O PINION
How Moving to Denmark, a Country With Few Fellow Jews,
Strengthened My Jewish Identity
BY REBECCA NACHMAN
GROWING UP, one of my
favorite books was “Number
the Stars,” Lois Lowry’s
middle-grade novel about
Denmark’s eff ort to smuggle
its Jewish citizens to Sweden
during World War II.

Th e operation, which saved
7,220 of Denmark’s 7,800 Jews,
has been remarkable to me
since I fi rst read about it: While
other European countries gave
in to antisemitic propaganda
and followed Hitler’s rule,
Denmark resisted. A common
explanation today is that
Danes didn’t see their Jewish
neighbors as “others” — they
were just as Danish as anyone
else. Why wouldn’t they help
their fellow Danskere?
Almost 80 years aft er the
rescue of the Danish Jews,
I moved to Copenhagen for
grad school. Today, Denmark’s
Jewish population stands at
around 6,000 members, most
of whom are congregated in
the greater Copenhagen area.

Coming from the Boston area,
which is home to 248,000 Jews,
and having attended Brandeis
University, a historically Jewish
college known for its robust
Jewish population, landing in a
country with such a small Jewish
population was a big adjustment.

But to my surprise, I preferred it.

Growing up, my family
attended a Reform synagogue,
I went to Jewish summer camp
and Hebrew school, and I had
a bat mitzvah — but the whole
time, I felt like I was just going
through the motions. At no
point did I feel any sort of
Jewish community, nor did I
feel the need for one. Plenty of
my friends and teachers were
Jewish, my classmates knew
about Jewish holidays, and
there is no shortage of Jewish
delis and Judaica stores in
Greater Boston. Being Jewish
wasn’t something I consciously
thought about because it was
so normalized in my setting.

But in Denmark, I’m
oft en the fi rst Jewish person
someone has (knowingly)
met. Th e Evangelical Lutheran
Church is the national religion,
but Denmark is overall an
extremely atheistic country,
with most people not being
involved in any form of
religious life. Here, I’ve had to
make an eff ort to meet other
Jews, and in doing so, I found
an amazing Jewish community.

Despite Denmark’s small
Jewish population, there’s
understanding between the two
religious minorities. And this
year, Copenhagen will host a
gathering of Jewish young adults
from all over Scandinavia.

Whether it’s services at the
Reform synagogue, challah
baking at Chabad, or Shabbat
dinner with the Jewish youth
movement at the Great
Synagogue, I’m never at a loss
for Jewish events to attend.

I appreciate that the
community isn’t strictly
divided by denomination —
I see the same familiar faces
no matter which synagogue or
organization I go to. While I
never felt like I found my place
in Greater Boston’s fragmented
Jewish population, I immedi-
ately felt welcome in Jewish
Denmark. When we’re such a
small minority (only 0.1% of
the population), the need for a
community is more pressing.

Having to deliberately seek
out Jewish life has made the
connections I’ve forged all the
more special. Danish society is
notoriously hard for foreigners
to integrate into, but through
the Jewish community I’ve
been able to make Copenhagen
feel like home.

Of course, this isn’t to say
that being Jewish in Denmark
is always idyllic. In 2014 the
Jewish school was vandal-
ized, and in 2015 a terrorist
attacked the Great Synagogue.

I personally haven’t experi-
enced antisemitism here,
but I know that my experi-
ence as a recent transplant is
different from those of Jewish
Danes who have spent their
lives here, and from those
who more clearly present as
Jewish. That being said, I still
feel significantly safer as a
Jew here than I did in the
U.S. (I have yet to hear a
Dane compare vaccines to the
Holocaust, baruch hashem).

I still think of “Number the
Stars” oft en, especially when
I’m at the same synagogue that
the Jewish characters attended,
or when I walk past a site that
was mentioned in the book. I
have no Danish heritage, so I’m
not personally connected to the
rescue of the Danish Jews. But,
as schmaltzy as it sounds, I feel a
sense of poetic beauty in fi nding
a Jewish home in the same tiny
Scandinavian country that came
together to save thousands of us
so many years ago. ●
Rebecca Nachman is a global
health master’s degree student at
the University of Copenhagen.

This originally appeared in Alma.

I appreciate that the community isn’t strictly divided by denomination — I see the same familiar
faces no matter which synagogue or organization I go to. While I never felt like I found my place
in Greater Boston’s fragmented Jewish population, I immediately felt welcome in Jewish
Denmark. When we’re such a small minority (only 0.1% of the population), the need for a
community is more pressing.

an offi cial Jewish commu-
nity, Det Jødiske Samfund, a
Jewish museum, an Orthodox
synagogue, a
Reform synagogue, a Chabad house, a
Jewish elementary school, youth
groups and an annual cultural
festival. Th ere’s even a Jewish-
Muslim biker club (yes, you read
that right) that works to combat
antisemitism and Islamophobia
in Denmark and create mutual
Be heard.

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JEWISH EXPONENT
NOVEMBER 18, 2021
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