Rabbi Avi & Mushky Feldman: How A Couple Helped Judaism Gain Official Status In Iceland

00:02 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wolk, and this is Lamplighters, stories from Chabad emissaries on the Jewish frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is unpredictable, joyous, tragic, and occasionally dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that relies on and supports their Chabad leaders. These are their stories. Since 2018, Rabbi Avi Feldman and Rebbetzin Mushkie Feldman have been Chabad emissaries to Iceland. He's from Brooklyn, she's from Sweden, so there's been a language to learn and a culture to understand. But the Feldmans face a challenge in Iceland that's different from anywhere else in Europe.

01:01 Speaker 2 How many capital cities in Europe could you say never had an organized Jewish community? Reykjavik might have been the last major capital without organized community.

01:15 Speaker 1 In a sense, the Feldmans are building from scratch. So when they arrived in Iceland, they began asking questions.

01:22 Speaker 2 We were very interested to know from the community and to hear from the locals what they found most important and w- you know, where we should invest our efforts first.

01:33 Speaker 1 Some people had already been organizing a few holiday celebrations and events, but Mushkie Feldman says they wanted more.

01:42 Speaker 3 Jews here in Iceland feel like they've missed out on many years of not having all these big deal events of the Jewish community.

01:50 Speaker 1 The Feldmans knew they could help them do more of that, but there was something else.

01:54 Speaker 2 Many people were saying that they wanted to see Judaism recognized in Iceland.

02:01 Speaker 1 You heard that correctly. When the Feldmans arrived, Judaism was not recognized as an official religion by the government of Iceland, so they got to work.

02:13 Speaker 2 About a year and a half ago, we got together with some people in the community. We organized and, uh, started to do all the paperwork, prepared the applications, and the forms, and all of the letters that needed to be written.

02:28 Speaker 1 Avi Feldman says the Icelandic government wanted to know exactly what Judaism is.

02:33 Speaker 2 So we described all of the Jewish holidays and the different things that we do, the life cycle events. They were interested to know what it takes to become a rabbi and what my credentials are.

02:45 Speaker 1 Government officials also wanted to know more about Iceland's Jews, who had maintained a presence there since the early 1600s, and about the significant contributions the small Jewish community had made to the Icelandic economy and culture. So Avi Feldman needed to present a strong case as to why Iceland was good for Jews, and why official recognition of Judaism was good for Iceland.

03:12 Speaker 2 And we were happy to share everything that we could and everything that was relevant. It took some time, and we just knew that this was something that was important to the community, so we just focused on getting it done.

03:28 Speaker 1 And they did. On March 8th 2021, the government of Iceland officially recognized Judaism as a religion, which might sound a bit odd to people who know Judaism's been around for almost 4,000 years. But even so, that recognition means a lot to Rabbi Feldman.

03:49 Speaker 2 This brings me great joy, and I know that many people in the community are very excited about this. This is a really big deal, and it's historic.

03:59 Speaker 1 And it'll result in some real benefits. The Jewish citizens of Iceland will now be able to allocate some of their tax money to fund events for the Jewish community, which is also now eligible for government land grants that could go toward creation of a mikvah, or a community center containing an official synagogue and Jewish museum.

04:20 Speaker 2 This is going to help the community tremendously in terms of activities that the community could now do.

04:27 Speaker 1 Which is not to say that the Feldmans didn't hit the ground running when they arrived on Iceland's volcanic shores. Since they arrived, the Feldmans have organized menorah lightings, Shabbos dinners, and Passover Seders, and other events for hundreds of people. The Seders presented a particular challenge. There's no kosher meat in Iceland, and in 2018, the Feldmans had not yet obtained the special permit that would allow them to import chicken and beef for their first Seder there.

05:00 Speaker 3 I remember thinking to myself like, "Oh my God, what am I gonna serve without meat, without chicken?" But we managed to dress up different fish in different, you know, sauces and toppings, and it was really, really beautiful, just like a fish Icelandic-style dinner.

05:14 Speaker 1 But at that first Seder, the Feldmans' discoveries went well beyond the culinary. There, Mushkie met a person who told her and her husband...

05:23 Speaker 3 "I live in, um, the northeast part of Iceland." And we're like, "What? That's far." And he's like, "Yeah, it took nine hours." We were like totally shocked, and there was like literally a blizzard at that time. And we were like, "This is crazy, this weather."

05:41 Speaker 2 I was like, "Wow, this is incredible for somebody to travel such a distance."

