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Comments (0)Banned by a court in Hungary, the extreme-right Hungarian Guard has resurfaced in neighboring Romania.
A chorus of demands is being raised throughout Hungary for a second court ruling to ban the extreme nationalist political party Jobbik, the paymaster of the Guard, along with its paramilitary prodigy.
The Guard will be heavily represented at a summer camp organized by the Hungarian Youth of Transylvania, or EMF, movement, attracting some 10,000 participants. The venue is Judetul Harghita in Romania, traditionally populated by Jews, Gypsies and Hungarians as well as Romanians. EMF already has tried to form an organization modeled on the Hungarian Guard.
One dominant theme at the camp will be the restoration of Hungarian autonomy in the region, lost after World War I. The guests of honor will include Gabor Vona, leader of the Jobbik Party.
In Hungary, the Guard was disbanded last month and the banning order upheld by an appeals court. Many widely respected Hungarians are now calling for the disbanding of Jobbik, which formed the Hungarian Guard in 2007, as a threat to the rule of law.
Perhaps the most influential among them is Peter Barandy, an eminent criminologist and former Liberal minister of justice. In an interview published by the daily Nepszabadsa newspaper, Barandy argues in favor of banning the party in defense of the fledgling Hungarian democratic system.
Historic Torah Scrolls Buried in Ukraine
The Jewish community in a western Ukrainian city buried the fragments of 221 damaged Torah scrolls recently returned by the state.
The fragments and damaged Torah scrolls were buried Tuesday in accordance with Jewish law in the Zhytomir Jewish cemetery.
The items were returned in late March from the local state archive to the Jewish community two years after they were confiscated by Ukrainian authorities.
Activists in the Jewish community, representatives of local authorities and journalists took part in the ceremony on the eve of 9th of Av near the local synagogue building, after which all the Torah fragments were buried at the Jewish cemetery.
Ukraine’s rabbis have been pressing for all Torah scrolls and fragments being held by the Ukrainian State Archives to be returned to their Jewish communities.
Ukrainian President Victor Yuschenko signed a decree in 2007 ordering the restoration of Jewish religious objects to the country’s Jewish communities.
Yuriy Reshetnikov, chairman of the Ukrainian State Committee on Nationalities and Religions, told JTA that the religious objects must be used to help revitalize Jewish religious life in Ukraine.
Ukraine is home to the third-largest Jewish community in Europe, with 150,000 to 250,000 Jews.
Local rabbis say Jewish communities need many of the Torah scrolls languishing in state archives, which can be restored and used during services.
Spanish, Venezuelan Foreign Ministers Visit Synagogue
The foreign ministers of Spain and Venezuela visited a Caracas synagogue attacked earlier this year.
“They sent a strong message repudiating anti-Semitism,” said Claudio Ethelma, director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, who traveled from Buenos Aires to attend the meeting.
This week’s visit was the second time that Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro had visited the Tiferet Israel Synagogue since it was attacked in January. The foreign ministers also met with members of Venezuela’s Sephardic Jewish community.
More than a dozen vandals broke into the temple, desecrating holy objects and spraying anti-Semitic messages on the walls before escaping with a database of the community’s personal information.
The attack occurred during a heightened period of tension following Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip, which President Hugo Chavez strongly criticized, eventually severing diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
“This visit to the synagogue from Chancellor Maduro fortifies the dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the Jewish community,” said Jack Terpins, president of the Latin American Jewish Congress, in a news release.
Thirteen people have been arrested for the break-in.
Naples Jewish Community Rebuilds Church
The Jewish community of Naples has raised funds to help rebuild the bell tower of a church damaged in an earthquake.
The Italian Catholic news agency SIR this week quoted Naples Rabbi Pierpaolo Pinhas Punturello as saying that he had been inspired to act on behalf of the church in the city of L’Aquila at the Passover seder, which took place shortly after last April’s quake.
“I was struck by the words at the beginning of the seder, ‘whoever is hungry, come and eat, whoever is needy come and celebrate the Passover with us,’ ” he said.
Punturello made contact with emergency rescue operations coordinating aid to the devastated area.
“Never before had I realized so strongly that as a Jew, and as a Jewish community, we had to do something for everyone who was hungry and in need,” he said.
In addition to raising funds to help rebuild the church, the Naples initiative also included the dispatch of emergency aid to L’Aquila in the immediate aftermath of the quake.