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PHOTOS: Tens of thousands of Jewish pilgrims visit this tiny Hungarian village
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More than 70 thousand Hasidic Jewish pilgrims will visit a tiny Hungarian village, Bodrogkeresztúr near Tokaj this year alone. They are not only visiting the tomb of a miracle Rabbi but are planning to repopulate the village which once held a large Jewish population.
In 2023, more than 70,000 Hasidic Jewish pilgrims could visit the small village of Bodrogkeresztúr, according to the Keren Menachen Assembly, index.hu reports. The pilgrims pay their respect to Yeshaya Steiner, also known as Rabbi Shaya’la, who lived in Bodrogkeresztúr in the late 19th and early 20th century until his death in 1925.
He was considered a miracle Rabbi already during his lifetime, and his tomb become a popular pilgrimage site. Hasidic Jews believe that his former house which became a visitor centre and his tomb still have miraculous power.
But why did Bodrogkeresztúr become such a popular site for Jewish pilgrims now, almost 100 years after the Rabbi’s death? According to his grandson, Rabbi Rubin, with the change of regime in Hungary after 1989 and the more convenient and cheaper transportation methods the descendants of Hasidic Jewish families, who used to live in this area, have better access to visit the village.
“My father fled in 1950. Although he lived in Brooklyn, his heart remained in Bodrogkeresztúr,” Rabbi Rubin told 24.hu. “He was in constant contact with the last Jewish resident of the village, Frida Winkler, sending her money regularly to look after the graves in the Jewish cemetery. As a child, I remember sitting around our father reading letters from home about who had married and where children had been born. We would even find out when the Bodrog was flowing and what the water level was.”
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Globalisation changes pilgrimage
Rabbi Rubin visited Bodrogkeresztúr for the first time in 1982 and purchased the house of his family back around 2010, which now operates as a visiting centre. Despite not wanting to profit from religious tourism, due to the high number of pilgrims they had to build a guesthouse and provide kosher food for the visitors.