Assimilation and Intermarriage Make Inroads on Swedish Jewry

Together the three Scandinavian countries have a Jewish population of about 12 to 13 thousand souls. Of this number about one-half, or 6,000, live in Sweden. The three important Jewish communities of Sweden are those of Stockholm, the capital, Gothenburg and Malmo.

Malmo is only three hours by boat from Germany and only one hour from Copenhagen, the Danish capital. Out of a general population of about 100,000 Malmo has about 150 Jewish families. This community is the least assimilated of all the Jewish communities of Sweden, since most of the Jews of Malmo immigrated there from Russia and Poland and the present community is only about 25 years old. The term present community is used because old documents in the local “Rathaus,” or City Hall, show that as far back as the seventeenth century Jews lived in Malmo and were either assimilated or emigrated to Stockholm or to neighboring Germany.

Of the Jewish spiritual life in Malmo there is little that can be said. There is a beautiful synagogue there in which the prayers are conducted in Orthodox fashion, and this is the only place where the Jews of Malmo meet. The rabbi of Malmo, Dr. Wahlstein, a former student of the Pressburg Yeshivah, complained that the Jewish generation here is growing up without Judaism and is rapidly assimilating. Lately, however, a few Malmo Jews have made serious efforts to establish a Hebrew school, but the community as a whole has not as yet interested itself in the project.

Only a fifteen-minute ride from Malmo brings you to the university city of Lund. There, too, a few dozen Jewish families live, almost all of them from Russia. Judaism there, too, is concentrated in the synagogue, which greatly resembles an Orthodox synagogue of Poland or Galicia. This community has a shochet, who is at the same time a teacher of religion. The Jews here still speak Yiddish, but their children, who have received a Swedish education, migrate to Stockholm, where in 80 cases out of a hundred they become assimilated with the native Swedish Jews, or rather, with the Swedes, since it is in general extremely difficult now to distinguish between a Swede and a Swedish Jew.

JEWS SCATTERED

Besides these two towns, there are other small places in Sweden which boast of a few Jewish families each. The whole Judaism of these Jews in the scattered Swedish towns is bound up in the celebration of the High Holidays. On these occasions they bring from Germany or elsewhere a cantor who can also deliver a sermon and blow the shofar. And this cantor who is “imported” annually is perhaps the only connection that these isolated Jews maintain with Judaism.

The second important Jewish community of Sweden is that of Gothenburg, or Goeburg, as it is called in Swedish. This is an old community with old-established Swdish Jews who own a beautiful house of worship, but live very little of a Jewish life. Here, too, the most active Jewish element is the immigrant Jews.

Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden and has a population of more than a quarter of a million. Nevertheless the number of Jews here is negligible. But what it lacks in quantity, it makes up in quality, since Jews occupy a prominent place in the economic life of Gothenburg.

Of Jewish education there is even less here than in Malmo, assimilation having penetrated to he very marrow of Gothenburg Jews. In speaking of this with one of the leaders of the Jewish community his excuse was, “We are not Orthodox; we are Liberal.” Thus he believed that the problem of the education of the future existence of the community depends, was solved.

And as an example of what the future holds out for the assimilated Jews of Sweden we can take the little town to Norkemping, which lies on the road between Gothenburg and Sweden . In that town there is an ancient synagogue, tended by a Gentile sexton, who said that the entire Judaiasm of these people is limited to celebrating the high Holidays and “Juhrzeit,” and that he has to remind these Jews of the days upon which they must celebrate “Jahrzeit” for their dead parents. In a sincere voice the old Swede a goo Christian at that-complained of the way in which the prosperous Jews of Norkemping have become estranged from Judaism, and, odd as this may sound, said:

“As long as I live I am still on guard to remind them from time to time of their origin. But one doesn’t live forever, you know.”

60%MIXED MARRIAGE

Stockholm, the largest Jewish community in Sweden, has as its Chief Rabbi Dr. Marcus Ehrenpreis, the famous Jewish scholar and writer, who was born in Galicia and who was for a long time the Chief Rabbi of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. In a talk with him, he said that there is a veritable epidemic of mixed marriages among the Jews of Stockholm and the rest of Sweden. Nearly sixty percent of Jewish marriages today are mixed marriages, and there seems to be no hope that this large figure will become smaller in the near future.

The Orthodox synagogue of Stockholm is located in a poor quarter of the city. The members of this little congregation are the few Polish Jews who live in Stockholm. The synagogue is supported mainly by two wealthy Gernman-Jewish Orthodox families. If a Jew who comes to Stockholm wishes to eat strictly kosher food, he must get himself invited to some home, since there is no kosher restaurant in the city