Iceland Opens Its First Jewish Center: Beit Shvidler in Reykjavík

By Jewish Compass

On 7 July 2026, Europe’s smallest Jewish community celebrated a first in the island’s roughly thousand-year documented history: the opening of Beit Shvidler, the Jewish Center of Iceland — run by Chabad-Lubavitch — in downtown Reykjavík. It is the country’s first dedicated Jewish center and culture house.

The center is named after businessman and philanthropist Eugene Shvidler, a lead donor to the project. It occupies a renovated building of roughly 9,000 square feet at Hverfisgata 33 — a spot that once housed a bar and, before that, a political party’s headquarters — just blocks from Reykjavík’s Rainbow Street and the Harpa concert hall.

Under one roof it brings together a synagogue, event and hospitality space, and the Gallery of Jewish Life in Iceland, a permanent exhibit tracing more than a century of the island’s Jewish story. A mikvah heated geothermally — using the volcanic groundwater that powers much of the country — is planned for a later phase.

The center is led by the Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries Rabbi Avi and Mushky Feldman, who arrived in 2018 as Iceland’s first permanent rabbinic couple, making Reykjavík the last European capital to gain a resident rabbi. For Jewish travellers it is a home base: Shabbat and holiday services and meals, kosher food and a kosher shop, and guidance on the genuinely tricky halachic questions of a place where, in summer, the sun barely sets.

Sources: Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Chabad.org and the Jewish Community of Iceland. Compiled by Jewish Compass, July 2026.