Iceland recognizes Judaism as an official state religion

The country has only one rabbi, Avi Feldman, who initiated the Chabad Lubavitch of Iceland in 2018. Feldman and the community have worked hard to gain Iceland’s formal approval.

 

A general view of Reykjavik, Iceland

(photo credit: REUTERS/MICHAELA REHLE)

 

Iceland has finally recognized Judaism as a religion. The process took over a year and, despite being home to a small Jewish community, Iceland has never before acknowledged the religion. Recognition was finally awarded on March 8.

The country has only one rabbi, Avi Feldman, who initiated the Chabad Lubavitch of Iceland in 2018. Feldman and the community members have worked hard to gain Iceland’s formal approval of their presence.

“For Iceland to formally recognize the world’s oldest religion is in itself very significant,” Feldman explained.

The decision is so significant because it allows Jews to pay taxes towards their own religious institutions. Jewish marriages, baby-naming, and funerals will also be accepted by the civil law.

While once Iceland was mostly isolated, immigration to the country has steadily increased. Some of these immigrant are Jews who escaped northward during and after the Holocaust.  According to Jewish community member Julian Burgos, “After World War II Jews began coming here in small numbers, but it was always a small community.”

When Rabbi Feldman first arrived in Iceland, the Jewish community had merely 100 members. However, “We meet local Jews whom we didn’t know previously every single week,” he said. Since then, the rabbi has found at least 300.

While most of the Jews live in the country’s largest city, Reykjavík, the rabbi said he has discovered scattered populations in the smaller cities of Akureyri and West Fjord. There are even Jews living in some of the fishing villages in the country’s outskirts.

With the growth of the Jewish community, Feldman has fought to support its culture and community in Iceland. The country’s first Holocaust memorial service was held in January 2020. Soon after that, the community danced through the street with their first Torah scroll. A menorah was erected on Hanukkah in the city’s centre.

This official approval of Judaism “Will help Jewish life here grow and become even more active,” Feldman exclaimed.

His wife, Mushky added, “The Jewish people of Iceland have waited a long time for this to happen. The determination of the people in the community to get this done is really impressive…There’s a bright future for Jews under the Northern Lights.”

SOME HISTORY

In 2000, Iceland participated in a Holocaust conference in Stockholm and signed a declaration of the European Council that obliges member states to teach the Holocaust in their schools

Around 250 Jews are living in Iceland as of 2018.

In 2011, the community gathered for a Passover seder organized by Rabbi Berel Pewzner of Chabad, and also held Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services in Reykjavík. These were the first formal services with a rabbi and a Torah scroll held in the city since the end of World War II, according to community members. According to the rabbi, it was the first time some of them had heard a shofar

After years of ongoing holiday activities the first permanent Jewish Centre in Iceland opened in 2018 to provide Jewish educational, religious and cultural services, as well as kosher food and synagogue services for the local Jewish Community and Jewish visitors. As a result, every major European capital will have a Chabad centre.

Dorrit Moussaieff, the former First Lady of Iceland 2003–2016, is an Israeli Bukharan Jew born in Jerusalem. After being denied departure in Israel after a short visit in 2006, she was asked by a border guard to present her Israeli passport. In frustration she replied, “this is the reason that nobody likes the Jews.”

In 2018, a bill banning circumcision was put forth in Alþingi, Iceland’s parliament. The bill gathered the support of all political parties in Iceland. It was called an attack on religious freedom by Jewish and Islamic groups