The Temple Israel of Sharon Brotherhood is embarking on a new initiative that is truly global. The Brotherhood wants to help revive Conservative Judaism in Hungary. Within the former Soviet bloc, non-Orthodox, egalitarian Judaism is in its infancy. Hungary has 90,000 Jews but the vast majority is highly assimilated. The challenge that Judaism faces in Hungary is intermarriage, indifference and a growing right-wing political movement. Traditional Judaism there is referred to as Neolog. It is non-egalitarian and has unsuccessfully engaged young people. The alternative, egalitarian movement, called Maron, has engaged thousands of young people, at least at some level. There is a very small group, perhaps 20 people, who are seeking a richer Jewish experience. This group is referred to as Dor Hadash. The success of this group in learning and ultimately teaching fellow Jews could very well determine the future of conservative, egalitarian Jewish life in Hungary.

But they are struggling. They currently use an apartment for their activities. This group’s knowledge base of Judaism is weak. No siddur has been published in Hungarian and Hebrew since before World War II.

The Temple Israel Brotherhood, working with Masorti, has started to explore ways how we can help this nascent group of young Jews. We don’t know where this will lead and we are starting slow. But we are starting.

The initiation of this program was a talk given by the then President of Masorti, Gillian Caplin, at the 2011 FJMC International Convention in California. Ms. Caplin discussed that there are a number of small, struggling and isolated conservative – egalitarian Jewish communities in Europe. These communities lack some basic Jewish and halachik knowledge and ritual items. This inspired our Brotherhood to reach out to the Dor Hadash community and begin an adventure.

While we in Sharon, MA are blessed with a strong congregation, excellent clergy and a welcoming community, we believe very strongly that our relationship with Dor Hadash is a partnership of equals. We are equals in that while we in Sharon have an abundance of resources and learned membership, Dor Hadash has something even more precious, the desire to learn and the thirst to discover their Judaism.

We began slowly, first with Skype calls where Gillian made the introductions. During these calls we learned a little bit about each other, our personal lives and our respective communities. Later, the new Masorti President, Dr. Joanna Kubar , joined our calls.

We started to create joint programs including our combined World Wide Wrap where both sides shared the joys of davening together. We’ve begun work on setting up learning sessions, via video calls across the Internet where members of Temple Israel Brotherhood will teach davening and Torah reading skills to members of Dor Hadash.

And our most ambitious project to date is inviting 2 members of Dor Hadash to visit our congregation in Sharon for the weekend just prior to convention as our guests and with the assistance of FJMC, join us in attending the International Convention in Danvers in July. We feel this will help create strong a strong and lasting bond between us and our new chaverim in Budapest. Additionally, we are looking for ways to support them with ritual items: siddurim and chumashim, to help them grow their numbers.

This is a new, exciting and uncharted program, changing and growing with each call. We would like to see this to become the template of a new initiative within FJMC and help other clubs reach out to other communities worldwide. And we are excited to help.