A solidarity service was held on Wednesday evening in the Dohany Street synagogue for Israel, which was attacked by Hamas on Saturday.
Among others, the President of the Republic Katalin Novák, Cardinal Péter Erdő, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Reformed Bishop Zoltán Balog, Pastoral President of the Synod of the Hungarian Reformed Church, Miklós Soltész took part in the commemoration of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz) and Budapest Jewish Community (BZSH). , the Prime Minister's Secretary of State for Church and Ethnic Relations, Mayor Gergely Karácsony, Slomó Köves, Chief Rabbi of the United Hungarian Jewish Community - Hungarian Jewish Association and Gábor Keszler, President of the Hungarian Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Community (MAOIH).
Andor Grósz, the president of Mazsihisz, spoke at the solidarity service: he is shaken in front of his audience, but when he looks around, he knows that he is not alone in his pain.
Specially thanking Katalin Novák for her presence representing the entire Hungarian society, she said: the grief and pain of the Jewish community is shared with that of Hungarian society.
The president of Mazsihisz put it this way: the inhumane terrorist attack on the celebration of the Torah, the holiest book of the Jewish people, affected not only Israel and the Jewish people. The terrorists, who also brutally slaughtered children, "not only took human lives in Israel, but also brutally broke the Ten Commandments, with which the Torah gifted all of humanity."
The terror that struck Israel and the Jewish people was at the same time an animal act committed against humanity, love, the main moral commandments conveyed by the Holy Scriptures, and the most important social ideals, Andor Grósz declared.
He touched on the fact that at the commemoration there are now representatives of Jewish denominations and Jewish religious trends who, in the weekdays burdened with internal conflicts, might not even be able to be seated at the same table in public.
The Jews, non-Jews and Christians gathered in the synagogue now want to leave a world where terror is not the master, Andor Grósz emphasized. He put it this way: "We believe because we have to believe that there are roads in social life that, although winding in different directions, lead in the same direction: towards a world about which every word of the Holy Scriptures speaks and in which there is no place for inhumanity or animalistic instincts, nor barbarism".
Jákov Hadasz-Handelszman, the ambassador of Israel to Hungary, thanked the entire Hungarian nation, the leaders of the churches and the actors of political life for their solidarity with Israel.
He reminded: 75 years have passed since the founding of Israel, but its residents are still fighting the same terrorism.
Israel was attacked, it is at war, said the ambassador, emphasizing that this is not only their problem, because the attack that hit the Jewish state will also reach Europe. He added: this is indicated by the fact that groups sympathizing with terrorists around the world celebrated the killers.
He also said: Israel will win this war, because the secret weapon of the Jewish community is that they have nowhere to go from there, so they will defend their homeland at all costs.
Mester Tamás, the president of the BZSH, spoke about: October 7 is a terrible day for all sensitive people, no matter who they pray to.
This is not a terrorist attack, but a war - declared Mester Tamás, who called it a "frenzied rampage of satanic creatures" that in the settlement of Kfar Aza, which was systematically exterminated by Hamas militants, 40 murdered babies were found among the victims, several of whom were beheaded.
It is completely incomprehensible - added Mester Tamás - why a part of the Palestinian-Muslim community immigrating to Western Europe for a better life and enjoying the benefits of the Western democratic way of life unselfishly celebrates mindless terror.
He emphasized: the more than a thousand innocent lives that were taken, the thousands of wounded and the hundreds of innocent hostages give Israel the right to fight a war of national defense against terror, and the modern civil democracies living in this Euro-Atlantic region must support the Jewish state.
According to László Győrfi, co-chairman of the United Hungarian Israelite Community, in this crisis, the question should not be asked what will happen, but "what can we do to change the world..."
He called the most important thing that the members of the community do not allow themselves to be broken. "Let us be proud of being Jews, of our 3,000-year-old culture and values, (...) of the many thousands of years of biblical and Torah values of our civilization," said László Győrfi.
Róbert Frölich, the national chief rabbi, spoke about the fact that war is not a matter for Arabs and Jews, but for all of us who live on this planet and consider ourselves human. They did not attack a country, but terror, hatred, meanness started a war against civilization.
The chief rabbi concluded his speech by saying: he believes that common prayer, said with one will, will be heard, and we must also believe that the words of the prophet Jeremiah 2,500 years ago, lamenting the destruction of the sanctuary, will be fulfilled on the terrorists of Hamas: "do unto them, eternally, as they acted, persecute them and remove them from heaven," the chief rabbi asked.
At the end of the service, the participants prayed to the caddy, then lit candles in the square in front of the synagogue in memory of the victims.
MTI
