Today I walked
from my apartment over to the Jewish Quarter where I visited the Dohany Street
Synagogue, also known as the Great Synagogue. It’s a magnificent structure, looking more like a church
than a syngagogue! It was built in
1859 by an Austrian, non-Jewish architect and intentionally made to look a lot
like a church so as to appeal to Gentiles. It is the second biggest synagogue in the world (second to
Temple Beth El in NYC.) The
synagogue even sports an enormous organ, although Orthodox Jews don’t use it
for worship because playing it is considered “work” and forbidden on the Sabbath. I also visited the Jewish Museum, which
is in the same complex. It’s a small museum but chock full of Judaica, some of
which is truly unique and fascinating. There is a drawing, depicting King David, Esther, Ruth
and other figures from the Hebrew Scriptures. Jewish artists are not supposed
to draw Biblical figures for religious art because to do so violates the
commandment not to make graven images.
This particular painting is absolutely fascinating because the artist
actually wrote, in teeny tiny, truly microscopic Hebrew letters the whole story
from the Bible that he was illustrating, thus making it a transcription of the
text and not a drawing. When you
look at the picture you don’t see the letters with the naked eye, but they have
it displayed with a microscope and when you look through it you can see the
Hebrew lettering. It is truly mind
boggling. The entire drawing is
actually a transcription in Hebrew of various chapters of the Bible!
The complex also
includes a memorial garden, where are buried many Jews who died in the garden
during World War II when it was part of the Jewish Ghetto. There are gruesome pictures showing the
garden, which is now adorned with trees and headstones, with corpses piled on
top of one another in 1944. And there
is a beautiful Holocaust memorial as well as memorials to the honorable
Gentiles, like Raoul Wallenberg who worked to protect Jews during the Nazi
era. I also went into a Jewish
History exhibit that had interesting artifacts of the life of Budapest’s Jews
just before and during the early years of the Second World War. They were showing some silent movies,
made by a Jewish filmmaker in the early 40s that document life in the Jewish
Quarter at that time.
At that point I
saw that I had just enough time to get to the Opera House for their 3:00 tour,
so I walked through the Jewish Quarter (which was the ghetto during the Nazi
Era) over to the Opera House. The
Opera House was built to look like the opera house in Vienna, equally beautiful
but a bit smaller. It is truly a
wonderful, ornate, impressive opera house. After that I took the metro over near to the basilica where
I wanted to attend an organ concert at 5.
At that point I had missed lunch, but when I emerged from the subway I
was right in front of a famous patisserie, which between the world wars was
where wealthy Budapest ladies would stop for coffee while shopping on the fancy
streets nearby. Gerbeau café is
still a fancy patisserie and quite elegant. I had a delicious confection – very thin pancakes (thicker
than crepe but thinner than a pancake!) filled with almond cream, dusted with
confectioner’s sugar and coated at one end with hot chocolate sauce. It also
came with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Delicious! Better than
lunch! I’ve included a picture so
you can drool!
Then I walked up
to the St. Istvan’s Basilica, where I attended an organ concert. The concert was magnificent and the
ambience inside the basilica was wonderful, although cold. No heat in European cathedrals I’ve
noticed, so I kept hat, gloves and coat on while I enjoyed the music.Then came home for a little rest and caught the tail end of the inauguration ceremonies before heading out for supper. Another filling plate of hungarian paprika - chicken this time with noodles mixed with ewe cheese and bacon. Delicious food and good thing I'm basically eating only one meal a day!!
No comments:
Post a Comment