Bernard Axelrad Scholarship Fund

Whenever my wife and I travel, my custom is to look for shuls (while she seeks out the rare and out-of-print bookshops). This proclivity usually leads to some interesting experiences.

On our most recent trip to Scandinavia and St. Petersburg, I got an aliyah in Helsinki, much to my pleasure. The Helsinki shul, to which I walked on Saturday morning from my hotel, was built like so many European shuls with a downstairs for the men and the upstairs for women and a bimah in the center for the Torah reading. Since Helsinki has less than 1000 Jews, I was surprised to find they had regular Sabbath services. During the summer, many of the regular minyan were away at vacation homes, and tourists like me made up half of the 20 men who were present. In talking to a young man (all Scandinavians speak excellent English) I learned that there were 5 and 6 generation Helsinki Jews.

On a previous journey 8 months earlier, I had occasion to look up shuls in Barcelona and Lisbon. It was a weekday and the shul in Barcelona was closed, but in a city of over 1 million people, the Jewish community was not vibrant or thriving. The shameful expulsion of 1492 has lasting effects.

Sadly, in Lisbon too, the Jewish community was quite moribund. There, I walked to a shul from my hotel in October 1999 and found about 25 men for the davening. At a kiddush that followed, I got acquainted with a lovely couple from Israel who were traveling through Portugal on their own by car-and whom we later visited at their beautiful home in Jerusalem. We also had an interesting conversation at the kiddush following services with a doctor from Lisbon whose family had been there for many generations. He told us the Jewish population of Lisbon was about 400 and they barely could make a Shabbat Minyan. Interestingly enough, the sermon by the Rabbi was in English and I later discovered the Rabbi was visiting from Australia and the Lisbon Congregation was hoping to get him to stay on as Rabbi.

Stockholm has about 12,000 Jews and three Synagogues. While we visited only the largest one, which is Conservative, there are two other smaller Orthodox shuls in Stockholm. The Conservative synagogue is known as The Great Synagogue and was dedicated in 1870. It seats almost 1000 and is more than filled for The High Holidays. Besides regular Sabbath services, there are morning minyans on Monday and Thursday for the Torah readings. There are also many cultural, social and educational activities in and around the Jewish Center building.

Throughout our trip a young couple from Chicago, who could move quicker than me, was extremely helpful in guiding us to the various areas of Jewish content in Scandinavia. In both Copenhagen and Oslo we visited their Resistance Museum depicting the struggle with the Nazis who occupied their countries. While most of the 7000 Danish Jews were rescued and found refuge in Sweden, some 700 did fall prey to Nazi death squads and concentration camps. In Norway, about half of the 1000 Jews escaped to Sweden.

Interestingly enough, Sweden remained neutral during World War II and while many Swedish citizens did support the Nazi cause, Swedish Jews were not harmed. More importantly Sweden provided a safe haven for Danish, Norwegian and other Jews of European origin. And of course we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the non-Jewish Swede, Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews in Budapest, Hungary by supplying them with Swedish 'safe passage' documents.

While today the Jewish communities of Finland, Denmark and Norway are quite small, the Swedish Jewish community totals about 18,000, of whom 7,000 are refugees from the Nazis who opted to remain in the country. It should be noted that the first Jew permitted to take up residence in Stockholm was a merchant from Germany, Aaron Isaac, who came in 1774. He later brought his family and eventually came the quorum (minyan) needed to hold Jewish worship services.

Norway, which we thought was most beautiful, has a smaller Jewish population today (about 1200) than at the time of the German invasion in April 1940 (about 1800). There are more fjords and waterfalls than Jews in Norway.

I also believe I have found my answer as to why so many peace conferences take place in Oslo and Stockholm. The people, we found, appeared to be very content and were less prone to violent and riotous behavior. Can it be that the socialist economy under which they are raised has stilled the Viking aggression within them!

On our previous journey before Scandinavia, we had taken a cruise from Barcelona to Lisbon with stops in Malaga, Palma de Majorca, Casablanca, Tangier and Gibraltar. We discovered there were synagogues in all those places, with several in Gibraltar and Casablanca, one of which we visited.

One hour by train outside of Barcelona is the small town of Girona which is worth a visit. There is a quaint 'Museum' maintained in Girona which recalls - in paintings, artifacts and video - the Jewish presence there for over 500 years, from the 9th century until the dispersal from Spain in 1492. The medieval town of Girona alone is worth a visit!

Today in Scandinavia, and places like Barcelona and Lisbon and even in Casablanca and Tangier in Morocco, there was no evidence of anti-Semitism and my queries among the inhabitants bore that out. The Jewish population of those places are so small and relatively low-key that they pose no threat. In Helsinki, where the population speaks English well, when I inquired where the Synagogue was located I would often be met by puzzled faces of people who often times didn't know what a Synagogue was or represented. It is a sad fact of life that if Jews stay voiceless and powerless, we most likely will not be persecuted. In our country, soon is coming up in November a test of whether that is so!

The adventures I encounter in seeking out foreign shuls, and the satisfaction I achieve in encountering my fellow Jews in diverse areas of the world, are full recompense for the time taken to do so while traveling. I also offer up a prayer of gratitude to the wisdom of my Hebrew teacher of 73 years ago, Herman Winter, who urged me to learn the Siddur and davening, with the admonition that I then would not feel strange in any Synagogue in the world. How true.

Incidentally, my wife bought books in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Bergen and even in St. Petersburg as well as Lisbon and Cadiz, but that is her story to tell. As for me, having covered shuls in Eastern Europe, France and even Rangoon, and now in Scandinavia, I am looking around for new areas of discovery. I heard there are Jewish communities in Mozambique, New Caledonia and Cochin and many other exotic places, so my quest is not completed.