Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.02.2013, Blaðsíða 16

16The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 2 — 2013
Timeline
The first documented Jew
arrives in Iceland. Daniel
Salomon, originally Pol-
ish, resided in Denmark
and converted to Chris-
tianity before arriving in
Iceland.
The first Jewish ship ar-
rives in Iceland. The Ul-
richa belonged to Ruben
Moses Henriques, a Dan-
ish merchant of hats, fab-
rics and paper.
The Danish Crown enacts
a law giving foreign Jews
the right to settle land in
Denmark.
The Danish Crown re-
quests that Iceland al-
low Jews to settle there.
Alþingi rejects this re-
quest in a decision that it
would be overturned two
years later. No documen-
tation from the period ex-
ists of Jews choosing to
settle in Iceland, however.
The first practicing Jew is
recorded in Iceland. Max
Nordau, physician and
journalist, arrives from
Hungary to provide an
account of the country’s
celebration of its millen-
nium anniversary.
The first practicing Jew
settles in Iceland. Fritz
Heymann Nathan estab-
lishes one of the period’s
most successful busi-
nesses, Nathan & Olsen,
after arriving from Co-
penhagen.
After 11 years in which he mar-
ried and saw the completion of
the first five-story building in
Reykjavik, Nathan leaves Iceland
to return to Copenhagen. The
complete lack of Jewish culture
informs his idea that a Jewish life
cannot be conducted here.
A Nazi party is founded
in Iceland. One year later,
it forms official ties with
Germany’s National So-
cialist Party.
Icelandic Prime Minister Hermann
Jónasson discusses a Jewish family
facing the threat of expulsion with
the Danish legation. In a diary entry
that mirrors the sentiment of many
Icelanders at the time, he wrote,
“Iceland has always been a pure
Nordic country, free of Jews.”
Th
e
Fi
rs
t J
ew
s
Er
a
of
W
W
II
1625
1815
1850
1853
1874
1906
1917
1933
1937
Even by generous estimates, there are less
than 100 Jews in Iceland. The community’s
infrastructure is sparse, their celebrations
un-elaborate. Their leader, although he dis-
putes the title, is Mike Levin, a Chicago-born
Jew transplanted here after meeting his Ice-
landic wife through a music instructor in Vi-
enna. Mike embodies the community’s near-
ly pathological—he says practical—eschewal
of publicity, and only after much coaxing did
he agree to sit for an interview at Kaffitár in
Reykjavík. As he later told me, “Sometimes
you talk to reporters, there’s an article about
you in the paper, and suddenly your barber is
looking at you differently.”
Despite that, he has a dream.
A GOOD SCOUT
Due to good fortune, Mike had what he con-
siders a solid Jewish upbringing in Chicago.
As a child, he attended Jewish summer camp,
Hebrew school and Sunday school religiously.
His synagogue had a Rabbi, a Board of Di-
rectors and a Hebrew Sisterhood. The other
synagogue members noticed that, when Mike
started attending services, everybody sang in
the same key. As he puts it, a “bunch of old
men moaning turned into a choir.”
One of the most striking memories from
his childhood occurred after Mike joined the
Boy Scouts of America at age nine. He re-
members his father driving him all day from
Chicago to Wisconsin for a Scout dinner, only
to leave without ceremony when he discov-
ered that ham was, indisputably, the only
option. In Mike’s last experience of the Boy
Scouts, his father “stuck to his guns”—a fact
Mike remembers with pride.
Even outside of the Boy Scouts, Mike
couldn’t refrain from living out his identity
as a frontiersman. At age 11, he accepted a
challenge and started paid work as a Jewish
cantor. Music paved his way to the University
of Illinois, and afterward his travels took him
to Vienna, where an Icelandic music teacher
introduced Mike to his future wife.
In Chicago, he had learned how to conduct
services by participating in them; in Vienna,
the same services seemed cloistered from
him and remote. Attending service made him
uneasy, so he simply stopped going. His inter-
est continued to drift from his Jewish roots
until he set foot on a particular Atlantic rock
in 1986. Then, as now, Iceland had no syna-
gogue, no Jewish community centre, and no
publicly organized structure. It was a harsh
contrast to note that Judaism was not even
one of Iceland’s state-recognized religions.
As he began to reach out to Iceland’s scat-
tered population of Jews, he came to under-
stand that with regard to Judaism this country
truly was, in his words, “the frontier.” There
were no rabbis and Hebrew Sisterhoods, nor
Hebrew schools for kids. If Iceland’s coarsely
combined assortment of Jews wanted to get
something done, they would have to do it
themselves.
Confronting the void and an oceanic feel-
ing, Mike decided to immerse himself in what
resources were available—slender phone
trees that mapped the Jews in Iceland; Ice-
land’s religious leaders, including the Lu-
theran Church’s bishop; and academics at the
University of Iceland. Soon, it was Mike who
was leading meetings at coffee shops and
community gatherings for Jewish holidays.
But the strongest impetus for Mike’s in-
volvement came from his kids, who are now
ages 17 and 19. “I wanted my kids to know
their heritage. I didn’t want them to grow up
unaware, like so many people do, or just to
hear about it from their friends,” he says.
As Mike sees it, even if many Icelanders
are unreligious, Icelandic society remains
permeated with religion. When neighbour-
hoods are designed, a Lutheran church is
put into the area’s plan from the very begin-
ning and without debate. In schools, religion
classes focus on Christianity, with scant men-
tion of Judaism, and Christian holidays domi-
nate the calendar year.
Mike wasn’t interested in opting his chil-
dren out of those classes and holidays, but he
wanted Judaism to be more than a small sat-
ellite orbiting the Lutheran church, more than
a single page of his children’s cultural mem-
ory. What he really wanted was something to
weigh against other influences—to “counter-
balance” Icelandic culture, as he says—and to
show his children their heritage.
Which leads to Mike’s dream: a synagogue
in Reykjavík.
“The experiences you remember as a kid,
they have a lot to say,” Mike says. “That’s one
of the most important reasons for me to par-
ticipate—so that my kids can experience first-
hand my own religion.”
MICHAEL AND GOLIATH
It’s an ambitious dream, to say the least, for a
community with less than 100 members. And
it’s a dream that immediately begs several
questions, the first of which is, where would
you put it?
On The Frontier
Leading Iceland’s elusive Jewish community
By Nic Cavell
Alísa Kalyanova