From Iceland — Interviewee Takes Issue With Article On Icelandic Jews

Interviewee Takes Issue With Article On Icelandic Jews

Published December 27, 2011

One of the people interviewed in a recently-published article in Haaretz on Jewish people in Iceland has described it as “full of inaccuracies.”
The article in question, Iceland Jews are left out in the cold, interviewed a number of Jewish residents of Iceland, among them Hope Knútsson, who is the director of Siðmennt, the society of ethical humanists in Iceland.
Hope is not, however, a practicing Jew, and identifies herself only as “a Jew only by ethnicity”. Speaking to Morgunblaðið, Hope says the Haaretz article was “full of inaccuracies”. Among them, she takes issue with the article’s angle – that Jewish people in Iceland are afraid to self-identify as such, for fear of anti-Semitic reprisals – saying “I have my doubts about that.”
She also believes that the community inviting Dorrit Moussaieff to take part in holiday functions was over-stated. “It was my understanding that someone at one time invited Dorrit to some dinner, but the way the article presents itself, it makes it seem as though there were people hurt that she didn’t want to be associated with these people.”
Grapevine has reported on the Jewish community in Iceland in the past, noting that while in 2004, the two Jews we found did not want to disclose their identities, today there seems to be a growing openness among those in the community about the faith they practice.

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