(Jewish Group) Jewish leaders in Hungary grapple with anti-Semitic tropes in politics

[Behind the Aegis]

'Nothing Orbán says is by accident': Jewish leaders in Hungary grapple with anti-Semitic tropes in politics

Before every production at Gólem Theater, a Jewish theater company in Budapest, Hungary, artistic director András Borgula gives his cast a crash course on being Jewish. For one week, actors eat kosher food, visit the Jewish community center, meet local rabbis and learn some of the Talmud, the source for Jewish law.

“We turn the actors and the artists into Jews for a week,” he said.

Gólem Theater sits in the center of what was once Budapest’s Jewish ghetto. Just a few feet away from the playhouse is a square where the bodies of more than 2,000 Hungarian Jews murdered in 1944 are buried. About 430,000 Jews were also deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, the majority to Auschwitz.

Today, Hungary’s Jewish population is estimated to be less than 100,000.

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