# Jews in Greenland

Greenland is a large, mostly arctic, and ice-covered Island, in the Western Hemisphere, with a population of 56,789 people as of 2024. There is no permanent Jewish population on the island, but there have been Jews who have lived there temporarily, like Danish Jewish soldiers, American Jewish soldiers, Israeli navy members, and members of the Israeli Air Force.

## History

There had never been a permanent Jewish community in Greenland, but Jewish fisherman have fished in its abundant waters. As Icelandic-born historian Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson writes in his book Antisemitism in the North, "there were certainly Jews among the first Dutch whalers in the 16th and 17th centuries."
In the 1920s, Alfred Wegener, who famously discovered continental drift, came to Greenland with his friend and fellow meteorologist Fritz Loewe, who was Jewish. Loewe got frostbite while trying to reach the center of Greenland. Loewe's team had to amputate his toes with scissors.
After the German occupation of Denmark on 9 April 1940, Henrik Kauffmann, Danish Ambassador to the United States, made an agreement "In the name of the king" with the United States, authorizing the United States to defend the Danish colonies on Greenland from German aggression. In 1941, the United States, built an air base at Thule. In the 1950s there were more than 50 Jewish servicemen stationed in the Thule Air Base at one time. Inside the air base, Shabbat services, Passover Seders, and prayers for the Jewish High Holidays were held. As a result, previously mentioned historian Vilhjálmsson writes about Thule, "having the northernmost minyan [prayer quorum] in the world."
In 1955, a German traveler, by the name of Alfred J. Fisher went to look for Jews in Greenland. To his surprise he found a nurse by the name of Rita Scheftelowitz. Fischer wrote:
   "The friendly Danish doctor, Dr. Schmidt, took me round the various departments. Finally we reached the children's section, whose inmates were an amusing mixture of Mongolian types with slanting eyes and blond, fair-skinned babies revealing their partly Danish parentage. With some astonishment, I noticed the nurse, whose features showed neither Danish nor Greenlandic characteristics. Dr Schmidt introduced her: "Miss Rita Sheftelovich [Scheftelowitz] from Copenhagen." Sheftelovich sounds no more Danish than François sounds English. Moreover, Miss Sheftelovich regarded my wife and me with the same curiosity with which we looked at her.In the afternoon we met her again, since one inevitably meets everyone at least two or three times a day in Egedesminde. Without any further ado, Rita now enquired in English whether by any chance we happened to be coreligionists."
Rita Scheftelowitz, whose family had sought refuge from Denmark in Sweden during the war, moved from Denmark to Greenland for adventure. Scheftelowitz lived an Orthodox Jewish life there. She was able to eat kosher by avoiding meat, and eating the fish that was plentiful in the nearby water
Another person who Fischer met was Jørgen Chemnitz. He himself was not a Jew, but claimed that his grandfather was Jewish and came to Greenland. However, there is no evidence for this, and the first Chemnitz who came to Greenland was a cooper from Als, and he was not Jewish.

## Modern times

Currently, the airbase is being used as a base for space exploration, and has been renamed to the Pituffik Space Base in 2023. There currently is one man named Paul Cohen who has been living in the city of Narsaq, who works as a translator. Despite his remoteness, he says that tourists are always able to find him.