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The Rákospalota Synagogue in Budapest, Hungary, ahead of the synagogue's rededication in September 2026. (EMIH)

While the Hungarian Jewish community was celebrating the reopening of its 100-year-old Rákospalota Synagogue last month, a local woman approached Rabbi Shlomo Köves.

“She saw the crowd around the synagogue and came over to me and said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but can I join?'” recalled Köves, the head of EMIH, a Hungarian Jewish organization affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. “I brought her inside, and then she told me she’s Jewish. It turns out she lives there with her children, and she hadn’t been to synagogue before.…