STONES

I just ran across a few notes scribbled above the half-finished crossword puzzle I found in my carry-on bag: stones, slammed shut, nothing new under the sun. This enticing collection of words convinced me I should try to document my impressions from a recent trip to Budapest before I forget them. These snippets all relate to the tragedy of the Hungarian Jews. I was not surprised that among all the places I visited, I found myself drawn into only two museums: the Dohany Street Synagogue and Museum of Terror. This trip did not really create my interest. I have been morbidly fascinated by The Holocaust for as long as I can remember, but it reactivated and added to thoughts that had been lying dormant inside me. I bought both museum tickets at a frigid street kiosk at the end of my Hop-On and Off Bus tour. Paradoxically, these two disturbing museums would later provide me warm refuge from the bitter December cold of Budapest.

The Jews prospered under the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s wildly prosperous peak years between 1850 and WWI. They assimilated because the general population allowed them to integrate and thrive, and they in turn voluntarily absorbed much of the Christian culture, slowly watering down their own traditions and practices in the process. This resulted in the construction of a huge and gaudy synagogue in the center of Budapest, the largest in the world at the time and the second largest today. (The first is in New York City.) As opposed to the typically austere appearance of traditional Jewish houses of worship, this synagogue calls attention for its distinctly Moorish look, multiple towers and ubiquitous golden star adornments. According to the guide, the eight-pointed stars which decorate the exterior were modifications of the usual Star of David because of the fancier look they produced. Inside, gold was used generously, pew seating was sold and marked with permanent reservation placards naming the owners, and Cathedral-like side stairways to matching pulpits on either side of the nave demonstrated a desire to imitate the ostentatious Christian houses of worship. To me, the Jews looked like they were on their way to making themselves indistinguishable from the society that surrounded them.

On the wall in the adjoining museum is written a reminder from Ecclesiastes: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” This prediction changed when the Hungarians lost World War one. The Jews were blamed for the downturn and slowly excluded from society, which certainly wasn´t the first time they had been used as scapegoats. But the Holocaust that followed had not been seen before on earth. In terms of organized human cruelty, it was a first. That event refuted what the Old Testament taught, and this museum makes note of this fact on the same wall where the quote appears. Below that Bible passage is simply written: ¨Now, in 1945, this is no longer true.¨ Once World War Two began, the Hungarians began to organize and limit the Jews´ freedom with breath-taking speed and order. By the time Hitler rolled in, rosters of some 250,000 inhabitants had been compiled and these people were immediately handed over to the Nazis. The doors to the free world were slammed shut on the Jews.

Following the horrors imposed by the Nazis, the communists under Russia re-targeted the Jews, though somewhat more indirectly. As citizens who fell into several of the newly formed undesirable categories, it wasn´t necessary to name them outright. The communists´ newly targeted enemies of society were suddenly deemed to be the religious, educated, landed, and owners of businesses. It was difficult for any practicing Jew to escape identification with at least one of these categories.

What isn’t immediately apparent to the naked eye is that in the process of dehumanizing the Jews, their persecutors were simultaneously slamming shut the doors to their own humanity. First the Nazis, and then the Russian Communists gave up their own peaceful worldly existence, ensuring blanket suffering for themselves and the citizens of practically all eastern Europe. The better the Nazis and Communists became at persecuting the Jews, the more efficiently they robbed themselves of their own peace. The same is true everywhere on earth and history is filled with examples of oppression imposed by the majority onto innocent minorities in every land. I see it today in the right-wing targeting of ¨them¨, meaning us liberals. The right wing has labeled us the godless representatives of an undefined socialist plague which somehow fosters and favors dangerous, non-white, unpatriotic immigrant hordes over the more deserving flag-wavers. Without logic, just emotion, liberals are deemed the wrong kinds of citizens, elitists and hypocrites, while conservatives fancy themselves the more genuine Americans. The extreme right pronounces God to be on their side, all the while failing to detect the irony of that claim. Doesn´t pretending to be godlier than others make you the ultimate elitist?

Today I look back at the tolerance of the world I grew up in and fear it won´t return during my lifetime. The Jews are used to these political cycles. For them, pogroms have come and gone with predictable regularity, ravaging their people as society bore down on them during hard times. This is where the stones come in. I learned for the first time during my visit to the synagogue that Jews don´t bring flowers to cemeteries. They bring stones. Flowers rot, but stones will always remain. How logical! This simple practice registers deeply within me. I relate to the Jews´ tough response to adversity. This custom is so practical it calls out society´s flowery norms as silly and impractical. Because they´ve been held out as the outsiders inside whatever society they try to coexist, the Jews have learned to gravitate towards the essential, stripped down and durable truths of survival. I´m grateful for my trip to Budapest for nothing else than this story of the Jewish cemetery stones. I´ll be holding stones in my mind´s pocket as I brace myself to face this country´s future.