Growing Jewish Community Goes Big for Passover in Another Dubai First
Jews have established the first new congregations in an Arab nation since the establishment of Israel in 1948
DUBAI—This year the Jewish celebration of Passover, which began on Friday, is being celebrated in the United Arab Emirates, where a small Jewish community has established the first new congregations in an Arab nation since the founding of Israel in 1948.
Jewish immigrants see Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E.’s capital, as havens from anti-Semitism that also have the benefit of low taxes and relaxed Covid rules. The country’s strict laws against hate speech toward any religion—not just Islam—leave some Jews feeling safer wearing a yarmulke in Dubai than they do in some Western cities.
The Jewish presence is as visible as it has ever been for the weeklong Passover holiday. In a first for the U.A.E., two dozen Jewish residents gathered at a private home in Dubai last month to bake matzo, the unleavened bread that is integral to Passover celebrations. The organizers also distributed hundreds of pounds of matzo in the country and neighboring ones. Similar events took place in Abu Dhabi.
Passover seders, the meals that tell the biblical story of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, are drawing Jews in hotels and residences across Dubai and Abu Dhabi—with the support of U.A.E. authorities. One Jewish congregation advertised the “Pesach of your dream in the heart of Dubai,” using another name for passover. About 1,000 Israelis and American Jews from abroad are expected to attend events, candle lightings and prayers this week.
Jews in the United Arab Emirates had for years kept their culture and religion from public view. They say a game changer was the Abraham Accords, U.S.-brokered deals in 2020 to normalize relations between Israel and four Arab states, including the U.A.E., that reshaped Middle East diplomatic relations.
For 50 years, Edwin Shuker sought a return to the Arab world after fleeing Iraq as a 16-year-old Jew facing persecution. He’s back in the Middle East. A Londoner who plans to buy a home within walking distance of one of Dubai’s Jewish congregations, Mr. Shuker settled last year in the U.A.E. as part of the region’s first new Jewish community in decades.
“I cannot describe the joy of walking and hearing my mother tongue, hearing the Arab neighbors that I grew up with, and to find it in such an atmosphere of total safety,” said Mr. Shuker, 66 years old. “I never thought I would see that in an Arab country.”
The Jewish population has grown to roughly 2,000, according to Jews leading congregations, dividing from a few dozen in just one congregation into at least four groups, which range from liberal to orthodox.
They have begun building the infrastructure of Jewish life: kindergartens, synagogues, kosher caterers and restaurants and even a mikvah, a ritual bath. Their hope is to create a permanent place for Jews among the mosaic of foreigners who make up 90% of the U.A.E.’s population.
Rabbi Mendel Duchman reads prayers in Dubai before sunset during a children's Shabbat dinner earlier this year.
Children in Dubai explore traditional Shabbat activities at Mini Miracles Nursery, the Emirate's first secular Jewish nursery school, in February. Inaugurated in January 2021, the nursery caters to all children but has dedicated extra-curricular activities tailored to the community's Jewish population.
The U.A.E is an autocratic state, with Islam as its official religion. There is little room for open discussion of political views, meaning its new Jewish residents hesitate to discuss Israeli policy in public despite the recent normalization agreement.
However, the country allows expatriates a largely Western lifestyle and in recent years has introduced longer-term visas and policies, such as decriminalizing cohabitation for unmarried couples and consumption of alcohol without a license, aimed at attracting more white-collar international expertise.
Countries including Iran, Yemen and Libya remain officially hostile toward Jews and Israel. The region’s volatile politics and history of persecution of Jews means the fledgling community in the U.A.E. can’t be certain it will be long lasting.
Judaism has never been part of public life in the U.A.E. Arabs from other parts of the Middle East, as well as Iran, have criticized the U.A.E.’s warmth toward Israel and Judaism. A recent interview on Dubai’s state-run television channel by a U.A.E.-based rabbi faced criticism on social media from some viewers who said it failed to acknowledge Palestinian influence over Israeli cuisine.
Some Jews in the U.A.E. said they still feel uncomfortable revealing their religion to colleagues from the Palestinian territories and other Arab countries. Others keep their heritage secret because they believe that being a Jew might affect their business relationships with clients here.
In Morocco, a party to the Abraham Accords, a small Jewish community is growing. Another party, Bahrain, hosts a longstanding Jewish community that is now raising funds to maintain its cemetery. Egypt, which isn’t in the accords but struck a peace deal with Israel in 1979, is renovating synagogues and permitting Holocaust remembrance. Last year, an American-Israeli rabbi visited Saudi Arabia, despite it having no formal ties with Israel and restrictions on practicing any religion other than Islam.
Jewish rabbis and business executives have learned to navigate bureaucracy in a country where non-Muslim practice is closely monitored and religious worship is regulated with permits.
“There was no playbook for this,” said Ross Kriel, a lawyer appointed as the Dubai government’s contact for establishing prayer services.
Ross Kriel, one of the founders of the Jewish community in the U.A.E., inside catering firm Kosher Arabia in Dubai. An employee at Kosher Arabia, the U.A.E.’s largest kosher-compliant kitchen, able to produce over 2,000 meals a day. Kosher Arabia made its debut a few months after the signing of the Abraham Accords.
Mr. Kriel estimates the Emirati community has attracted hundreds of new Jews since the Abraham Accords, mainly from Israel and Europe. Jews in Dubai helped host cultural events and nurtured commerce, participating in the recent visit of Israel’s president and head of state, Isaac Herzog.
