King Harald V of Norway and his son, Crown Prince Haakon, have made a historic visit to Oslo's Jewish Community and met with local teens to hear about difficulty of being Jewish in country. The king and his son visited the local synagogue and Jewish nursery school, attended a Torah reading ceremony, listened to songs by the community's cantor and joined the kindergarten's children in song. The king also met with a group of Bnei Akiva youth guides, all local teens, who shared with him the difficulty of being a Jew in Norway these days. They told the monarch that their meeting with him helped strengthen their Norwegian identity.
Community leaders hope visit will help counter growing anti-Semitism in Norway. The Norwegian royal family has been making efforts recently to get acquainted with minority groups in the northern country and have also visited mosques and Muslim communities.
