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It has been 100 years since the position of military rabbi in Germany has been filled, which has now been appointed to Hungarian rabbi, Zsolt Balla, azonnali.hu reports.
Ever since the First World War, there hasn’t been a rabbi within the German armed forces (Bundeswehr). After the German parliament voted last year to allow rabbis back into Germany’s military, the Central Council of Jews in Germany recommended Hungarian-born Balla to take on the duty.
Zsolt Balla was born in Hungary in 1979, and studied engineering in Budapest. He has lived in Germany since 2002, and in 2009, he completed his rabbinical studies. For the past eleven years he has been working as the municipal rabbi of Leipzig. Since 2019, he has also been serving as the chief rabbi of Saxony. In addition, Balla was one of the first two Orthodox rabbis to have graduated and appointed in Germany since 1938.
Hungarian Embassy in Israel Organises Conference on Kosher Food Production
Hungary’s embassy in Tel Aviv organised a conference on the production and market opportunities of kosher-certified food on Tuesday.
At the event, Hungarian, American and Israeli experts and businesspeople discussed the rules of kosher food production and the conditions for selling kosher food on the Israeli, European and American markets.
Levente Benkő, Hungary’s ambassador to Israel, discussed the traditions of Hungarian kosher food production through the example of Tokaj wine and noted the kosher slaughterhouse in Csengele, in southern Hungary. Benkő said the 19 billion dollar global kosher food market offered significant opportunities for Hungary’s food industry.
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony on Friday marked the memorial day of the Hungarian victims of the Holocaust, at a virtual inauguration ceremony of a statue in Budapest’s 13th district.
The inauguration of the statue by Zénó Kelemen was originally planned for the March of the Living on April 25 but has been reorganised due to the coronavirus epidemic.
In the video posted on Facebook, Karácsony said “the Holocaust casts a long, dark shadow over our entire civilisation, but our civilisation has to live on, with all the weight and consequences of what happened.”
Even during a destructive pandemic, the memory of the victims has to be kept alive, and the memory of those who “did not watch idly as fellow humans were cruelly sent to their death in the name of a mad ideology.”
Marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán addressed a letter to Ronald S. Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, in tribute to his work preserving the memory of Holocaust victims. Meanwhile, PMO Chief Gergely Gulyás pledged the government’s continued support for the preservation and strengthening of the cultural identity of Hungarian Jews.
Orbán said he and his wife recalled Lauder’s “great speech” given at last year’s commemoration at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, the PM’s press chief said in a statement.
Orbán assured Lauder that
“Hungary has drawn the appropriate lessons from the dark chapter of Hungarian history that took away so many of our compatriots from the Jewish community and deprived the survivors of their loved ones.”