Chabad Lubavitch of Hungary

Chabad-Lubavitch in Hungary: the Budapest mission from 1989, the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation (EMIH) founded in 2004, its close funding relationship with the Orbán government, and a 2026 State Audit Office report on its anti-antisemitism foundation

Chabad Lubavitch of Hungary
Logo
Type	Jewish religious community (Chabad-affiliated); established church under Hungarian law
Founded	August 1989 (Chabad mission); 24 May 2004 (EMIH)
Founder(s)	Baruch and Batsheva Oberlander (mission); EMIH founded with Shlomo Köves
Headquarters	Budapest
Location	Budapest, Debrecen, Kecskemét, Miskolc and Szentendre
Area served	Hungary
Key people	Shlomo Köves (executive rabbi of EMIH); Baruch Oberlander (head of the rabbinical court); Sholom Hurwitz
Website	https://emih.org
Remarks	Works through the Egységes Magyarországi Izraelita Hitközség (EMIH), a Chabad-Lubavitch-affiliated religious community

Chabad Lubavitch of Hungary is the Chabad-Lubavitch network in Hungary. Its emissaries, Baruch and Batsheva Oberlander, arrived in Budapest in August 1989. Since 2004 the network has worked through the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation (Egységes Magyarországi Izraelita Hitközség, EMIH), a Jewish religious community led by Rabbi Shlomo Köves. The Chabad movement's own directory lists 13 institutions in the country.

EMIH has had a close relationship with the government of Viktor Orbán. In 2019 it was given the "special status" that brings core state funding, and it has received large state grants and a state development-bank loan for culture, higher education and Holocaust remembrance projects. The relationship has strained its ties with Mazsihisz, the largest federation of Hungarian Jewish communities. In April 2026 the State Audit Office (Állami Számvevőszék, ÁSZ) reported serious irregularities at the Action and Protection Foundation (Tett és Védelem Alapítvány, TEV), an anti-antisemitism foundation set up by EMIH. It referred suspected budget fraud to the competent authority.

History

The Budapest mission (1989–2004)

According to Chabad.org, the movement's news site, Baruch Oberlander, a New Yorker whose parents were Holocaust survivors from Budapest, moved to Budapest with his wife Batsheva in August 1989 as Chabad emissaries. The same article says Oberlander:

• published Jewish religious books in Hungarian, including a Hebrew–Hungarian prayer book;
• taught Jewish law at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) from 1991 and founded an "open university" for adult Jewish education;
• founded the Pesti Jesiva, an advanced yeshiva, in 1998. Several of the country's later Chabad rabbis, Köves among them, studied there;
• set up a permanent rabbinical court (beth din) in 2008 with Köves and Sholom Hurwitz, with Oberlander as its head. The court deals with Jewish-status questions and kosher certification.

Chabad.org also reports that Oberlander received the Hungarian Order of Merit from the human resources minister Zoltán Balog in 2012. By 2014, it says, Chabad ran a kindergarten and school on Dohány utca and had acquired a chain of old people's homes with places for 1,200 people.

Founding of EMIH (2004)

An account published on zsido.com, EMIH's own news site, says EMIH was founded on 24 May 2004 at a meeting in a Budapest hotel. Köves was then 25. The account says the name was chosen to avoid a clash with Mazsihisz and that the new body declared itself in the Status Quo Ante tradition. Köves has been EMIH's executive rabbi since 2004. EMIH is one of three Jewish bodies with "established church" status under Hungary's religion law; the other two are Mazsihisz and the Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Community (MAOIH).

Shlomo Köves, executive rabbi of EMIH, at a Budapest conference in 2023

Centres and institutions

In October 2026 the Lubavitch.com directory listed 13 Chabad institutions in Hungary: nine in Budapest, and centres in Debrecen, Kecskemét, Miskolc and Szentendre. Its Budapest entry gives Oberlander, Hurwitz and Köves among the emissaries; other listed rabbis include Shmuel Raskin, who runs the Keren Or Israeli centre.

In October 2017 EMIH bought ZSKF Fenntartó Kft., which runs the private Zsigmond Király University in Budapest. According to Világgazdaság, EMIH paid its own share of the price with donations from foreign supporters, and the state-owned Hungarian Development Bank (MFB) lent a further 1.1 billion forints. The university was renamed Milton Friedman University in August 2018.

Relations with the state

Special status (2019)

On 18 November 2019 the Deputy Prime Minister, Zsolt Semjén, signed a document giving EMIH the "special status" already held by several churches and by Mazsihisz. The status opens up kinds of state funding, including core funding and grants for educational work, that other bodies cannot receive. Köves said EMIH was "pleased that the government has chosen to strengthen its relationship with EMIH".

Culture grant (2019)

In December 2019 EMIH received 1.8 billion forints through the state-owned EMET from a government fund that replaced the abolished culture tax relief. The money was for a planned cultural complex. According to Index, the complex was to be at Baross utca 61 in Budapest, with about 4,000 m² of floor space and a theatre of more than 200 seats. Index put the award at nearly two billion forints.

House of Fates

The House of Fates (Sorsok Háza) is a Holocaust memorial museum building at the former Józsefváros railway station in Budapest. It was built by the state but never opened as a museum. On 7 September 2018 the minister heading the Prime Minister's Office, Gergely Gulyás, announced a government decision that EMIH would own the museum. The government would set it up with EMIH and with the public foundation directed by the historian Mária Schmidt, and would provide a budget of 2 billion forints. The European Jewish Congress reported that Schmidt had directed the curation of the museum's permanent exhibition, and that Yad Vashem had come out publicly against the museum. Its Hungary expert, Robert Rozett, said the concept ignored Hungary's anti-Jewish laws of 1938, the deaths of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in forced labour, and the part played by Hungarian authorities in the deportations, and that Yad Vashem had dissociated itself from the project in 2014. A week after the announcement JTA reported, citing EMIH, that Schmidt would not run the museum.

