Published: 7 December 2017
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Stretching across 3.5 acres between Heroes’ Square and Vajdahunyad Castle, the Budapest City Park Ice Rink draws hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the country each winter. They come for the Christmas market, the winter festival, and the promise of smooth ice and affordable skate rentals.
It’s an enormous and enormously popular attraction, so City Park Ice Rink is busy nearly every day with the Christmas revellers. Except, however, on the first night of Hanukkah.
On that evening, the rink is populated with hundreds of Jews.
They gather to sing Chanukah songs as they watch rabbis on skates light a large menorah built by EMIH, the local branch of the Chabad Hasidic movement. With help from a donor in Budapest, they rent the rink for $12,000, and distribute sufganiyot and tea to holiday revellers who have pre-purchased tickets.
The City Park Chanukah celebration started just over a decade ago, and it is unusual in that it’s one of just a few places in Europe where the North American “Chanukah on ice” tradition has taken root.
FULL STORY In Budapest, Chanukah comes out of the shadows and onto the ice rink (JTA)
AND SEE
The insanely fascinating history of Chanukah light (Forward)
Photo: Rabbi Slomo Koves, right, and a participant at Chabad Hungary’s 2015 Chanukah on Ice event take selfies in 2015 (EMIH)
