Posted on 08/07/2013 6:41:24 PM PDT by xzins
BUDAPEST, Hungary -- What do you do when you learn you are not the person you thought you were, when you learn you are the very thing you hated?
It was a question Csanad Szegedi was confronted with -- one that led to a remarkable transformation.
Szegedi was once a rising star in Hungary's third largest and most controversial political parties, Jobbik. Jobbik has been labeled fascist and anti-Semitic.
Its leader once asked for a list of all the Jews in Hungarian government. And Szegedi, still in his 20s, was on a trajectory to lead the party someday.
"I joined Jobbik in 2003, when the party foundations were being built," he told CBN News. "I was a member for 9 years. I was vice president for 6 years and I have served in the European parliament since 2009."
Szegedi was also branded an anti-Semite, although he told CBN News that when he joined Jobbik, "I was kind of indifferent toward Jews."
"I didn't care about Jews," he said. "I didn't care about the Holocaust. I didn't consider the Holocaust as a tragedy for the Hungarian people."
Szegedi's Damascus Road
But still, Szegedi was a leader in a major anti-Semitic party, and his public statements showed that, at the very least, he didn't like Jews and was suspicious of them.
But that would all change when Szegedi learned something about himself that would turn his world upside down: Szegedi discovered he was a Jew.
When rumors of his Jewish ancestry started swirling on the Internet, Szegedi went to talk to his 94-year-old grandmother, who he never knew was Jewish.
"She opened up and she talked about her life and how she was sent to Auschwitz and how our family was annihilated," he recalled. "I was shocked. First of all because I realized the Holocaust really happened."
At first, Szegedi tried to hide his Jewishness and act like nothing had happened. But he realized he couldn't stay in Jobbik.
"It started such a crisis in my consciousness," he told CBN News. "I realized I can't take part in any organization that has anything to do with anti-Semitism. And after my Jewish origins were disclosed, they really didn't want to see me in the party anymore."
A Spiritual 'Leper'
So what do you do when you discover you are one of the very things you hated? Szegedi decided to change.
He contacted local Rabbi Schlomo Koves, who first thought it was a joke.
"When I first met with Csanad, I had very, very mixed feelings because on one hand I was sitting across from a member of the Jobbik party, which has extreme anti-Semitic views," Rabbi Koves told CBN News.
"But on the other hand, I was sitting across from a broken person who has realized what he has done and has come to a situation where he figured he had to change but he didn't know how to change," he said.
Szegedi started attending synagogue and jokes that he was treated by some members "like a leper."
"It was very interesting to see how other people viewed it and some stepped back," Rabbi Koves said. "They were shocked."
But Szegedi started taking classes at the synagogue, learning Hebrew and the meaning of kosher and Shabbat. He said his life has completely changed.
"It's changed everything. It's like being re-born, and the changes in my life are still happening," he said. "I had this set value system that I had to change completely. I had had this value system until I was 30 and I had to admit that it was all wrong and to find the will to change."
Visiting Israel
He also became a politician without a party and has continued to serve in the European parliament as an independent.
"As a politician, now I want to defend human rights for everyone," Szegedi explained. "I am aware of my responsibility and I know I will have to make it right in the future."
One of the high points of his new life was visiting Israel with his wife and visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and the Western Wall.
"When I landed in Israel, airport security asked me a lot of questions, and when the guard asked me, 'Are you a Jew?' Then for the first time in my life, I could say, 'Yes,'" Szegedi recalled.
"Just to feel like you are on the right way spiritually, and you can get closer to God," he continued. "It's a whole new feeling for me, that I am doing the right thing."
"Since then, my life has been full of incredible miracles," he said. "But I believe everyone who chooses the way of God sees miracles."
I was referencing the old English story of a French ship wreck during Napoleanic times and the residents hanging the powder monkey who might have survived the wreck. The song is about hanging the monkey because he’s a spy.
Easy one for me...I’d go to Harvard Law. :>)
Soros was put out for adoption by his Jewish parents to protect him from the anti-Semitic local government. He was perhaps 15 when he was traveling with his adopted father foreclosing on Jews.
Powder monkeys were boys who would run down the stairs pick up a charge of powder from the hold and carry it up to the guns. Small boys were preferred as they could more easily pass each other in the stairs.
