BUDAPEST, Hungary — Marcell Kenesei, the 41-year-old director of the Budapest Jewish Community Center, is a sharp dresser and brings his brown mutt Alfonse in to work every day; Krakow, Poland, JCC board member Serhii Chupryna, 26, works in the tech world, wearing his long hair twisted into a bun above the nape of his neck; Anastasiia Fursova, 22, of the Dnipro JCC in Ukraine, clinched the title of best Jewish youth club in Ukraine when she led the club a few years ago.

All three discovered their Jewish roots as young adults — Kenesei and Chupryna because of grandmothers who survived the Holocaust but kept their Jewishness from their children during the communist regime, and Fursova by finding her mother’s biological Jewish mother, who had given her up for adoption. While all three could have continued their lives blending in with the general, gentile population of their cities, they chose instead to learn more about Judaism and actively join their fate with the Jewish people, becoming leaders in their Jewish communities and their JCCs.

They represented a younger generation of leadership at the recent JCC Global “From Good to Great” conference held in Budapest, Hungary Dec. 9-12, who are finding ways to support a cultural and inclusive Jewish identity in societies with new, burgeoning Jewish communities.

In many Eastern European countries, Jewish identity skipped a generation as — following the devastation of the Holocaust — fear of the Soviet communist regime suppressed the expression of any Jewish or other religious expression and any Jewish connection was kept secret, Kenesei said.

“During communism Judaism was not encouraged,” he said. “[My grandmother] Magda was persecuted because she was Jewish so she did not share that information with her children. As Magda’s grandchildren [we] did not know anything about Jewish life until the fall of the Iron Curtain.”

Chupryna said he discovered his Jewish heritage while looking into what he thought was his grandmother’s Polish ancestry as he was preparing to move to Poland. Instead, he discovered his family’s hidden Jewish history. The discovery that she had been oppressed into hiding her real identity drew him closer to the grandmother who died when he was four years old and to her religion, he said. 

“I am living my Jewish life because she was not able to live hers,” Chupryna said.

“It is literally the creation of the Jewish future that we are seeing right now. We have such a great community, [people who] inspire, people who make everything happen right now and, at the same time, this is preserving the continuity [of Judaism]. It is important to get into the [next] generation, the youth, the young active Jewish leaders to make sure that there is continuity… This is exactly what Judaism is about, to inherit from your elders, the best that you can do, and ensure that you continue their legacy.”

Kenesei recalled the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee establishing itself in Budapest after the fall of the Soviet Union, helping to rebuild the Jewish community with schools and other institutions. He said that he was among the Jewish children whose parents sent them to a private Jewish school because of its academic excellence.

In that way, he said, Jewish philanthropy helped Hungarian Jews find their way back to Judaism.

As he discovered his family’s Jewish roots he began to feel a responsibility to find the “hidden treasure” which had been concealed for so many years, he said.

“I felt we have to make sure there is some continuation of that rich heritage which has been lost for two generations,” Kenesei said. “So I felt a little bit of responsibility because two generations kept this [secret] and I felt that now it is on me to make something out of it. I inherited something in a way that was not from my father or my grandparents, but I inherited it from my great-grandparents and I had to find my own way, for my own generation after the destruction of the Holocaust and communism. I had to find a bridge, a way to make sense of this by making Judaism relevant and make sure there is a Jewish future.”

Growing and working within the Budapest Jewish community, he eventually became head of the JCC where he now welcomes a variety of activities into the building including as a meeting place of the HaShomer Hatzair youth group, a place of worship for a Reform congregation and a Jewish film festival. It is also supportive of the LGBTQ community.

“That is the story of Hungarian Jewry,” he said. “This year we celebrate 30 years… This JCC was created with a single purpose of allowing people to discover, to find meaning, to find their own way back to Judaism and without one single definition. So this is a non-religious institution, but there are many religious people who also come here.”

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the JCC saw a large number of previously uninvolved Hungarian Jews who were searching for a Jewish framework to help, volunteering with the JCC to help with Ukrainian refugees at the start of the war, Kenesei said. After that, they started showing up for other programs as well, he added.

With her fine, light brown hair, Fursova could have fit right in on the California beaches where she was spending time with her father’s non-Jewish relatives when Russia attacked Ukraine almost three years ago. She could have stayed in the U.S. and attended college there. But instead she chose to return to her city of Dnipro, now on the frontlines in the war with Russia, to her family and friends, her community and her JCC.

“There was nothing for me in California. My family there isn’t Jewish, I was not part of the Jewish community there, I did not have my JCC there,” she said. She began attending the JCC when she was 16 after discovering her Jewish roots and soon moved into young leadership roles, becoming a counselor in the youth club, developing workshops and projects for the youth, and — one year later — leading the club herself. In addition, her family was helped by Jewish Family Services in Dnipro. Both of her parents are deaf and they received assistance from the Jewish community, she said.  

She still has a lot of in-person projects for the youth at the Dnipro JCC, she said, and in addition to the JCC Global conference she recently attended the JFNA General Assembly to speak out about the situation in Ukraine and the Jewish communities there.

“Yes, restaurants and cafes are working, and business is going on. But at the same time we have internally displaced refugees, we have rockets, we have bombings. We have a lot of local issues and problems,” she said. “This is our message: for the Jews in Ukraine, for all Ukrainians, don’t forget about us because even just remembering helps us. We are still alive. We’re still working — not online, but in person. We do sessions for our kids; we do activities for our adults. We do this on a daily basis.”

JCC Global provided eJewishPhilanthropy with transportation and accommodation for the conference.