From State-Imposed Urban Planning to Israeli Diasporic Place: The Case of Netivot and the Grave of Baba Sali

This chapter Altering Alternatives, has focused primarily on secular Jewish cultural space. It examines the process of the shaping and configuring of "Jewish space" in Budapest on three different levels. The levels are historical spaces, spaces of contemporary urban culture, virtual spaces. The darkest era of the Jewish community in Budapest arrived in November, 1944, after the unsuccessful attempt of the Horthy government to withdraw from the German alliance. Supported by the German invaders, the new Szlasi government erected ghettos in both areas, with the intention of deporting the Jews of Budapest. In several Central European countries, the built environment the Jewish quarter is clothed with nostalgic contents that push it back into the past. In Budapest, the culture constructed by official organizations appears in the same physical space in the old Jewish quarter. The latter raises a further issue, namely, the role and legitimacy of the representative Hungarian-Jewish political-cultural organizations in an overwhelmingly assimilated environment.