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 finger-printed, photographed, and interrogated at a local police station. 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 a senior adviser 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.