The Sándor Scheiber Awards were presented by Minister of State for Church, Minority and NGO Relations György Hölvényi from the Ministry of Human Resources, on Monday in Budapest.
The Award was founded in memory of Sándor Scheiber, late Director of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and is awarded on 3 March, the anniversary of his death. The decoration honours those who have performed outstanding work in the field of Hebrew and Judaism Studies, teaching the Jewish religion and promoting dialogue and tolerance between Jewish and non-Jewish people.
This year’s prize-winners were Tamás Lichtmann, Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Anna Sándor, Founder of Spinoza House, and Béla Tarjányi, University Professor and Head of the St. Jerome Catholic Bible Society.
Tamás Lichtmann is an internationally recognised researcher of literary criticism. His areas of research include Jewish cultural history, Jewish culture in Hungary, Jewish literature and related arts research. His books and studies have been published in Hungarian and German and he is a founding member of the periodical “Hungarian Jewish Review” (Magyar Zsidó Szemle).
Anna Sándor opened the Spinoza House in 2001 and has done a lot for the preservation of the original style of Budapest’s Jewish district.
Béla Tarjányi had made a Hebrew-Hungarian dictionary available in the early 1990s, and had published scripture commentaries and other biblical textbooks, which were hardly available previously. It was also his Bible Society that published the entire Bible in Romani language.
On behalf of the Hungarian Government, Minister of State György Hölvényi stressed that only by nurturing traditions can the future be built and the award-winners have performed exemplary and value-creating work in this regard.
(Ministry of Human Resources)
