Voices of European Jews: Helsinki, Finland
What time does the sabbath start tomorrow in Helsinki? I ask.
Chana, a 25-year-old pen pal who hosted me during my visit to Helsinki, walks from the hallway of her apartment into the living room. He picks up a large paper wall calendar, like the Jewish calendars that synagogues send me every year in the US. Placing his finger on July 7th, he answers, “22:22” I ask when the Sabbath ends. The answer is pretty much after midnight.
I’m surprised the sabbath lasts more than 25 hours. Chana explains that in most of the world the Sabbath ends when three stars appear in the sky. But the Jewish community in Helsinki is one of the northernmost in the world. As a result, no stars can be seen in Finnish summer. It doesn’t get completely dark on a Finnish summer night. Instead of looking for three stars at the end of Shabbat, Finnish Jews follow the halachic hour – a term used in rabbinic Jewish law in which an hour is calculated by taking the total amount of light on a given day from sunrise to sunset and dividing it into twelve equal parts. Halachic class varies by season and sometimes by day.
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Chana is not the only Jew in Helsinki who follows the halachic class as a guide. Although there are about 1,300 Jews in Finland – mainly in Helsinki and a smaller community in Turku – Chana belongs to one of ten families who call themselves “frum”. She wears a dress whenever she’s out, strictly observes the Sabbath, and keeps kosher.
Every weekend, Chana walks 17 minutes away from the Shabbat services at the Helsinki Synagogue. There is only one synagogue in Helsinki and it is Orthodox, but most of its members are not Orthodox. Many are actually not religiously observant and simply identify as culturally Jewish.
A security guard wearing shorts and a simple T-shirt greets Chana as we walk to the gates that surround the building on Wednesday. He doesn’t acknowledge me when they start talking in Finnish. He immediately opens the gate and waves us in. He doesn’t check my bag or ask to see my passport. He knows Chana, and apparently that’s enough for him.
Chana leads me to the secretary’s office; I find it funny to walk right into a room instead of knocking first. But it’s clear from the way Chana walks that she knows her way around the synagogue, the place where she grew up.
The secretary leads us into the sanctuary, and my first reaction is, “Wow, the walls are green.” Chana and I sit on brown, wooden seats facing the bima, a few rows behind the visiting Israelis on the tour. A man stands in front of Bima and speaks Hebrew.
“He used to be our cantor,” Chana whispers to me. “Now he lives in Israel, but comes back to Helsinki every summer.”
Seconds later, Chana realizes that the cantor only speaks Hebrew and nudges me on the arm and hands me her phone. He is the author of “Do You Understand Hebrew?” I nod my head.
The cantor picks up the guitar and begins to sing “Shehechiyanu”. I hear Chana is quietly joining.
When the cantor and the Israelites leave, I walk around the sanctuary. I take “Sidur Helsingin” and flip through the pages. I am excited to see the Finnish language
side by side with Hebrew prayers. I learned that although most of the Jews in Helsinki are Ashkenazi, there are some Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in Helsinki who join the Ashkenazi service.
Next, we walk to the Jewish school next door. To register, at least one parent of the child must be a member of the Jewish community. In Helsinki, all Jewish institutions, with the exception of the Chabad house, are located in one large complex: Jewish school, Jewish community, synagogue, Jewish youth facilities, mikvah, Jewish library, Jewish preschool. The secretary points to the tables where the students eat their lunch every day. Chana recalls the excitement she and her classmates felt as children when it was their turn to ring the golden bell before singing Birkat Hamazon.
Chana seems so comfortable in her Jewish community. I feel comfortable in his community. As we walk back to her apartment from the synagogue, she bumps into someone and has a brief conversation with them. “Jews,” he tells me with a smile as we walk away. It reminds me of what I would say in the states – all the Jews know each other.
And yet, as much as I’ve enjoyed my time in Helsinki and appreciate the friendly atmosphere that surrounds the happiest place in the world (as ranked by the World Happiness Report, which is largely based on life assessments from the Gallup World Poll), I feel that I don’t like living in a place where so few Jewish institutions. Later, I ask Chana if it’s hard to live in a place where there aren’t many other religious Jews, and she immediately says yes.
“That’s the reason I moved to England for university, to be in a bigger religious community,” he says. “But I’m still not sure where I’ll live in the future.” PJC
Madison Jackson, a graduate student in Chatham University’s Creative Nonfiction MFA program, is the founder and director of the Global Jewish Pen Pal Program. He will travel around Europe this summer and write for the Chronicle about Jewish life in different places. He lives in Squirrel Hill.
Read more about his travels at pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.