Jewish MP elected speaker of new Finnish parliament

Finland’s parliament has elected the country’s only Jewish lawmaker Ben Zyskowicz, 56, as its new president. Zyskowicz has been a member of parliament for the National Coalition since 1979 and served as head of its parliamentary group from 1993 to 2006. He is the first Jew ever to be elected to the Finnish parliament. In last week’s parliamentary elections, he became the ninth most popular politician nationwide.

Zyskowicz was born in Helsinki to Jewish parents. His father, Abram, was a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust and later fled to Sweden, where he met Ben's mother Ester Fridman, a Finnish Jew. Ben Zyskowicz himself is married to Rahime Husnetdin-Zyskowicz, a member of the Muslim Tatar community in Finland, and has two daughters.

Finland’s Jewish community has only around 1,500 members.

For more information on its history, visit the website of the Helsinki Jewish community.