Chabad Lubavitch of Finland

Chabad-Lubavitch in Finland: Suomen Chabad Lubavitch ry in Helsinki, run since 2003 by Rabbi Benyamin Wolff and Ita Wolff from the Sami and Charlotte Rohr Chabad House

Chabad Lubavitch of Finland
Logo	The Old Customs and Packing House at Mariankatu 3, Helsinki, home of the Sami and Charlotte Rohr Chabad House (photo: Htm, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Type	Jewish religious organisation (Chabad-Lubavitch)
Founded	September 2003 (association formed 2004)
Headquarters	Helsinki
Location	Mariankatu 3, 00170 Helsinki
Area served	Finland
Key people	Benyamin Wolff (director), Ita Wolff
Website	https://www.lubavitch.fi

Chabad Lubavitch of Finland (Suomen Chabad Lubavitch ry) is the Chabad-Lubavitch organisation in Finland. It was launched in Helsinki in September 2003 by Rabbi Benyamin Wolff and his wife Fruma Ita (Ita Wolff), and since 2022 has been based at the Sami and Charlotte Rohr Chabad House, Mariankatu 3, 00170 Helsinki.

History

According to its website, Lubavitch of Finland opened its doors in September 2003. A 2022 academic study, Chabad on Ice: Jewish encounters with fundamentalism in Finland by Mercédesz Czimbalmos and Riikka Tuori of Åbo Akademi University, says that the organisation was launched by Benyamin and Fruma Ita Wolff, then in their early twenties, "sponsored by the Russian-Hungarian Jewish philanthropist family of Sami Rohr". The study notes that Chabad emissaries had arrived in Denmark and Sweden in the 1990s and that Chabad has had a house of its own in central Helsinki since 2011.

According to Chabad.org, Ita Wolff's great-grandparents, Rabbi Mordechai and Bunia Schwei, were sent to Turku in 1928 by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, to educate Jewish children, and stayed until 1935. Rabbi Wolff told Chabad.org that the organisation had used six different locations over the years.

Rohr Chabad House

Chabad-Lubavitch of Finland bought the 1765 Old Customs and Packing House at Mariankatu 3, next to the Presidential Palace, in 2015. After years of renovation the building was inaugurated on 22 June 2022 as the Sami and Charlotte Rohr Chabad House; George Rohr and Pamela Rohr cut the ribbon. The centre also houses a museum of Finnish Jewish history.

Registered entity

Suomen Chabad Lubavitch ry is a non-profit association (aatteellinen yhdistys), Business ID 1999997-7. According to the Finnish Patent and Registration Office, the association dates from 2 November 2004, when it was recorded under the name "Suomen Chabad Lubavizch ry"; it has used its current name since 22 August 2005. It has been registered with the Tax Administration since 9 February 2006 and in the Trade Register since 20 October 2020. Its address is Mariankatu 3, 00170 Helsinki, and its industry code is 94999 (activities of other membership organisations). It has been in the prepayment register since 28 January 2011, the employer register since 1 January 2015 and the VAT register, for the transfer of rights to use immovable property, since 9 October 2019.

Funding

According to the Chabad on Ice study, the Wolffs' mission was sponsored by the Rohr family. The Helsinki centre is named after Sami and Charlotte Rohr, and George and Pamela Rohr dedicated it in 2022. No source was found on state funding for the association.

Relations with the Jewish community

The main Jewish community body in Finland is the Jewish Community of Helsinki, which, according to the Chabad on Ice study, runs a kindergarten, a synagogue and a school and employs a chief rabbi and a deputy rabbi.

According to the study, Chabad's arrival in the early 2000s caused suspicion among some members of the Helsinki congregation's council. Some feared that Chabad "could eventually take over the community, or at the very least divide it, given the international connections and the vast financial resources at their disposal". One interviewee said that Chabad had "split the community" in Gothenburg, and that the Helsinki congregation's hiring of emissaries from the Israeli religious Zionist youth movement Bnei Akiva was partly a response to this fear. Another interviewee said that after Chabad arrived, the Jewish Community of Helsinki started to "steal the events" Chabad had organised. The authors conclude that most of their informants described Chabad positively as "an element of active change", but that "some congregants still remain sceptical", and that Chabad's arrival "essentially activated the Jewish Community of Helsinki, perhaps out of the fear of losing members".

In 2022 Yaron Nadbornik, president of the Jewish Community of Helsinki and vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, told Chabad.org that "Chabad has added value to the community".

Politics

The Chabad on Ice study contrasts Chabad in Finland with the movement in Hungary and Russia, where it says Chabad has been close to the governments. It states that "in Finland, Chabad has so far remained politically neutral, perhaps because it has not found a fertile ground for such engagements". No source was found describing formal links between the Finnish organisation and the Israeli state.

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch movement
• Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Finland
• Chabad Lubavitch of Sweden
• Chabad Lubavitch of Norway
• Chabad Lubavitch of Denmark