By Mark D. Zimmerman
MELVILLE, New York — Sweden is in the news, with President Trump’s false claim of a terrorist attack there recently. With a Jewish population of fewer than 20,000, there aren’t a lot of “Jewish/Swedish” stories. But which of the following is true?
A. Yiddish is one of the official languages of Sweden.
B. Benny Andersen first started performing in a Swedish pop-rock group, the Hep Stars in 1946. The band was successful in Sweden, mostly performing cover songs. Over time, Benny was interested in writing and performing original music, and he eventually teamed up with three other musicians that he had met, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Björn Ulvaeus, to form a new band. They were writing and practicing, but had not yet decided upon a name for the band. One day Benny was in a coffee house in Stockholm when he overheard a young child at a table nearby, calling out to his father, who happened to be a tourist from Israel. “Abba, abba,” the child said. Benny liked the sound of the word “abba” and asked the gentleman what it meant. Told that it was Hebrew for “father,” Benny decided that it was fate that he should choose that name for his band, as he had only learned that morning that his wife was pregnant.
C. The first Jew to be offered Swedish citizenship was Aron Isak, in 1774. King Gustav, who granted him this privilege, then allowed Isak to bring in additional Jewish families to ensure there would be 10 men for a minyan.
D. One of the world’s most famous children’s books came out of Sweden, where author Astrid Lindgren, born in Vimmerby, wrote the Pippi Longstocking series. Lindgren, who was Jewish, purposefully did not make her most famous character a Jew, as she wanted Pippi to be seen as representing little girls world-wide. The one Jewish reference in the Pippi Longstocking books was Pippi’s father, the seafarer Ephraim Longstocking, named after Astrid’s father Ephraim, who emigrated to Sweden from Russia following the Kishinev pogrom in his hometown in 1903.
E. Tuvia Peretz was a peddler in Lithuania who used to blow a shofar as he pulled his cart through the streets of Vilnius, summoning the residents to come and buy his wares. He survived World War II and emigrated to Sweden, where he continued to sell small goods from a cart, eventually becoming successful enough to rent a storefront to sell home goods and furniture. As an homage to his roots in Lithuania, he named his store Tkea Furniture. However, he was told by a local customer that Tkea was very similar to the Swedish word for rubbish, so Peretz, not looking to spend money for a new sign above his front door, simply added a horizontal line at the bottom of the Letter T, making the new name Ikea, which has since grown to nearly 400 stores around the world.
Zimmerman is the author of the Rashi, Rambam and Ramalamadingdong series of Jewish trivia e-books. Learn more at http://www.rrrjewishtrivia.com.