The Tom Lantos Institute has been supporting the implementation of rural Hungarian Jewish culture and history projects for years.

Since 2016, it has been cooperating with the local Jewish community of Sátoraljaújhely in organising its annual event, the ‘Day of Remembrance’. In addition, a teachers’ guide to the permanent exhibition at the Synagogue of Pécs, titled ‘Living Together Then and Now’ was published in 2018 and launched at the Israeli Cultural Institute in Budapest in 2019.

In 2017, in partnership with the local Jewish congregation in Győr, an audio-guide was developed for the permanent exhibition of Jewish Religious and Local History at Menház. Furthermore, a teacher training event was organized at the Zsuzsanna Kossuth Leánykollégium, a local college for young women, where TLI was also represented.

TLI also contributed to the creation of the travelling exhibition by the curator, Norbert Lakk, and the Museum of Sárbogárd Association, titled ‘Pictures and memories from the past of the disappeared Jewish community of Sárbogárd’. In 2019 the exhibition was displayed at the Synagogue of Óbuda in Budapest.

In order to increase the visibility of the Jewry of the countryside, in collaboration with the Israeli Cultural Institute in Budapest, we launched a new initiative in 2022, entitled “The past, present and future of the Jewry of Transdanubia.”  We organised an event to showcase the rich and diverse Hungarian Jewish heritage of Transdanubia. Lectures, exhibitions, and presentations of community initiatives provided insight into the past and present of the Jewish communities of Siófok, Székesfehérvár, Szombathely, and the Káli Basin. We will continued this project in 2023, and involve other Jewish communities from the region.

The Institute also supported the publication of the book ‘Mihály Heilprin – The Adventurous Life and Works of the First Hungarian Jewish Poet,’ as well as the translation of the book by Tibor Schatteles, ‘The Jews of Timișoara: A Historical Perspective’, into Hungarian, under the title “A Temesvári Zsidóság – történelmi távlatkép”.