The dress code was compulsory, yellow stars in the Ghetto which makes being asked to wear my kippur in 2025 Budapest tame.
Jews from four years old were mandated to sew the yellow stars on to the left-hand side of their garments in the 30s and 40s.
With the ultimate sanction execution.
Today Jews rightly and proudly are giving out the instructions to those entering their grand synagogue… to wear the kippur provided.
If the cap fits
Being an Irish-Scots Catholic this is new to me and the kippur takes off in the March Budapest wind.
I retrieve it and spot that there is a Kirby grip attached.
Only I was told to get my thatch cropped before coming on my four-day loveholidays and InterContinental trip to Budapest.
And so I have little hair to attach it to although I make it work and it does hide my baldy spot.
I am clearly not the only Christian here today judging by the questions fired at our guide.
Who just happens to be Kristjan too, a twenty-something Jew who has been raised in the history of Budapest Jewery.
And tells us that as Neolog Jews they assimilated into their country and lived and fought as Hungarians first.
And Jewish worshippers second and they often took names from their surroundings.
Lest we forget
Not that any of that protected them from persecution, starvation and execution.
The images, audio, video and numbers in the ghetto museum are more difficult to assimilate.
More than half a million Jews killed by the Nazis and their sympathisers.
And one in three who died in the million killed in Auschwitz a Hungarian Jew.
Poignantly a sculpture, a weeping willow with its leaves carrying the names of victims.
In front of the gravestones, the mass 2,500 buried on the land at its front.
Everday life in a Jewish home
We are offered a glimpse of the lives of Neolog Jews.
In the Jewish Museum, the religious rituals associated with food, fasting and fashion.
And we are emboldened by the messages of hope in adversity which endures and how we all assimilate with each other.
It was and is the Neolog Jews’ watchword and we see that in the most modern manifestation of sport, showbiz and satire.
In the baseball cap with the Michael Jordan Jumpman logo in the merch shop.
As a Rabbi with the logo Just Jew It.
Which will take pride of place to my kippur in 2025 Budapest.