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Brooklyn is the biggest Hungarian “city” after Budapest? – VIDEOS
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More than a hundred thousand ultra-orthodox, Hasidic Jews live in New York’s Brooklyn. Most of them have Hungarian ancestors, who were forced to live their birthplace during the dark ages of the 20th century. In the “New World”, they rebuilt their community but did not forget where they came from. Therefore, one can run into a lot of Hungarian inscriptions in Brooklyn. Offbeat Budapest has collected these in a thorough article recently.
Ancestors came from Budapest and other Hungarian cities to Brooklyn
According to the news site, “at about South 9th Street, a strikingly different world emerges; gone are the designer stores, stylish hipsters, and luxury high-rises. Instead, a secluded world of ultra-Orthodox Jews appears.”
People wear their traditional clothes. Men have hats, long beards, side curls, and black coats from which the white fringes of their prayer shawls hang. Meanwhile, bewigged women wear long black skirts “navigate the streets with baby strollers and roving children.” Everything is kosher. Restaurants, grocery stores have Yiddish inscriptions making this part of Brooklyn a surreal experience for every visitor.
Most people living there originate from Hungary, so it is not hard to find somebody, who talks Hungarian.
Hasidic Judaism, an ultra-orthodox branch of Orthodox Judaism, was popular in the northeastern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 19th century. This territory belongs today to Ukraine, and it is called Transcarpathia. Still, more than 120 thousand Hungarians live there, but almost no Hungarian Jews.
Unlike the Jews living in cities and Budapest, Hasidic Jews did not want to assimilate. They “held to the ancient traditions and formed large hereditary dynasties (or sects) under the strict guidance of a revered grand rebbe. After the Holocaust, when nearly all were killed, the survivors fled Hungary and
rebuilt their communities from the ashes in the newly formed Israel and the United States”– Offbeat Budapest wrote.
Synagogues named after Hungarian cities
Today more than 150,000 ultra-orthodox Jews are living in Brooklyn having Hungarian ancestors. The biggest dynasty is Satmar, named after the Hungarian town Szatmárnémeti. It is now in Romania, but half of its population still speaks Hungarian. Satmar Meat is also a chain of kosher butcher shops with locations in Williamsburg and Borough Park.
Abundance of hungarians and hasidic in one place? National sport #1- Complaining!!!!
Note New York’s dirty streets, with garbage all over. There’s no garbage pickup on Sundays when these Hassidim go out to walk and shop, push the baby strollers around, and open up the stores. Covid has grounded up to 20% of the city’s sanitation workers (who pick up Covid-infected trash.) The government neglects the outer boroughs anyway, neglects the infrastructure (see the metro station), neglects services.
Manhattan, the center city however, is taken care of. Of the two Jewish areas the article covered, Borough Park has changed little over a century – seen in the architecture. Williamsburg however, has been gentrified by Manhattanites, hipsters, visitors, has lots of entertainment venues and party places. New high rise building dot the waterfront and its near-neighbor, Greenpoint. https://tinyurl.com/yyyz5f7b and downtown Brooklyn today https://tinyurl.com/yysuj8zz Crown Heights is the third section that make up the Hungarian city inside Brooklyn, New York. Most Hungarian gentiles and many secular Jews however, have moved out of NY decades ago and had integrated into the American melting pot.
What you come away with after meeting these people, or having eaten with them at the local diners, is their sense of decency and kindness. These gentle people constitute a community built on kindness, family, and God. Very Hungarian, and very much aligned with their sensibilities of goodness.
To better understand it all, see these YOU TUBES from a gentile film maker who went there to learn about the mystery – each You Tube is better than the next!
PART I – https://tinyurl.com/y5j9nqbt
PART II – https://tinyurl.com/y46x9gmy
PART III – much shorter – https://tinyurl.com/y2kua6k2
PART IV – marriage/relationship counseling – https://tinyurl.com/y6k45nhf
You realize that in Hungary they weren’t considered Hungarian? I’m Jewish with (non-Hasidic) ancestors who came from Hungary, spoke the language, etc. – but there’s a reason that so many of them left, and so few remain in Hungary. Let’s be honest about that.