King Charles III landed in Bermuda on Friday, May 1, making it his first visit as reigning British monarch to any British Overseas Territory since his ascension to the throne. Among those invited to a reception with the King at the Governor’s House that afternoon was Rabbi Chaim Birnhack, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Bermuda alongside his wife Menuchy, who has served the island’s Jewish community as its first resident rabbi since 2022.

During the event, Rabbi Birnhack found himself in conversation with the monarch.

“The King seemed pleasantly surprised to learn there was a rabbi on the island,” Rabbi Birnhack recalls with a laugh. “He was very warm and friendly.”

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The timing of the encounter added a certain gravity to their conversation. Two days earlier, two Jews had been stabbed in an antisemitic terror attack in Golders Green, one of London’s largest Jewish neighborhoods, the latest in a long string of such incidents across the United Kingdom. Earlier that week, while at an engagement in New York, Queen Camilla had received a copy of Conversations With My Rabbi, an upcoming book by Nikki Goldstein and Rabbi Eli Schlanger, the British-born Chabad rabbi murdered during the Bondi Chanukah Massacre.

Birnhack told the king how much the Jewish community, in Bermuda and far beyond, appreciated his friendship toward the Jewish people and vocal opposition to antisemitism.

The King told Rabbi Birnhack about his paternal grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, who sheltered a Jewish family in Athens during the Holocaust.
The King told Rabbi Birnhack about his paternal grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, who sheltered a Jewish family in Athens during the Holocaust.

Then King Charles began to speak about his family’s long history of standing with the Jewish community. He told Rabbi Birnhack about his paternal grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, who had lived in Nazi-occupied Athens during the Holocaust, and at significant personal risk, sheltered a Jewish family and distributed food to persecuted Jews despite being under surveillance by the Gestapo. She never spoke of what she had done. The family, the King said, did not discuss it much.

Years after the war, Yad Vashem recognized Princess Alice as Righteous Among the Nations. She later asked to be buried in Jerusalem, and was laid to rest on Har Hazeitim, the Mount of Olives. The King visited her grave during a 2020 trip to Israel as the Prince of Wales.

“It was deeply moving to see how much the King cares, and how much his family’s commitment to standing with the Jewish community resonates with him personally,” Birnhack said.

With the afternoon approaching evening, the rabbi departed Government House as fast as protocol allowed. Guests were already arriving at his house for another royal visit: The Shabbat Queen.