Márton Gyöngyösi at the Passover seder table is like having a pedophile guest of honor at a conference on kindergarten education, Shlomo Köves, head of the Association of Hungarian Jewish Communities (EMIH), told Index.
As we reported earlier, U.S. Ambassador David Pressman celebrated the first night of Passover with Jobbik President Márton Gyöngyösi and Mazsihisz President András Heisler. We recalled that Gyöngyösi first caused international outrage with his speech in Parliament in 2012:
„It is time to take stock of how many people of Jewish origin living here, especially in the Hungarian parliament and Hungarian government, pose a certain national security risk to Hungary.„
But this was not his only antisemitic outburst. In 2013 he made statements at a protest such as,
„The world’s Jews in the service of Zionism played a sinister role in running communist dictatorships,”
or:
„The way in which the State of Israel, in violation of the written and unwritten rules of international law, is forcing the indigenous Palestinian people off their land is genocide on a scale that even the chief ideologues of Nazi Germany would have admired.”
The bizarre guest list of the Passover dinner at the U.S. ambassador’s residence has been reacted to by EMIH’s Chief Rabbi Shlomo Köves, who strongly criticized the invitation of the Jobbik-Conservative president:
„Márton Gyöngyösi at the Passover seder table is like having a pedophile guest of honor at a conference on kindergarten education or the leader of the Ku Klux Klan at a Martin Luther Day celebration. It is incomprehensible, and letting him join was tactless and impolite”
– he said, adding:
„Make no mistake! Judaism believes in the power of repentance, teshuvah. In 2012, I took the position that Csanád Szegedi, the Jewish-born disgraced vice-president of Jobbik, should be given the opportunity to repent. The precondition for this was to leave a notoriously racist party and make amends for his own missteps, i.e., to use his public profile to draw attention to the dangers of his former racist ideology. Through the example of his own personal history, he took a public stand against his former principles and racism.”
Köves emphasized: Even Márton Gyöngyösi should be given the chance to do this.
„Even though in the most antisemitic speech of the last decades of parliament he talked about the national security risk of Hungarians of Jewish origin. Despite this, if Márton Gyöngyösi were to leave the racist Jobbik, share with us all how it was possible for him to have been a leading politician and spokesman for an antisemitic party for years, and then come to the realization that he was wrong, well, in that case, we should also give him the chance to make amends. In fact, if we can find some legitimate reason, he could even be allowed to take part in a seder. Of course, even then it would be difficult to understand why he is the only politician invited to such an event.”
– Rabbi Shlomo Köves said, adding:
“But that is not the case with Márton Gyöngyösi. He is the president of a party that for many years was a symbol of modern Hungarian racism, and it was in the colors of this party that he brought open antisemitic rhetoric back to the Honorable Parliament. He is the leader of a party that, even after becoming the so-called ‘people’s party,’ ran a candidate who talked about the “lice-infested” payot of Orthodox Jews and called Budapest “Judapest” in the parliamentary elections, and meanwhile had a co-president who, while calling itself the ‘people’s party’, celebrated his wedding with a gesture that strongly resembled a ‘Heil Hitler’ salute.”
Shlomo Köves explained that
according to Jewish tradition, repentance consists of three steps: Regret, confession and determination (to change). „Our sages teach that if even one of the three is missing, it is like an unclean person submerging himself in a ritual bath of purity while holding a snake in his hands.”
According to him, it is highly doubtful that Márton Gyöngyösi has taken even one of the three steps above sincerely; however, that particular snake has a very strong hold on him.
„Thus, recalling Márton Gyöngyösi’s infamous speech, one might even think that Gyöngyösi was scanning the people sitting around the table in search of national security risks between Passover bites. Woe to those who say of the evil that it is good and of the good that it is evil; who present darkness as light and light as darkness, who present bitter as sweet and sweet as bitter, Isaiah taught 2,700 years ago (Isaiah 5:20)”
– Rabbi Shlomo Köves explained to Index.
