Iceland welcomes its first permanent Torah scroll

The final letters of the Torah were written at a reception last Thursday at the home of the US ambassador to Iceland, Jeffrey Ross Gunter, who is Jewish.

A geyser in Geysir, Iceland. (photo credit: BOB STRONG / REUTERS)
A geyser in Geysir, Iceland.
(photo credit: BOB STRONG / REUTERS)

Iceland welcomed its first permanent Torah scroll.

The final letters of the Torah were written at a reception last Thursday at the home of the US ambassador to Iceland, Jeffrey Ross Gunter, who is Jewish, according to Chabad.

The new scroll, which took a year to write, was donated to the Jewish community of Reykjavik by Uri Krauss of Zurich, Switzerland.

On Sunday, members of the city’s Jewish community brought the Torah scroll to the local Chabad Jewish Center.

The Chabad center was opened in 2018, the first full-time Jewish institution on the island nation. It has been borrowing the Torah scroll used every Shabbat morning.