Bridges in the Gulf

Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE (United Arab Emirates), is a conservative, religious Muslim country boasting a spectacular royal palace, a luxury hotel where all things drip gold (including 24-karat edible shavings on the coffee), a  grand mosque that holds over 41,000 people, and stores selling camel milk chocolate. Yet it was recently instrumental in a dramatic, out-of-the-spotlight operation: saving the lives of the last Jews of Yemen.

It was a bittersweet chesed on the part of the Emiratis, as it essentially turned off the lights on the 3,000-year-old Jewish community, the oldest in the Diaspora — ending the ancient Jewish presence in Yemen for good.

We spent a week in the Persian Gulf, visiting and baking shemurah matzah with Jews in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Dubai. But our visit to Abu Dhabi would be a bit different — our main goal in visiting Abu Dhabi specifically, was to spend time with these very last Jews to leave Yemen and learn about their life and their customs.

Each of the Emirates has its own character. Dubai, as we found, is consistent with its reputation as Western, cosmopolitan, and flashy, with less of a flavor of local traditional culture. Abu Dhabi, on the other hand — a mere hour away by car — is more sedate, traditional, and conservative. As in Dubai, there is an emerging expat Jewish community as well as Chabad, but Abu Dhabi also has this small but tenacious Yemenite Jewish community.