In Dubai, a Jewish community has emerged that remains humble, welcoming, and sincere
Text and Photos by Ari Z. Zivotofsky and Ari Greenspan
Like many of our fellow travelers, we, too, were excited about the possibility of a peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and wonder what the current normalization between the Saudis and Iran will portend.
We’d all heard the rumors about how for years the Jewish State has been in contact with Riyadh, and we would have liked to be able to travel on our Israeli passports to the vast oil-rich country where non-Islamic displays are currently forbidden. For now, though, we’re happy that we can travel to Dubai and the rest of the UAE and visit the small, nascent Jewish communities in the Emirates.
While Dubai is known for its opulence — the tallest, the biggest, the most expensive, the grandest, the deepest, the widest are the superlatives that describe this city — we were not there to see the shiny, fun, brash side of the country but to experience a unique phenomenon in the Jewish world today: the emergence of a new Jewish community smack in the middle of a Muslim-majority country. In the middle of this popular tourist destination — with its huge artificial islands, the most expensive hotel (7-star) in the world, the world’s tallest building, an indoor ski slope and the most visited mall on the globe with 1,200 stores and 50 million annual visitors — one can find solid evidence of a growing Jewish community: prepackaged OU-certified kosher meals.
Create a free account to keep reading.