Another crucial signal in recent years, some Jews said, was the Emirati effort in 2020 to evacuate some of the last Jews living in Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula state that has fought a war against Houthi militants. The U.A.E. resettled them permanently within its own borders.
Yousef al-Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador to the U.S. who helped negotiate the diplomatic accords with Israel, said all visitors and foreign residents should feel safe in his country. “Provided they’re not breaking laws, you will be treated just as everyone else,” Mr. Otaiba said.
More than 850,000 native Jews left Arab countries for the U.S., Europe and Israel during a violent period of riots and pogroms after World War II and then the establishment of Israel in 1948, according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dwindling pockets remained.
There was never a significant Jewish presence in the collection of Persian Gulf sheikhdoms that in 1971 unified as one nation, the U.A.E., according to British historian Tudor Parfitt, who studies Jewish communities around the world. So the U.A.E never developed the same entrenched animosities as much of the region, he said.
The total number of Jews in the U.A.E. in the late 2000s was around 40, and they purposely kept a low profile and didn’t flag their existence to U.A.E. authorities, according to Giacomo Arazi, an early member. Events beyond their control gave them pause, such as the 2010 assassination of a Hamas operative in Dubai, blamed on Israeli intelligence services, and conflicts between the Islamist movement and Israel.
This community often met at Mr. Arazi’s home in Dubai and began vetting new members and non-Jews who attended events following the Mossad hit, he said. Things got more formal with the arrival in 2013 of Mr. Kriel, an orthodox Jew who for years had visited Dubai from his native South Africa. Another newcomer, Alex Peterfreund, from Belgium, was the first who could read aloud Hebrew texts. Before their arrival, the community was more secular and services were usually conducted by visiting rabbis.
Staff run food to tables packed with customers at the Israeli Kosher restaurant TLV in the H Hotel in Dubai.
Together, they borrowed a Torah scroll from a synagogue in London by convincing a member to carry it through Dubai’s airport in a bag for golf clubs.
“Wearing the kippah in Antwerp and London, you risk your life. People are spitting in your face, they can attack you,“ said Mr. Peterfreund, using the Hebrew word for yarmulke. ”Here, I never had that.”
After Mr. Kriel’s arrival, Jews decided to better connect with the government and business community in Dubai. They sought the help of an American Jew, Eli Epstein, an aluminum executive who had visited the U.A.E. for years and built a relationship with Emirati leaders including Mohamed Alabbar, a billionaire real estate tycoon close to Dubai’s ruler.
Mr. Alabbar, a practicing Muslim, said at the time that the Islam his parents taught him was tolerant of other religions. “Islam is compatible with your presence here and I want to welcome you,” Mr. Alabbar remembered telling Jews gathered at Mr. Arazi’s house, which was known as the Villa and effectively became the U.A.E.’s first synagogue.
In an interview, Mr. Alabbar said he related with the Dubai Jewish community’s feeling of being an outsider, having lived as a young Muslim in Seattle and Singapore. “I felt that they needed someone to hold their hand,” he said.
In December 2018, the Jews revealed themselves in a series of news articles. The U.A.E. government had designated 2019 the “year of tolerance” to reinforce the idea that, in a region torn by conflict, people of diverse cultures and religions can find common ground. That year, the government hosted Pope Francis for the first visit by a sitting pope to the Arabian Peninsula. The Jewish community contributed to a book outlining the diversity of religions in the U.A.E.
Around that time, Messrs. Kriel and Peterfreund and others formed the Jewish Council of the Emirates to formally represent it, and appointed Yehuda Sarna as chief rabbi from his base in New York. The U.A.E. announced that it would build a compound featuring a mosque, church and synagogue in Abu Dhabi called the Abrahamic Family House, and that Israel would have a pavilion at Dubai’s Expo 2020 world fair.
Rabbi Levi Duchman, left, sits with a community member in Dubai. Hailing from Brooklyn, N.Y., Rabbi Duchman moved to the U.A.E. in 2015 and was the country’s first resident chief rabbi. He currently serves as the head of the Jewish Community Center of the U.A.E.
Levi Duchman, a rabbi who moved to the U.A.E. from New York, obtained a license in 2020 to conduct prayer in Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E. capital. At the same time, he ran services in Dubai and sought a permit for prayer from the emirate’s authority that regulates religious communities.
Mr. Duchman, who speaks some Arabic and is part of a New York-based ultraorthodox Chabad movement, began calling himself “Rabbi to the United Arab Emirates.”
He launched a kosher certification agency, offering to certify hotels and restaurants, and an organization called the Jewish U.A.E., which like the Jewish Council for the Emirates, seeks to promote Jewish life in the country. “I’m here to support the community with unconditional love,” he said.
In part to counter Rabbi Duchman, the Jewish Council of the Emirates appointed its own rabbi from the U.S., Elie Abadie, to be based in the U.A.E., according to people familiar with the appointment.
Elie Abadie, the Senior Rabbi of the Jewish Council of the Emirates, begins prayers before the official start of Shabbat on Feb. 11 in Dubai.
“It is normal, where Jews live, that as the community grows and evolves, that they will subdivide according to religious rites,” said Mr. Abadie, who was born in Lebanon and speaks Arabic.
At a prayer service on a Saturday earlier this year, dozens gathered to hear celebrity Rabbi Shmuley Boteach give a sermon on the Holocaust. Mr. Shuker, the Iraqi-born Jew, was asked to say a weekly prayer for the U.A.E., its royals and armed forces that the community first began saying in 2014 at the Villa.
“May this land and all its people be blessed with stability, prosperity and peace,” Mr. Shuker said.