Where the Continent Ends

Newfoundland runs on its own time — literally. The province keeps a half-hour time zone found almost nowhere else in the Western Hemisphere, thirty minutes ahead of Atlantic Canada, as if the island couldn’t quite be bothered to sync up with the mainland. It didn’t bother syncing up politically, either. Newfoundland was Britain’s oldest colony in North America, a self-governing dominion with its own flag and national anthem. It didn’t join Canada until 1949 — and even then, the vote was 52 to 48. St. John’s, the capital, voted two-to-one against. To this day, it remains a place slightly apart.

It is also a place with a Jewish history longer than most people would guess. Sephardi traders arrived as early as the 1770s, dealing in fish, seal fur, and lamp oil. A century later, Ashkenazi peddlers fleeing Russian and Polish pogroms followed, traveling the island trading salt fish and textiles. The Hebrew Congregation of Newfoundland was incorporated in 1909. A synagogue went up on Henry Street in St. John’s in 1931. At its peak in the early 1970s, about 360 Newfoundlanders identified as Jewish. In the 1930s, there was even a push to resettle Jewish refugees on the island’s west coast — but the government, insisting on “British stock,” turned them away.

Today, the Jewish population numbers at several hundred — and Rabbi Chanan and Tuba Chernitsky are working to make sure there’s a place for them to call home. Rabbi Chernitsky was born in Buenos Aires, raised in Winnipeg, and ordained as a Rabbi in Venice. When the Chernitskys started looking for a place to open a Chabad house, a friend in Toronto connected them with a man who had been funding yeshiva students to visit for the holidays but believed the province needed a permanent Chabad presence. They visited twice in 2016. “There were more Jews than we expected,” Rabbi Chernitsky says, “and almost nothing here for them.” They moved in February 2017 with three children under four and whatever kosher meat they could ship frozen from Montreal by truck and ferry.

The nearest Chabad center is in Halifax — an hour and a half by plane. You can drive, but you need a ferry. The island stretches more than 500 miles end to end, with a population of half a million, most of it concentrated in greater St. John’s. The culture runs deep Irish and Scottish, the accent unlike anywhere else in Canada, and the economy is built on fishing, mining, and oil. Downtown is known for the candy-colored houses of Jellybean Row. Minutes away, Cape Spear marks the easternmost point in North America. Signal Hill is where the first transatlantic radio signal was received in 1901. After that, there’s nothing but ocean until Ireland.

The Chernitskys run a Hebrew school on Sundays, host Shabbat meals, hold a monthly community Friday night dinner, and recently finished building a mikvah. But perhaps the most unexpected chapter of their work is the Friendship Circle, launched in 2021 for children with special needs — and every participant is non-Jewish. Eighty children across the province receive monthly letters from volunteers. There are group music lessons, bowling outings, and fun events like reptile shows. “It’s definitely out of the box,” Rabbi Chernitsky says.

During their very first visit in 2016, the Chernitskys met an Argentinian Jew in St. John’s who mentioned another Argentine Jew in town. Rabbi Chernitsky looked the name up in the phonebook, drove to the address, and knocked. He introduced himself in Spanish. The man at the door paused. “Chernitsky,” he said. “I know a Chernitsky.” He knew the Rabbi’s aunt — someone he had worked with back in Buenos Aires years earlier. Now they were both standing on a doorstep at the edge of the continent, a rabbi from Argentina and a stranger who turned out not to be a stranger at all.