jewishsighsteeing.com staff report, April 11, 2006


HELSINKI— Sometimes visitors who are unfamiliar with Finland's rich Jewish heritage are surprised to find that Helsinki boasts a large synagogue.  This year, they are even more astonished to learn that
the congregation  is celebrating its 100th anniversary, and that in the city of Turku, another Jewish congregation will celebrate its centennial in 2012.

The Helsinki synagogue , which today serves a Jewish community numbering 1,200, was built in 1906 following the settlement in Finland of Jews who had served in the army of czarist Russia, which then exercised control over what had been formerly Swedish Finland. When Finland became an independent country in 1917, Jews who first started arriving in the country as early as the 17th century, were granted the rights of full citizenship.

Finland's Jewish population grew in the period between the 1917 Russian revolution and World War II.  In response to the Soviet Union's expansionist tendencies, Finland defended itself in the Finnish-Russian War  of 1939.  When Germany attacked the Soviet Union during World War II, Finland found that  it and Germany had a common enemy, but not a common purpose.

The can be no  clearer illustration of the difference in the two countries' goals than the way they treated their Jewish populations.  Finland refused to take the anti-Semitic measures against its Jews notwithstanding the pressure it was under from Nazi Germany to do so. 

It is a well-known story that during the war Finland had Jews as members of its armed forces and that in some cases, these units fought alongside the German units against the Russians.  Finland's war hero, Marshall Mannerheim, attended a ceremony in 1944 at Helsinki's synagogue. 

In addition to prominence in business affairs, the Jews of Helsinki have been active in cultural and governmental arenas of Finnish life.  For example, the painters Rafael Wardi and Sam Vanni and the composer Simon Parmet  established international reputations, while Max Jakobson served as Finland's ambassador to the United Nations and Ben Zyskowicz was elected as a member of parliament.  Jakobson was nominated to be secretary general of the United Nations, but was defeated by Kurt Waldheim.

Although many of Finland's early Jewish settlers spoke a Lithuanian dialect of Yiddish, over time that language fell into disuse.  Today, most Jews speak Finnish as their first language and Swedish as a second language.  Yiddish classes are taught in the Jewish community center, built in 1962 adjacent to the synagogue. Hebrew, as it is around the Jewish world, is used for prayers and increasingly to converse with visitors from Israel.

Finland was among the first countries granting recognition to the State of Israel, and since 1948, there  has been some Jewish immigration from Finland to Israel, as well as various projects emphasizing friendship between the two countries. 

Organized Jewish life is quite extensive under a Central Council of Jewish Communities which coordinates Jewish affairs in Helsinki, Turku and a tiny community in Tamere.  Helsinki has a kosher delicatessen and butcher shop, a chapter of the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO), Maccabi athletic competitions, a highly regarded Jewish choir, longstanding societies for the burial of the dead and visiting of the sick, and a Jewish day school founded in 1918.

Some information for this report was provided by Andre Zweig of the Jewish-Heritage-Finland travel organization.