Many Icelandic tours focus on mountain huts in the highlands. A booth in downtown Reykjavik, the Nordic country’s lone sukkah, will host some 35 Jews over the Sukkot holiday, Rabbi Avraham and Mushky Feldman, Chabad shluchim (“emissaries”) to the country told JNS.
Overlooking the waterfront, against a mountainous background, the Chabad House in the Icelandic capital could be confused for Utah, Eilat or Vancouver.
The Feldmans lead the six-year-old organization—the first permanent Jewish institution in the land of fire and ice, which is home to 300 to 400 self-identified Jews, they say. Thousands of visiting Jews have passed through the Chabad in the past six years, they told JNS.
JNS observed an extensive High Holiday celebration in the Nordic country, during which some 80 people gathered for Rosh Hashanah dinner with the Chabad family, two weeks ago.
Throughout the holiday and following Shabbat, the Feldmans hosted varying kinds of meals for Jews hailing from all over, including Spain, Israel, Germany, the United States and Canada. Some were professionals working in the country—as doctors, tour guides, technology entrepreneurs and guest house managers—while others were tourists passing through.
Daytime temperature highs during the High Holiday in Reykjavik ran in the upper 40 degrees.
In the island country, where even non-kosher food can cost ball-park prices since so many things must be imported, the Rosh Hashanah meal featured a dizzying array of homemade foods: fresh salmon filets, a variety of salads and pasta, chicken salad, beef with peas, honey cake, apple pie, potato salad with dill and pickles, hummus and tahini, whole wheat challah with sunflower seeds and a selection of fruits and sweets.
The Feldmans, who celebrated their 10th anniversary in April, accomplished all that with five children under the age of 9. Swedish-born Mushky is the daughter of Rabbi Alexander and Leah Namdar, Chabad shluchim in Gothenburg, who opened the first-of-its-kind Scandinavian center in 1991. Her husband Avraham, who hails from Brooklyn, studied at Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, N.J.
For decades prior, Mike Levin, a Chicago native who has lived in Iceland since 1986, coordinated the Jewish community’s activities. They would gather for Jewish holidays and various programs, maintaining a Jewish presence despite the challenges of a volunteer-based organization.
A U.S. military base that occasionally provided services for Jewish personnel through visiting chaplains closed in 2006, further emphasizing the need for organized Jewish community support. Since 2011, various Chabad representatives visited annually or twice annually.
A turning point came in 2011, when Rabbi Berel Pewzner, then a rabbinical student and now co-director of Chabad of the Cayman Islands, contacted Levin. As part of Chabad’s Roving Rabbis program, Pewzner organized the first public Passover seder in Iceland, attracting 50 participants and laying the groundwork for future Jewish community development in that Nordic setting.
The event paved the way for our ongoing efforts to nurture and grow the Jewish community in Iceland.
“Being from Sweden, I care a lot about Scandinavian life. Starting a Chabad in this region was always a dream,” Mushky told JNS. “I never really thought of Iceland, and when I learned of the community here, I couldn’t not do it.”
She said Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn informed the couple there was a gap to fill.
“It was Mushky’s idea to start the community,” Avraham Feldman told JNS. “She was hearing about the Jews in Iceland, and that they’ve lived there for 100 years and never been a formal community. The need sounded very clear and important.”
Off the heels of being shluchim in Berlin, the Feldmans’ inaugural visit to Iceland coincided with Chanukah 2017. They connected with local Jewish residents and organized a Chanukah gathering to introduce themselves to the community. They decided to move to the country.
Their journey began at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport before the scheduled menorah-lighting time. Due to Iceland’s winter daylight hours, with sunrise occurring at 11 a.m., they were able to light the menorah upon arrival at their Airbnb in the morning.
They initiated contact with city authorities, requesting permission to set up a public menorah. The Feldmans were concerned when they didn’t receive a prompt response. A few weeks later, they got permission for a prime location on a main Reykjavik street.
The city clerk later told them that their unprecedented request was delayed as it passed through various departments before reaching the mayor, who approved it swiftly. They settled officially into their new role in the spring of 2018, just before Shavuot.
It took a year before they could sort the paperwork, but now kosher meats are available in Iceland—flown in by the palette from Paris—to serve the family of five, and Shabbat and holiday guests. At the local Costco, Kedem grape juice and kosher pickles are available, and a modest collection of certified kosher American products can be found in supermarkets in Iceland—brand-name cereals, nut spreads, candies, canned vegetables and sauces.
