like déjà vu

Phone calls in the Night
We were woken up twice by our US cell phone in the wee hours of Sunday morning. But the caller phone number was blocked, and at a dollar a minute we decided not to answer it. Then in the wee hours of Monday morning we received another call, but this time a caller phone number appeared. Tari answered and found it was from the fraud squad from one of our credit cards. Somehow the number had been used on the US west coast although we had both cards in our possession and had not used it very often in Budapest. We denied the charges and had a temporary block put on the card. We used the secure online email system to verify the situation. We were told to download an affidavit concerning the rejected charges and then go to the US Embassy to have it notarized. The Embassy has an online reservation system and the first opening was Tuesday of next week. We then made arrangements to have the new credit cards sent to us. We have been exchanging emails, and received a phone call confirming our intention to have the affidavit notarized and saying they would remove the unauthorized charge.

Academic Matters
I have been eating lunch by myself in the building bufe (cafeteria). Once or twice I have seen another faculty member come down but they didn’t sit with me. Wednesday that changed. I was eating and concentrating on some Hungarian words to learn when two of the younger faculty came up and asked if they could join me. I said of course. One of them had been to Chicago. He knew I was originally from Chicago, and then went on about the Cubs, baseball being a very slow game which allowed for plenty of hotdogs, beer and conversation. He mentioned the people watching the game from the roofs of apartment buildings that overlook Wrigley Field.

I gave my Wednesday afternoon lecture on private health insurance in US which raised much less discussion than the previous week’s on Medicare and Medicaid. In my preparation I did learn about company and union benefit societies that existed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, so that Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance just didn’t emerge suddenly during the depression and commercial insurance after World War II. On Friday I gave my delayed presentation to the faculty on Clinton and Obama Health Reform efforts. I apologized for missing the previously scheduled meeting, but told them that things had progressed in the ensuing two weeks including the President’s televised meeting at Blair House with Congressional leaders, the President’s own proposal (at long last), and the official decision to pass Health Care Reform under the reconciliation process requiring only 51 votes in the Senate for the corrective bill if the bill already passed by the Senate was approved without amendment by the House. Because of a special convocation that morning I was told to limit my talk to an hour. I cut a bit but still felt rushed. In the end I think the details of the Clinton and the current House and Senate bills along with the cutthroat politics must have seemed Byzantine to the faculty. The department chair did comment that lobbies like tobacco had great influence in Hungary as in the US. I did learn that in 1993 staff for Senate minority leader Robert Dole told Republican Senators not to talk with Mrs. Clinton and then Rep. Newt Gingrich vowed that no House Republican would vote for the Clinton legislation. Clearly in 2009 and2010 Republicans are following the same strategy. As the great philosopher Yogi Berra put it, “This is like déjà vu all over again!”

Ceremony
The Semmelweis University convocation on Friday began with the singing of Gaudeamus Igitur, the alma mater, for which everyone stood. One verse reads, “Long live academia, Long live the professors, long live the male and female students.” Another verse goes … "Long live the state and those who rule it. Long live our city, and the charity of benefactors," which tied into the March 15th national holiday on Monday. During the song, a color guard led the speakers, with green, white and red cockades (circular paper badges) into the hall and to their seats in front. This was followed by the playing of the Hungarian National Anthem, Himnusz (literally Hymn) which begins “O Lord, bless the nation of Hungary with your grace and bounty” but goes on in a vein similar to the Star Spangled Banner, on the perseverance of Hungary in the face of Mongol and Turkish invasions as well as the victories of King Mátyás Corvinus. It ends with a prayer for relief for those who have suffered for all sins of the past and of the future.

The awards ceremony itself took about an hour and recognized faculty, staff and students for their contributions and activities to the University. It ended with the playing of the other major anthem (perhaps akin to God Bless America although though much more fatalistic) Szózat (literally Summons) which calls on Hungarians to be ever faithful to your homeland because in the great world outside of here there is no place for you, and a thousand years of suffering would enliven you or bring death. The speakers were then escorted out by the color guard again to Gaudeamus Igitur.

March 15th is a national holiday celebrating the 1848 revolution. Following similar “revolutions” in France, Germany and Italy, a large demonstration of ten thousand people was held in Pest on March 15th. Petõfi Sándor read his poem, National Song, which begins “On your feet, Magyar, the homeland calls!
The time is here, now or never! Shall we be slaves or free?” The writer Jókai Mór read the Twelve Points for change which the Mayor of Pest and the Imperial Governing Council in Buda were forced to sign. An independent government was established and passed a series of legal reforms and then in July 1849 the Hungarian Parliament enacted a law giving ethnic and minorities rights. But it was too late: Emperor Franz Joseph (who had deposed his ailing uncle) called on Nicholas I of Russia to help suppress the Hungarians, who were no match for the Russian army. Shades of 1956 or as Yogi Berra put it…

On Saturday morning we went to services at the Dohany Utca Great Synagogue. I wanted to say the memorial prayers (yartzeit) for my parents. We passed through security and into a small chapel, not the large main sanctuary with its balconies. We estimated thirty people attended about two-thirds men and one-third women. We received English prayer books from the Conservative United Synagogues (mine was a gift from a couple in Cleveland, OH). I alos picked up the Hungarian prayer book and a small thin volume containing the Book of Exodus in Hebrew and Hungarian without the numerous rabbinical commentaries. I asked what the reading for the week was and was told it was a double parshat of Vayekhel/Pekudei that come at the end of Exodus. I only later realized it was in Hebrew on signs on either side of the ark.

The Chapel, in the mid nineteenth century German liberal tradition, had an organ and choir that accompanied the Cantor. The Cantor had a very Ashkenazi accent, but not as slurred as I have heard in Orthodox services in Detroit and Chicago. Every once in a while the tunes were familiar and I recognized the call to the amidah and stood up for it. At the end I think they said the Kadish, the memorial prayer, twice, perhaps the first time for the holocaust victims and the second for individual mourners. I stood and said both.

Although the trappings were “liberal” or “modern”, the atmosphere was very orthodox. Tari sat with the women on one side and I with the men on the other. The men who arrived late would stand and begin their personal opening prayers while the services moved on. The men conversed with each other and several of the women talked almost the whole time. Except for the Cantor, the prayer leaders were at a prayer niche against the wall next to the ark or at the prayer table facing the ark and could barely be heard. As far as I could tell, no page numbers were announced as the service, as in most congregations, skipped along through the prayer book. At one point the man who handed out the prayer books went to the front and encouraged everyone to stand for the Hazak that is said when a Torah book is completed. When the services were over, everyone left and went home, no Kiddush or greeting of strangers.

On the Town
Last Sunday we decided to take the 59 Tram in Buda that Constance described at the Fulbright orientation as going from birth (near the hospital) to death (near the cemetery). We caught it at Moszkva ter and took it north in the direction of the hospital. Nothing much, so we rode it all the way to the other end up the Buda hills to the Farkasréti cemetery. What had started as a few snowflakes was now a wet snow that was piling up at the top of the hill. At the end of the line is the original Auguszt pastry shop, so we stopped in for a four o’clock tea.. Started in the 1870s Auguszt has been a family business ever since surviving World War II and the Soviet imprisonment of some members during the 1950s. The pastry was good and the hot chocolate very rich, reminding us of Ghirardelli in San Francisco. When we got back to Pest, only a few flakes were on the ground.