A whistle-blowing Budapest rabbi was questioned by police for what has been described as misuse of sensitive private information stemming from a personal conflict within the Jewish community.

Rabbi Zoltan Radnoti this week was interrogated at a local police station, finger-printed and photographed. The investigation stems from a case last year, in which Radnoti revealed that a high-level official in the Jewish community was not Jewish according to Jewish law as his mother was Christian.

At the time, the man in question, identified publicly as E.O., was the president of a Budapest synagogue and also a senior advisor to the leadership of Mazsihisz, the main Jewish umbrella organization.

As a result of Radnoti’s revelations, E.O. lost his position.

On Tuesday, Mazsihisz and Hungary’s chief rabbi issued statements pledging to support Radnoti, saying that the case was an internal Jewish affair and should not be dealt with by the police or civil court.

It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.

This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions. 

We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.

As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday! 

Don't just read the Forward - invest in it. Make a gift and our board will match it.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$129 $180 $360 OTHER AMOUNT