Budapest Synagogue Reopens as a Home Run by Teenagers

Some news makes you stop and smile. According to Israel National News, a 150-year-old synagogue on Dessewffy Street in Budapest has reopened after being closed for more than a decade. This time, teenagers are running it.

A building that waited

The report says the synagogue went quiet after the deaths of its longtime worshippers. Those worshippers had worked to preserve the building and its community since the early 1990s. Once they were gone, religious life there stopped, and the synagogue was effectively locked up.

Its story goes back to 1870. According to Rabbi Tzvi Bassman, a Chabad emissary interviewed by Israel National News, the community began in a building that had once been a stable. Jewish porters and coachmen from the "red hat" neighborhood came there to pray. Over the years the site also housed a cheder, a traditional Jewish elementary school, and youth programs. Rabbi Bassman credits the late Laszlo Herzog with keeping the flame of Orthodox Jewish life burning for decades and bringing local young people closer to the community.

Led by the young

Today the synagogue serves the youth community of the C-teen movement. Rabbi Bassman, in his early 30s, is described as its oldest regular worshipper.

He says the goal is not simply "another minyan" for those under 18. It is to create a place "entirely led and run by them." The officeholders, community leaders and organizers of daily activities are the teenagers themselves. He wants each young person who walks in to feel that this is home, and to take real responsibility for shaping their own Jewish lives and those of their friends.

That is a hopeful idea. Young people often wait to be handed a faith. Here they are being trusted to carry it.

Part of a wider restoration

The report places this reopening within a broader effort in Hungary to reclaim historic synagogues that were abandoned, confiscated or repurposed during the Holocaust and Communist eras. Rabbi Bassman says the Association of United Hungarian Jewish Congregations (EMIH), led by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Koves, has worked for years to return such buildings to Jewish hands.

He gives a recent example. On the eve of Yom Kippur, the historic synagogue in Budapest's Rakospalota district was rededicated. Rabbi Michael-Yitzhak Dushinsky originally established it. It was confiscated during the Holocaust and later served for decades as a storage facility for the Hungarian National Library. After four years of effort and renovation, it was returned to the community.

According to the report, Dessewffy Street is the sixth historic synagogue to resume services under this initiative. The list includes the ancient synagogue in Óbuda, built approximately 250 years ago.

Dry bones and living hope

Rabbi Bassman likened the revival to "the resurrection of the dry bones." He added that at the reopening ceremony the mayor said this is not a break with the past but its natural continuation. The image comes from the prophet Ezekiel, who saw a valley of bones and heard God promise to bring them to life.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Look, they are saying, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘O My people, I will open your graves and bring you up from them, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, My people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put My Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will do it, declares the LORD.’”

Ezekiel 37:11-14 (BSB)

The Hebrew Scriptures often tell of ruins being rebuilt and silence giving way to song. Isaiah wrote of that kind of restoration.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins; they will restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations.

Isaiah 61:4 (BSB)

As followers of Yeshua, we read these promises with gratitude and with love for the Jewish people. Yeshua himself was a Jew who, as Luke tells us, went into the synagogue on the Sabbath as was his custom. Any place where Torah is studied and the God of Israel is sought, and where a new generation is invited in, is worth celebrating.

Pride and belonging

Rabbi Bassman told Israel National News there is "tremendous excitement" about the reopening. He also said Hungary is one of the few places where Jews and Israelis can walk around without fear. That is his own assessment, and we simply pass it along. He says the message for young people is that Judaism is not something passive inherited from the past but "a living, vibrant experience" to be proud of.

Whatever our background, we can pray that these teenagers find what every young person needs: a place to belong, a purpose, and a living encounter with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Where there was darkness and silence, may there be light and life.

This article is original commentary based on a report from Israel National News.