For years, Iceland has sat near the top of the kosher traveler’s bucket list and near the bottom of its list of practical destinations. Glaciers, black-sand beaches, and the Northern Lights on one side; no synagogue, no mikvah, and no reliable place to buy kosher food on the other. That equation changed this week. Iceland’s roughly 300 Jews now have a permanent home for the first time in the country’s known history, and Jewish visitors finally have a real anchor in Reykjavik.
And personally, it’s one of my favorite destinations on the globe. I’ve been twice. Once in 2008, a trip across Northern Europe that was the precursor of starting YeahThatsKosher.com, and again with my boys over Thanksgiving week in 2019. I’d happily go again and again.
Eight Years in the Making
The Beit Shvidler Jewish Center of Iceland opened its doors in downtown Reykjavik on July 7, drawing more than a hundred guests, including rabbis from neighboring Nordic countries, an acting US ambassador, and members of the Icelandic parliament. The 9,000-square-foot building is the country’s first dedicated Jewish center, and it caps an eight-year climb that started when Rabbi Avraham and Mushky Feldman arrived in 2018 as Chabad emissaries and began hosting Shabbat dinners out of their living room. Before they came, Iceland had no permanently stationed rabbi in its thousand-year recorded history, and Reykjavik was widely described as the only European capital without a synagogue.
The space itself has a second life. It previously ran as a downtown bar, and before that it served as the headquarters of an Icelandic political party. The community bought the building in 2024 after outgrowing rented rooms and church basements, including the basement of Hallgrimskirkja, the towering church that anchors the city skyline.
What’s Inside the Center
The center pulls everything a Jewish community needs under one roof for the first time. There is a synagogue, a seminar room that seats close to 80 people, a youth center, a library lounge, and a security center. For travelers, the two rooms that matter most are the kosher shop and the community kitchen, which together turn Reykjavik from the bring-your-own-food destination we first documented in our guide to keeping kosher in Reykjavik into somewhere you can actually restock.
The building also houses the Gallery of Jewish Life in Iceland, a permanent exhibit tracing more than a century of the island’s Jewish history. One display holds three small prayer books left by early Jewish residents, the only known physical remnants of Jewish life in Iceland before the Feldmans arrived.
A Mikvah Is Coming Next
The new center does not include a mikvah. The community is building one separately, on its own property, where the plans and most of the approvals are already in place. The Feldmans aim to break ground toward the end of the summer. A functioning mikvah is one of the last pieces of infrastructure that turns a place from a short-term stop into somewhere observant families can settle, so it is the milestone worth watching next.
What It Means for Kosher Travelers
Iceland has always been reachable, about five hours from the New York area on a direct flight, which is a big part of why it draws Jewish travelers chasing waterfalls and glaciers on trips like the ones mapped out in our Iceland kosher travel itineraries. The missing piece was on the ground. Now there is a Chabad running Shabbat services, a kosher store, and a community kitchen within walking distance of Rainbow Street and the Harpa concert hall, in the heart of the compact downtown where most visitors already stay.
The community coordinates Shabbat meals and kosher catering for visitors, and maintains a running kosher list of what you can buy in local supermarkets. Plan around a small community: reach out before you fly rather than counting on walk-ins, since a 300-person congregation works on advance notice.
A Long Road to Permanence
The center is the latest in a run of firsts. In 2020, the community completed its first native Torah scroll, commissioned by a donor in Switzerland. A year later, the Icelandic government formally recognized Judaism as an official religion, which opened the door to legally recognized Jewish weddings in the country. The new building turns those milestones into something physical: a place that will still be standing, and staffed, long after any single visitor leaves.
The World’s Northernmost Chabad
There is a geographic footnote worth knowing. Reykjavik sits just below the Arctic Circle, and the new center now ties the Chabad house in Fairbanks, Alaska, for the title of northernmost in the world. For a certain kind of traveler, davening at the top of the map is its own reason to book the trip.
The Beit Shvidler Jewish Center of Iceland is located in downtown Reykjavik, minutes from Rainbow Street and the Harpa concert hall. It houses a synagogue, kosher shop, community kitchen, youth center, and library lounge, and is run by Rabbi Avraham and Mushky Feldman of Chabad of Iceland. Visitors can arrange Shabbat meals, kosher catering, and Shabbat times through jewishiceland.com, and check what is available locally on the community’s Iceland kosher list.
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