Teleki Tér Shtiebel Budapest

The English phrase “T.G.I.F” –took on a new shade of meaning for our community, this week. After a break of many decades, we resumed the age old tradition of holding Friday night services followed by Kiddush and a warm and modest Friday night meal.

As far as I am concerned, each individual who attends our services is a dignitary and therefore it is fair to say that we had many V.I.P.’s present at the event, I shall not bore you with particulars.

People were charmed by the authentic aura of the evening and the warm and homely atmosphere that we have created.

“Mitzvah goreret mitzvah” – “one positive act produces another positive act”; a particularly insightful statement of our sages implying that through a simple virtuous act we can produce a ripple effect of positivity. A single act, even modest has the potential to serve as the catalyst to something infinitely greater and a state of reality incomparably more sublime than the actual act that started the whole process. (Much like Larry Burrows [James Belushi] in Mr. Destiny.)

After each successful event, we are inspired to continue and to host more and more events. The previous events have spurred on additional events, leading up to the Friday night prayer service, which leads to the monthly Friday night services followed by Kiddush and dinner. This monthly service, I anticipate to lead to weekly Friday night services, which in turn can lead to ….

It is therefore with real gratitude that I applaud all who are part of this renaissance; in this exciting project of propelling our community into a fully functioning Jewish kehillah.

On 2 December 2010 we held the first Hanukah event at Teleki Tér Shtiebel of the last few decades.

We had all the fun, dozghuts, chocolate hanukah geld, playing driedel, Chinese market…

The event was made possible thank to the Teleki Tér Women’s club!! :D

Deed of Foundation for the Mishnah Society from 1927

Our old fancied dream is to collect as many living stories about the Jewish history and traditions of Teleki tér Budapest.  This was the reason we started shooting our own Jakab Gláser movie, in the foot steps of  Jancsó Milkós.

Lately we have a very big support in our efforts from historian Michael Miller, who decided to track down the memories and descendants of the Mishnah Society. Fortunately he DID succeed! He managed to get in touch with a few old, abroad living Teleki tér people. As their stories, memories arrive to us, we will upload all of their pictures, stories to the History section of our website.

Here we present the first from Yechiel Arie Hahn (originally Hahn István György).

Looking at it from any angle, this is a new year. The autumn holidays are gone, it’s high time we thought about what we gained in 5770 – for Teleki tér.

The most-most-most important thing is the enthusiastic team, the community that got formed around the synagogue. With them and for them is there any sense for such a – now – community place to function.

Just at Rabbi Hurwitz put it in his Simchat Torah report post the last year’s Shabbat morning prayer group converted into a community.

And indeed:

A community room was added to the Teleki, from MAZSIHISZ (Hungarian Federation of Jewish Communities) support, and from our own joint efforts, since the amount of the support covered about half of the costs of the revenue so far. The furniture, fixtures, facilities for cooking, tsunt cooker, refrigerator, water heater, microwave, the plates, all are from donations, from offerings of our members.

Incredible gigs and events were held, the kinds this house of prayer has not seen in decades. Was invited to the famous Bostoner Rebbe for a m’lave malke, we held every major holidays, Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Purim, Rosh Hashana, etc. We hog drunk at Purim, and in fact, at Simchat Torah too (respect for exceptions, of course). :)

We established a non-profit organisation to support the Teleki Square Shul The Jakab Glaser Memorial Foundation, (named after are late Uncle Jacob Gláser), which organizes the fundraising, and brings news of the house of prayer now in 3 languages to the world, through web sites it funded and manages (like this one here).

A wonderful small team joined the supporting of the shul, named the Budapest Beyond. This company directed by György Baglyas leads alternative Jewish guided tours in the eighth district showing the remains of the district’s Jewish memories, either for foreign-language speaking visitors or to Hungarians. BB’s Jewish-themed the background is provided by the Bálint Ház. Anna Bálint, and Csaba Gyula Szikra led the groups throughout the summer, through the district up to the Teleki Square. Big cheers to them for this, as through their wonderful PR activities we received a substantial support, from visitors who felt like supporting the shul who, in exchange for a beautiful postcard – from – threw wome money in the Tzedokoh glass.
And a very important fact that shall not get forgotten, thanks to their tours this ancient colour patch of this old District become widely known.

One of the two highest peaks of tourism at Teleki is also connected to the Beyond Budapest, the other is to the pair of two organisations, Mazsike and Kidma (organised by Andrea Deak and Viktor Czech), when at both times there was about 200 people visited the praying house one afternoon.

We formed (perhaps re-formed?) the Teleki Square Women’s Club, which undertook the necessary “woman jobs” associated with community life (organising cooking before the holidays and the kosher kitchen etc) and also carries out educational work, lessons and thematic presentations held every 2 weeks at Teleki Square.

So in general, Teleki Tér Shtiebel is up to the bigest reforming of all times.

A GREAT SHKAYACH TO EVERYONE!

Unfortunatelly our blog is only in Hungarian, with time we will try to add posts in English, and translate the old ones too.

Thank you for you understanding.