05:48 Speaker 3 And he was just like, "Yeah, this is a Pesach Seder and, and, and I'm joining, no matter how far I live." And now he's very, very much part of our community.

05:57 Speaker 1 Which is growing, or perhaps more accurately, it's publicly embracing its shared heritage. Before the Feldmans arrived, they were told that there were only about 30 to 40 Jews in all of Iceland.

06:10 Speaker 2 But since we got here, literally every single week we're meeting Jewish people who we have not known before.

06:18 Speaker 1 They're from all over the world, including North America, Israel, and continental Europe. Before COVID, the Feldmans met lots of tourists, which they expect to meet even more of now that Iceland has eased travel restrictions, and increasingly they're encountering Jews who have lived for generations in Iceland.

06:39 Speaker 2 People will come into the Chabad House, and they'll be like, "Wow, I didn't know that there are so many Jews in Iceland. This is crazy." And sometimes we'll even have two people who come to an event, and they might have known each other from before, and then they meet each other at this Jewish holiday, and they're like, "Wow, you're Jewish? I had no idea." And now I could say that there could be somewhere between 500 and 1,000 Jewish people in Iceland. So people are always surprised, and we're always surprised by how much Jewish life there actually is here and how much work there is to do.

07:22 Speaker 1 Surprised perhaps, but never daunted. In February of 2020, Chabad of Iceland organized a Torah dedication ceremony after the island received its first-ever kosher Torah scroll.

07:43 Speaker 3 It was a big celebration for our community. We marched down and danced down the streets, and there was just so much love from everybody. People passing by were just, like, clapping their hands and like, "Yay," like, you know, cheering us on. And I was walking with some people, you know, some of the women in our community, and they were all crying. And one of them said to me, she said, "I never thought I would see something like this in Reykjavik."

08:17 Speaker 1 But someone else thought so or at least had hoped he would. His name is Mike. About 10 years before Iceland's first kosher Torah scroll was completed there-

08:28 Speaker 3 He just said to himself like, "I have no idea how this will happen, but God gave me hands. I'm a carpenter. I'll make an ark. I'll make an Ark HaKodesh." So he made an ark that would fit a Torah.

08:38 Speaker 1 And he talked to a Jewish woman in the community, an embroiderer

08:42 Speaker 3 And she made a beautiful covering for the ark, a beautiful verse from the Torah on it and a, and a Star of David, and she made it really, really beautiful just to fit this ark, and he had it in his storage house for years. When we arrived, he said, "Now we have a synagogue, and here's the ark, and one day we'll fill it up with a Torah." This was his dream.

09:09 Speaker 1 The Feldmans are young and energetic, and they're still learning, still growing, and still bringing the community together.

09:17 Speaker 2 Definitely. We always know it's never—what we did yesterday and what we did today is never enough. That's one really important thing that we learned from the Rebbe, and we always remind ourselves the importance of giving more people the opportunity of creating more activities, Jewish celebration, more Jewish life, and, uh, this is something that we think about every single day.

09:45 Speaker 1 That's a big job, but fortunately for the Feldmans, they're inspired by their religion, which is now formally recognized, and by the Rebbe, and even by Iceland's natural wonders. In fact, to hear them talk about their new home is a little like reading a travel brochure, only one written from the heart.

10:05 Speaker 2 It's a really cool place. We have the northern lights, hot springs, glaciers, lava fields. So it's not for nothing that Iceland is called the Land of Fire and Ice.

10:19 Speaker 3 It's a beautiful, breathtaking place, and it's very, very clear to people that there's a Hashem behind everything. Living in Iceland, I think it's impossible to deny the fact that there is a God.

10:32 Speaker 1 In their short time in Iceland, the Feldmans have felt earthquakes and witnessed volcanic eruptions. They're raising two little girls, providing the country's first-ever kosher food option to hundreds of tourists and residents alike, and they're inspiring hundreds of Jews. They've also observed Shabbos in the Icelandic summer, which, because of the country's latitude, starts at about midnight Friday and ends early Sunday morning. So you have to make m- more than one pot of cholent, I guess.

11:08 Speaker 2 Pretty much.

11:12 Speaker 1 It's a lot for one couple to do, but maybe all of it, including persuading the government to officially recognize a religion that was born nearly four millennia before Iceland even became a sovereign nation, was just all in a day's work for Avi and Mushkie Feldman, a long day's work in the Land of the Midnight Sun. I'm Gary Wollek. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.