Budapest -- Adam LeBor on Possibilities in Budapest's Downtown Jewish Quarter

Adam LeBor has a nice commentary in the Economist about the Jewish quarter in Budapest, pegged to the Quarter6Quarter7 Hanukkah festival.

District VI and District VII have survived wars and revolutions, invasion by the Nazis and the Soviets, and decades of communism. But capitalism has proved perhaps their deadliest enemy yet, as property developers—many of whom, ironically, are Israeli—knock down large swathes of the area and build ugly modernist office blocks and parking lots.
Yet the twists of Hungarian politics, and the recession, may prove the Jewish quarter’s greatest allies. The developers have run out of money, at least for now. The Socialist municipal officials who permitted historic buildings to be destroyed lost office in October's local elections. György Hunvald, the disgraced former mayor of District VII, is in detention awaiting trial on corruption charges.  

Municipal government was decentralised after the collapse of communism, giving Budapest's district mayors substantial powers. The new Fidesz mayors and their officials are said to be pragmatic and open-minded—and doubtless aware of the political and financial value of a thriving Jewish quarter. The Quarter6Quarter7 festival is already attracting commercial support: Vodafone has sponsored audio guides to 30 locations that can be downloaded on to a mobile phone.

Budapest -- The Hanukkah Festival is on!

Tour guide Agi Antal leads a group to the Dohany St. synagogue in Budapest during the 2009 Hanukkah festival. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm back in Budapest for Hanukkah again -- I arrived last night and plunged right in to events in this year's Quarter6Quarter7 Hanukkah festival, which takes place in the city's downtown old Jewish quarter (the 6th and 7th Districts). I wrote about last year's festival for JTA and the New York Times online.

My train from Prague was too late to catch the concert I wanted to hear of Shkayach, a group that sings updated versions of Israeli and traditional Jewish songs. The group's singer, Flora Polnauer, also fronts hip-hop klezmer fusion groups -- and she chanted the Rosh Hashanah service this year for a Budapest reform congregation.

But I did manage to catch the concert by the Polish Klezmer Jazz group, the Bester Quartet.

And afterwards, I had a drink with the festival's organizer, Adam Schonberger, at "M"  restaurant -- which is serving special menus during the festival. Last night there was a Sephardic menu; I had the fish empanadas with a orange and black olive salad.

Adam told me that he is experimenting with the festival format this year. Instead of having concerts, performance, openings and other events for the full eight days of Hanukkah, as last year, the last four days are devoted to a film festival.

One of the innovations this year is a downloadable Jewish quarter tour guide app for smart phones -- more on this after I take a look at it. So far it's just in Hungarian, but an English version is coming.

As last year, though, more than 30 local venues and businesses in the 6th and 7th district are involved in the festival, hosting events or providing programs.

Shanghai -- Jewish Quarter Under Threat (and Shanghai Moon)

NPR reports that the historic Jewish quarter in Shanghai -- where thousands of Jews fleeing Europe during the Holocaust found refuge -- is under threat from developers.

In the 1930s, Shanghai was the only place in the world to offer visa-free sanctuary to Jews fleeing Nazism — 20,000 ended up in Shanghai. In 1943, the Japanese restricted them to a one-square-mile area, which became known as Little Vienna.

A pianist and a violinist used to play popular music for customers at the White Horse Inn, or Das Weisse Rossl. The waitresses wore dirndls — traditional Bavarian outfits — and the menu featured Wiener schnitzel.

But the White Horse wasn't in Austria or Germany, it was in wartime Shanghai. And for the city's wealthier Jewish refugees, it offered a memory of homes that no longer existed.

- - - -

The White Horse Inn is among a number of buildings inside the Jewish district to be knocked down to make way for a widened road.

As they start work, the demolition crews are uncovering layers of the past, like unwitting architectural archaeologists. By knocking down shop facades, old shop signs beneath are revealed, like one for Wuerstel Tenor, a sandwich shop, which had been covered for decades.

They will pull down other fading shop fronts at the heart of Little Vienna, as well — those of Cafe Atlantic and Horn's Imbiss-stube (Horn's Snack Bar).

Read (or Listen to) Full Story

Coincidentally, the award-winning mystery novelist SJ Rozan has just come out with a new book that is partly set in the Jewish refugee milieu of wartime Shanghai. It's called The Shanghai Moon and concerns a (fictional) legendary jewel from that era, believed lost and/or stolen....

Rozan is an old friend of mine, and this marks the first time she has used a Jewish theme in her mysteries -- most of which (like The Shanghai Moon) are a series featuring a Chinese-America detective, Lydia Chin, and her Anglo partner, Bill Smith.

You can read an excerpt from The Shanghai Moon by clicking HERE.