REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Till not too long ago, this metropolis positioned close to the Arctic Circle was one of many few locations in Europe the place organized Jewish life didn’t exist — no synagogue, no ritual bathtub, no communal constructing. That modified this week, because the Jewish group in Iceland opened the Beit Shvidler Jewish Heart of Iceland, the nation’s first-ever Jewish heart.
The middle is housed in a renovated, roughly 9,000-square-foot constructing in downtown Reykjavik that after operated as a bar and, earlier than that, because the headquarters of a political celebration. It sits simply minutes from the place the husband-and-wife group of Rabbi Avraham and Mushky Feldman have lived and labored since arriving on the island in 2018. The challenge has been funded largely by way of group donations.
The middle features a synagogue, a seminar room seating almost 80 individuals, a kosher store, a group kitchen, a youth heart, a library lounge and a safety heart, facilities the group has by no means had entry to in a single place.
There may be additionally a mikvah, or ritual bathtub, that’s heated geothermally, utilizing the ample underground volcanic warmth that gives a lot of the nation’s energy.
“Jews right here had been craving for a synagogue, for a rabbi, for some type of a group,” Avraham Feldman mentioned of the years earlier than the couple’s arrival, “and it has been wonderful to fill that want.”
Neighborhood members agree.
“Iceland has a extremely numerous, dispersed and subtle Jewish group; provided that we’re an remoted island, all of us type of washed up right here,” mentioned Michael Klein, an American Jew dwelling in Iceland since 2020.
“The Feldmans managed to drag collectively the sources, the constructing and the work to show a disused political celebration headquarters and restaurant right into a Jewish heart that may serve not solely our small group however the far bigger group of holiday makers from all around the Jewish world who come for our pure magnificence and peaceable isolation,” added Klein.
Jewish life in Iceland has all the time been sparse and intermittent. Jewish merchants are identified to have handed by way of as early because the 1600s. Nonetheless, the organized Jewish presence dates to the late 1800s, and the primary training Jew believed to have settled completely was Fritz Natan, a businessman who, in 1917, constructed Iceland’s first five-story constructing.
For many years afterward, Jewish life in Iceland survived on the efforts of a handful of devoted volunteers who coordinated casual gatherings, typically assembly in rented areas or within the basement of Hallgrímskirkja, the nation’s most recognizable church. The U.S. Navy base within the city of Keflavík, close to the worldwide airport, sometimes offered Jewish chaplains till it closed in 2006. However there was nonetheless no everlasting establishment, no resident rabbi, and no devoted constructing, a niche that led some to name Reykjavik the one European capital with no synagogue.
A Hanukkah celebration in downtown Reykjavik, Iceland, drew the nation’s overseas minister, Dec. 14, 2025. (Courtesy Mushky Feldman)
That started to alter in 2018, when the Feldmans relocated from america to Reykjavik to ascertain a Chabad-Lubavitch presence, changing into Iceland’s first completely stationed rabbi and his spouse within the nation’s documented historical past of a thousand years. The couple began small, internet hosting Shabbat dinners and vacation providers out of their front room. Estimates of the group’s measurement hover round 300 self-identified Jews, out of Iceland’s whole inhabitants of about 400,000.
Momentum constructed shortly. In 2020, the Jewish group celebrated its first native Torah scroll, commissioned by a donor in Switzerland and accomplished with the assistance of the Icelandic congregation. A yr later, the Icelandic authorities formally acknowledged Judaism as an official faith, opening the door to formally acknowledged Jewish weddings and permitting residents to direct a part of their non secular tax to the group. What number of have completed so just isn’t public data.
By 2024, the group had outgrown its rented rooms and church basements and bought the constructing that grew to become the brand new Jewish heart, roughly tying one in Fairbanks, Alaska, because the northernmost Chabad homes on the earth. The constructing sits in Reykjavik’s compact downtown, simply blocks from the enduring Rainbow Road and Harpa Opera Home that make town one of the vital Instagram-friendly websites on the earth.
In a metropolis that caters to vacationers, and for a group constructed largely from immigrants, longtime Icelandic Jewish households, and individuals who married into Icelandic life, the brand new heart represents one thing uncommon: a shared bodily dwelling.
Rabbi Avraham Feldman speaks on the dedication of the Jewish heart in Reykjavik, Iceland, on July 7, 2026. (Jenna Gottlieb)
“It’s been clear for a very long time that we’d like a house for our group,” mentioned one Jewish resident in Iceland, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of not all of his colleagues know he’s Jewish. (Iceland’s comparatively small variety of Jews means that there’s little file of antisemitism; anti-Israel sentiment is powerful, with the nation one among 5 to boycott the Eurovision music contest this yr over Israel’s participation.)
“It’s not like we’ve been hiding or aren’t a robust group; we rejoice holidays collectively, and there are Shabbat dinners,” he continued. “However I believe it’s vital that now we have this heart. Seeing it opened could be very shifting and vital.”
Like many Jewish establishments in Europe, the middle will guarantee safety by being open solely to members of the group or guests who attain out upfront.
Avraham Feldman mentioned the area will maintain a show case with three small prayer books donated by early Jewish residents, the one identified surviving bodily remnants of Jewish life in Iceland earlier than his arrival, a reminder of how current, and the way hard-won, this permanence has been.
“The results of this heart is a mixture of dwelling, household, and permanence that was unimaginable after I began visiting 14 years in the past and was solely a mere dream after I moved right here in 2020,” Klein mentioned.
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