From time to time, Feldman is called upon to be a kashrut inspector for the Orthodox Union for Icelandic-made foods. He has his own hechsher, which has appeared so far on a local gin and whey powder.
In one notable encounter, he toured a fish factory as a kosher certifier and he met the owner, “Gunnar” (who wished to be anonymous), who had newly discovered his Jewish heritage. The rabbi promptly invited the latter to Shabbat dinner.
Shabbat that never ends
A popular question that the couple often receives is when Shabbat begins and ends during the time of year with limited sun in Iceland.
The longest day of the year is in late June, when sunset in Reykjavik is just after midnight and Shabbat ends shortly after 1 a.m., they told JNS. In that instance, they go to sleep and conduct Havdalah the following morning when they awake.
A few minutes walk from their home is the newly purchased, 8,900-square-foot Jewish community center, a former bar called Miami and previously the headquarters of one of the government political parties. It will be the country’s first Jewish center.
The couple expects renovations to be completed and the building to open officially in time for Passover. The building’s seminar room is to seat nearly 80, with two Torahs available for reading and studying. They also plan to have a kosher grocery and take-out restaurant, a dining hall set for almost 100, a full-scale industrial kitchen, a Talmud Torah school, office space and study areas.
The shluchim said they plan to build a mikvah, but for now, natural springs in the area can be used and are “perfectly kosher,” Avraham Feldman told JNS. Some are within an hour’s drive from the capital.
JNS was the first news outlet to take a full tour of the new facility.
‘They wanted Judaism to be recognized’
Beyond seemingly never-ending Shabbats, being Jewish in Iceland involves things like making blessings on volcanoes, as the Feldmans detail on Facebook and YouTube. Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, the couple celebrated the country’s first completed Torah scroll, donated by a Zurich family, and Jewish community members, per custom, were able to inscribe the final letters written in the Torah.
The procession of the new Torah down the streets of Reykjavik drew both Jewish and non-Jewish bystanders, the couple told JNS.
They have also hosted annual Holocaust memorial events for the past four years, in partnership with institutions like the University of Iceland and the Polish, German and U.S. embassies in the country. In April 2021, Iceland recognized Judaism as an official religion and community—the result of a two-year process, which required lawyers and paperwork, they told JNS.
“One thing that we kept hearing from locals was that they wanted Judaism to be recognized,” they said.
Another memorable—and unplanned—event took place in 2022 when a flight from Poland to New York made an emergency landing in the Iceland capital. The Feldmans provided kosher food to a large group of Chassidim and even held an impromptu farbrengen (singing and learning party) during the group’s unexpected 24-hour stay.
On a smaller scale, a Jewish couple has driven eight hours from their home to attend Passover Seders with the Feldmans, they told JNS.
‘Important for everybody to hear’
Some 90 people came to the recent Oct. 7 memorial event, which the rabbi described as “very moving and emotional.” Attendees included local politicians and ambassadors.
An Israeli medic, who was a first responder to the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, gave a firsthand account of his experience that was “very powerful,” the rabbi told JNS. A Nova music festival survivor recorded a special video for the event, recounting the day’s terror.
Mushky said that the medic, who wishes to remain anonymous, “was an incredible person, a big strong soul.”
“He simply described his experience as a paramedic in the morning in Gaza, really one of the first,” she said. “It was so important for everybody to hear it.”
After Oct. 7, 2023, “people started coming to our house like it was a shiva house at all hours,” the rabbi said. “People would just come. To talk and cry and just to be.”
“It felt like, what a painful time, but how beautiful that people feel like this is a place they can come to, just to cry, just to be who they are and connect with other Jews, with their thoughts and feelings in our house,” he said. “That was something very meaningful for me.”
Year-round, the couple conducts children’s activities, especially on Jewish holidays, while Musky runs and plans a summer camp for four weeks. The camp “gives the kids a sense of community and belonging with other Jewish kids,” she told JNS.
“There are of course many things that I choose to put my heart and soul into in my own way,” she said. “I just love when the community comes together and Jews get to know each other.”
“Now we’re in an interesting time of Jewish history,” she told JNS. “Jews need each other’s presence and support. When Jews get together now, they really intentionally strengthen one another and the sense of unity is very important. For us to be here to help create that sense of community and unity, to form Jewish friendships, to form Jewish bonds, is beautiful for me to see.”