There has never been an organized Jewish community in Greenland, other than the U.S. military base at Thule in far northwestern Greenland. Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, an Icelandic-born historian and former senior researcher at the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, wrote a chapter about Jewish life in Greenland in the 2019 book “Antisemitism in the North” that originally appeared in a Danish journal called Rambam.
Vilhjálmsson writes that
“there were certainly Jews among the first Dutch whalers in the 16th and 17th centuries.”
But there were no definitive reports of Jewish life in Greenland until World War II, when the United States established a military base in Thule, which is just 950 miles from the North Pole.
In the 1950s, there were more than 50 Jewish servicemen stationed in Thule at one time. Passover seders and services were held for Shabbat and high holidays, at the time giving Greenland the distinction, Vilhjálmsson writes, of
“having the northernmost minyan in the world.”
But in the rest of Greenland, there are no records of any Jewish services or events. There have been Jewish scientists, journalists, nurses, and other professionals working in the territory, but most were on short-term assignments.
In the absence of definitive records, it’s highly likely that Paul Cohen, an American Jew who has lived there with his wife Monika for 22 years, Narsaq’s remoteness, has made history as the Jewish person with the longest continuous tenure living in Greenland — 22 years and counting. He chuckled at the notion, saying it makes him feel like
“some sort of rare orchid on the tundra.”
“I like the idea,”
he said.
“There are very few Americans living here. So I’m used to feeling like the oddball.”
A sign welcomes visitors to Narsaq. (Dan Fellner)
Cohen says few Jewish tourists come to Narsaq, but when they do visit, they have a way of finding him. One observant Israeli couple whom he ate dinner with served food on paper plates with plastic cutlery, which they used in lieu of kosher dishes.
“My name just screams ‘Judaism,’”
Cohen said.
“It’s almost as if there’s an unspoken secret handshake.”
While Cohen isn’t religious, he has a silver mezuzah hanging in his Narsaq home and enjoys late-night Hanukkah candle-lighting Zoom sessions with his family back in America.
> Read more: The only Jew in remote Greenland sometimes feels like ‘the last person on earth’
Jeshuaisten / Jeshuaists 