As part of the protest and fight against revived anti-Semitism in Hungary, the Rabbinical Center of Europe has decided to hold its bi-annual General Assembly in Budapest in March.
The conference, to be organized in cooperation with the Hungarian government, will take place March 24-25 and will be attended by hundreds of Rabbis from across Europe, as well as by Israel's Chief Rabbis, Rabbi David Lau and Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef and senior members of the Hungarian government.
"It is not easy to by a Jew in Hungary in 2014. In the past few years, the number of anti-Semitic incidents has risen sharply in the country. Grave arsons, violent attacks and blood libels have become routine. The conference is aimed at showing support to the Jewish community,’’ says Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who heads the RCE and the European Jewish Association (EJA).
Around 80,000 Jews live in Hungary.
The Hungarian extreme-right and anti-Semitic Jobbik party has recently been gathering much momentum in the Hungarian street as well as in the country's Parliament where it introduced several fascist bills and verbally assault various minorities, especially Jews and Gypsies.
In an act of defiance against the local Jewish community, members of this party announced over the weekend that it will hold a political assembly in the city of Esztergom in a building that used to be a Synagogue.
The March convention will also feature a memorial ceremony in line with the Hungarian government’s own memorial project to the landmark 70th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary where some 800,000 Jews were exterminated by Nazis.