The festival, which will
continue until Thursday with concerts and theatre
performances, marks the Jewish Hanukkah festival, which
commemorates the reconsecration of the Jewish temple in
Jerusalem following the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BC.
The first candles were lit by Minister for
Social Affairs, Péter Kiss, the President of the Supreme
Court Zoltán Lomnici, and the Israeli Ambassador to Hungary,
David Admon.
Budapest is home to the
largest Jewish community in central and eastern Europe, and
about 75,000 Jews live in Hungary today. More than 500,000
Hungarian Jews were killed during the Holocaust by the Nazis.
