Budapest rabbi raises hackles after interview with far-right news website

A senior rabbi from Budapest stirs controversy in his community by granting an interview to a news website that is widely identified with the far-right Jobbik party.

Zoltan Radnoti, the chairman of the rabbinical council of the Mazsihisz Jewish umbrella group in Hungary, speaks with a reporter for the Alfahir news website in a wide-ranging interview published Friday about the meaning of Hungarian Jewish identity.

The interview follows two unusual gestures made recently by Jobbik Chairman Gabor Vona amid an effort by the party, which has been shunned by Hungarian Jews and labeled a neo-Nazi party by European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor, to gain greater respectability in Hungarian society.

In December, Vona sent a holiday greeting to Mazsihisz and other Jewish groups, and the following month said his country would cease to single out Israel for criticism. Jobbik leaders have frequently inveighed against Jews, Israel and Zionism.

Although Alfahir is not officially part of the party apparatus, it features content consistent with Jobbik’s radically nationalistic point of view.

Radnoti tells JTA in an interview Monday that he decided to grant the interview to facilitate a departure, also within Jobbik, from anti-Semitic sentiments.

“I’m no Jobbik fan, but you can’t ignore the million voters and supporters this party has,” he says. “We need to overcome our own reservations and explain who we are rather than pretend they don’t exist.”

But the Szombat Jewish-Hungarian weekly published an article Sunday that raised the question of whether Radnoti perhaps “gave Jobbik a kosher certificate” by granting Alfahir the interview.

— JTA