Köves says EMIH produced a new exhibition concept by about 2020. ATV reported that the museum did not open and that the government withdrew its decision on the opening in 2024. In September 2025 the government decided that the complex would pass to the MTK Budapest sports club from January 2026, with 2 billion forints for remodelling. Köves called the idea of giving a national Holocaust memorial centre to a sports club "bizarre" at first hearing. He said EMIH had had nothing to do with the building, "neither in ownership nor even in possession", although the 2018 government announcement had said that EMIH would own the museum, and ATV itself reported that the government gave it to EMIH in 2018. He also said the concept had cost 400–500 million forints, of which 200 million forints was state support and the rest was paid by EMIH.

Action and Protection Foundation funding

EMIH set up the Action and Protection Foundation (TEV) on 15 November 2012 to monitor and counter antisemitism. In 2018 TEV started a European offshoot, the European Action and Protection League. Chabad.org says Chabad invited leaders of other Jewish organisations to help found it. According to the State Audit Office, TEV received central government grants of 525 million forints in 2019 and 500 million forints a year from 2020. The grants came from the Prime Minister's Office until 2020 and from the Bethlen Gábor Fund Management company from 2021.

State Audit Office report (2026)

Regulator findings

On 24 April 2026 the State Audit Office published report 25137 on TEV. The audit covered six central government grants, totalling 2,047.5 million forints, paid between 2020 and 2023. The ÁSZ found that:

• in 2021 EMIH, as founder, instructed TEV to make liquidity loans to EMIH and to TEV's own company, Brüsszel Intézet Nonprofit Kft. TEV paid these loans out of grant money, against the grant terms. The short-term loans outstanding grew from 544.3 million forints at the end of 2021 to 1,021.9 million forints in 2023;
• TEV's grant accounts included 680 million forints of invoices from Brüsszel Intézet under a services contract dated 1 February 2022 to develop software that collects data from online and social media. The invoices were settled by setting them off against Brüsszel Intézet's loan debt to TEV, which the grant terms did not allow;
• one study, billed at 120 million forints, was dated after TEV had already submitted the accounts that claimed it;
• TEV published its 2021–2023 annual accounts late and incompletely. It did not appoint the auditor required by law and did not set up the required separate supervisory body;
• TEV used the grants other than for their stated purposes. In the ÁSZ's view it "handled the public money irresponsibly", and its accounts were not fit to give a reliable and true picture.

The report also records action by the grant-givers. Bethlen Gábor Fund Management withdrew the 500 million forint grant paid in 2021 and ordered it repaid, because TEV had not met its reporting obligations. When the ÁSZ completed its fieldwork, the fund had not yet decided whether to accept the accounts for three other grants.

Criminal referrals

The ÁSZ said that, as the law requires, it had referred suspected offences, including use of central grants for other purposes and budget fraud, to the competent authority. It also notified the grant-giver, which opened its own inquiry and filed a criminal complaint on 3 September 2025. These are referrals and a complaint, not charges. As of October 2026 we have found no report of charges, an investigation being opened, or a conviction.

Response

TEV said on 5 May 2026 that it had carried out real activities in line with its aims. It said the problems the ÁSZ found were "mainly administrative and accounting" shortcomings, not missing work or diverted funds. It described the software as a multilingual antisemitism-monitoring platform. In October 2025 EMIH had ordered an internal review by its own audit department. TEV said the draft report, completed in April 2026, reached the same conclusion, and that the accounting errors had since been corrected.

Relations with other Jewish bodies

Mazsihisz

JTA reported in 2019 that relations between EMIH and Mazsihisz had soured, partly over how Mazsihisz dealt with the government. Mazsihisz had led protests against the government of Viktor Orbán, including against its decision to put up a monument that Mazsihisz and others said whitewashed Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust. It had also said that the government's billboard campaign against George Soros encouraged antisemitism. EMIH, which JTA said had been less involved in campaigning, defended the government against some of these allegations.

MAOIH election (2023)

In February 2023 Gábor Keszler, described by the US State Department as being "of the EMIH", was elected president of the Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Community of Hungary (MAOIH). Some MAOIH members called the election a hostile takeover by EMIH. The ousted president, Róbert Deutsch, sued the Prime Minister's Office for recognising Keszler; the government recognised him anyway. EMIH supporters told the Times of Israel that EMIH's financial help to MAOIH was vital.

On 16 May 2024 the Budapest-Capital Regional Court (Fővárosi Törvényszék) dismissed Deutsch's claim. On review, the Kúria (Hungary's supreme court) set that judgment aside on 24 January 2025 and terminated the proceedings. It held that state bodies may not rule on a church's internal disputes, and that only a representative of the church as a whole could challenge the registration of its officers, which Deutsch, as a former president, could not.

Criticism and allegations

These are allegations and criticism reported in the press, not regulator or court findings.

• Index reported in December 2019 that, under the rules of the culture-tax replacement call, EMIH could not even have applied for the grant it received.
• Yad Vashem publicly opposed the House of Fates, which the government was transferring to EMIH, saying its concept ignored the role of the Hungarian state in the persecution and deportation of Hungarian Jews.
• The US State Department's 2023 religious freedom report describes EMIH as "Chabad-affiliated and government-aligned". It records MAOIH members' claims of a hostile takeover, which EMIH's supporters dispute.

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch
• Chabad Lubavitch of Ukraine
• Chabad Lubavitch of Russia