Sailing the Danube: Tracing Jewish Resilience from Budapest to Vienna

From the ruins of a Roman outpost to the heart of Europe, a Danube river cruise reveals an unbroken chain of Jewish survival. A Jerusalemite centurion, a minyan in Szentendre, and a yeshiva reborn in Israel tell the true story of a people that refuses to vanish.

How did a Jerusalemite centurion end up in Roman Budapest?

Around the year 200 CE, in the Roman city of Aquincum, which is now Budapest, a centurion named Aelius Silvanus was laid to rest at the age of 86. He had served an astonishing 61 years in his legion and was buried beside his daughter, Aelia. His epitaph revealed something remarkable. He was a native of Syria Palaestina, Colonia Aelia Capitolina. In plain terms, he was from Roman-ruled Jerusalem.

How did a Jerusalemite end up 2,200 kilometers away? The answer is tied to the darkest chapters of our history, and the most defiant. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Rome's Legio X Fretensis occupied Jerusalem. Decades later, in 106, Emperor Trajan made Aquincum the capital of Pannonia Inferior. Publius Aelius Hadrianus, the future Emperor Hadrian, was the first proconsul to reside there. In 129, Hadrian's decision to establish a Roman colony on Jewish land sparked the Bar Kochba revolt.

Aelius Silvanus would have been about 15 at the time of the revolt. Was he a Jew? The reference on his tomb to his being a