Because of flash and burning embers, it was not permitted to store many charges near the guns.
there were also shot monkeys, but because of the inert nature of shot, more were permitted to be stored by the guns. Some were made of brass, and when it got cold the brass would contract more than the steel shot. When it was really cold the cannon balls could fall off the shrunken monkey, it then being cold enough to freeze the [cannon] balls off a brass monkey.
Good info, thanks.
The song is about hanging a monkey, but the suspicion is that it’s about hanging one of the powder monkey boys.
I don’t get it.
He was labeled anti-Semitic, and therefore HE WAS...? MANY people are labeled anti-Semitic, very many, and often for reasons that have NOTHING to do with Judaism.
I have gone to very few political rallies, but I did once protest the arrival of Bill Clinton in San Francisco, and I was called a nazi and anti-semite very many times —simply because I was not a fan of Bill Clinton.
Further, this states that his thinking about Jews changed BECAUSE he discovered his grandmother was Jewish:
I also don’t understand this —this is close to showing a triumph of narrow tribalism and Balkanization. We should instead read something like, “But then I joined a sports team full of GREAT guys, who were generous and fair to all, and after that I realized that my previous reservations about Jews were silly...”
Let’s say someone asked to be your friend “I want to be your friend BECAUSE you are an Eskimo”.
Eskimos are fine, but my point is shouldn’t something other than MEMBERSHIP drive people...?
Story is also that Soros applied for help from a Jewish community charity in London after the war.
Most of the charities then were in the practice of checking with the British government to ascertain eligibility for any public benefits. This helped the charities make sure that their (very limited, especially then) resources went to the most needy, and that everybody who applied for help got it (from either source).
Soros allegedly did not disclose he was receiving public benefits, or else there was something else that the charity felt was wrong with his application (I heard it was that he didn’t reveal the monies he was getting from the public dole). However the details, his application for charity was apparently turned down, and he seemed to carry a grudge about it. If this is even partly accurate, it would help explain his anti-British and anti-Semitic attitudes....
if anyone can confirm just what made Soros into such a hate-filled man, please share with us. (Just his having to live through Nazism, and yes, rat on his family and friends....)... that would have probably warped a lot of people in that position, especially at such an early stage in life. But all I can do is speculate ... I wish we could find out just what broke his mold... perhaps this will provide us a means of “reaching out to him”... and just think of all the good he could do in the world if he could just overcome his sociopathy
From the radio Islam web site.
Just so you can see what ilk puts out this stuff.
West Bank and Gaza papers have pumped out this filth and worse over time.
I hadn’t heard that before. Thanks for the mention.
You may want to look at what I posted just above to Sport.
No kidding!
Odd, that take on the part of Arabs. Jewish inventiveness and technology far outstrips theirs and when considered in terms of ratio, number of Jews versus number of Islamics, it is exponentially enormous.
“and that all of them will be saved.”
Disagree...only if they have accepted Jesus as Messiah and are born again.
Many have not, and many will not.
http://gracethrufaith.com/ask-a-bible-teacher/will-all-jews-be-saved/
I thought of that skit when I saw the headline also. One of Chappelle’s finer moments.
http://www.geraldschroeder.com/AgeUniverse.aspx
Agreed, and just in this one Jew alone. Incredibly intelligent people!
Israel expends it's energy on being productive, and the Arabs spend too much energy being destructive.
I don't think the whole Arab world spends their time being destructive, but it's hard to deny the almost universal hatred of Jews, and for that matter the U. S.
In the old days we used to think or Russians here as potential sleepers. Today, that's more or less my concern about Arabs on U. S. soil.
I hate to think of it that way, but what we're having to do in this nation to keep us safe, causes me to view this whole thing very dimly.
Not exactly. He was a preteen given to a non-Jewish family to save him. As a teenager he ended up working with the Nazis.
And though Soros is disgusting, and I wish him a slow and painful death, he is not nearly as terrible as were the Jewish leadership of Hungary, whose head was Erich Kastner, who when informed by an escapee from Auschwitz about the death camps, used the information to save their inmediate friends and family and let the Jews of Hungary go to their deaths.
Ping!
I realize that is a viewpoint, and it can be supported from other Biblical verses.
But it contradicts Romans 11.
The Church (RCC, plus some Protestants) have recognized and now teach this.
This also is consistent with our understanding of the nature of God (indeed, this may be the most important part of it all, that God is not a liar and that He keeps his word, etc...)
At any event, that’s what I can contribute.
Go in faith my friend...
Best regards,
fhc
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