Hungary has been labelled one of the safest countries for European Jews by David P. Goldman.
In his popular Spengler column, Goldman writes that he put on a kippah and walked half an hour across Budapest to the Keren Or synagogue without issue.
Following violent attacks on Jews in German streets, the leaders of Germany’s Jewish community warned Jews last month not to wear a kippah or any other visible sign of Jewish identification in public.
The French community issued such warnings years ago and in Belgium not a single Jew in Brussels is willing to wear a kippah in public.
Goldman writes that he walked across Budapest four times (for Friday evening and Saturday daytime services), and no-one looked at his kippah twice.
At services, he met Hasidim who had walked to synagogue with kaftan and shtreimel, the traditional round fur hat. Whatever residual anti-Semitism remains among Hungarians, it doesn’t interfere with the open embrace of Jewish life, he writes. There are no risks to Jews because there are very few Muslim migrants, he adds.
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