Walt meets the Chief Rabbi of Iceland
On a study tour of Northern Europe, former NSW Labor frontbencher and former State MP Walt Secord recently met the Jewish community of Iceland’s spiritual leader and Chief Rabbi of Iceland, Rabbi Avraham Feldman, in Reykjavik.
Rabbi Avraham Feldman and Walt Secord
It is part of Mr Secord’s ongoing personal education about Judaism and Israel. Whenever he travels to an international community, he always visits Jewish sites and communities.
Mr Secord met the New York City-born Chabad-trained rabbi in his Reykjavik home along with his Swedish-born wife Mushky. The Feldmans arrived in Iceland in May 2018 where they have four daughters and a son.
Mr Secord was accompanied by his wife, author Julia Levitina-Secord.
Rabbi Feldman oversees all Jewish life cycle events in Iceland. This has included marriages, funerals and sourcing kosher supplies for the community.
Reykjavik is Europe’s only capital city without a synagogue, and Rabbi Feldman conducts services from his family home.
When the Secords visited, there were a small group of Jewish children attending a summer day camp at the Feldmans’ home.
There are between 300 to 400 Jews on the island nation of Iceland – which is home to more than 380,000 people overall.
Jews have been living in Iceland since the late-1800s, but they had not been registered as an official religion until recently.
In March 2021, Iceland’s Interior Ministry added Judaism to its list of State-recognised religions as a formal community.
Rabbi Feldman and Mr Secord discussed the rabbi’s recently approved plans to build a community centre and his role in speaking about Judaism and the Holocaust to Icelanders and how the Jewish community responds to the unusual challenges of observing the Shabbat when the sun never sets in the far North.
In the winter, the sun can only appear for up to as little as 4.5 hours a day and in the height of summer, the sun does not set until midnight and rises several hours later.
Mr Secord said: “Rabbi Feldman plays an important role in Iceland and he is well-aware of the huge responsibility that comes with his role as he is often the first and only Jew that Icelanders had met.”
“Rabbi Feldman has ambitious plans for Icelandic Jewry and work is set to begin on building a community centre.”
In February 2020, the Jewish community of Iceland celebrated the completion and inauguration of the island’s first permanent Torah scroll.
Rabbi Feldman has increased the profile of the Jewish community in Iceland. In 2021, the First Lady of Iceland, Eliza Reid oversaw the lighting of the Menorah in the town square during Chanukah and in April 2023, the President of Iceland Guoni Johannesson, attended a Holocaust memorial service organised by Rabbi Feldman and the German, Canadian, American and Polish embassies.
Rabbi Feldman also lived and studied for a short period in Australia, including Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
During World War II and the Cold War, rabbis served on the American military base in Iceland, but there has never been a permanent one until Rabbi Feldman’s arrival.
Mr Secord’s trip to Iceland was self-funded.
THIS IS TRULY WONDERFUL AND INSPIRING