper "Torah
birds" and "Torah airplanes" taken directly from the story of Creation.
My wish is that Sim Shalom should grow
rich with such moments and joys, and many more like them, so that we ourselves should
become the persons of the psalm „Mi ha ish"... so that "we desire life, we
love the days, that we may see good."
Szim Shalom
- PF 701/111
- Budapest, H-1399
- tel: (1) 176 7095
- email: ssalom@bigfoot.com
[photo-exhibition] -
[program] - [reactions]
[history of women in the rabbinate]
- [women on the bima]
[start in german] - [start in
english]
every comment or feedback is appreciated
Online-Documentation: iris@hagalil.com
Realisation: david@hagalil.com |
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