Meet Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Herzog, the Rabbi of Riyadh
AT first glance, the video seems like a hoax. Surely these are actors — someone staging a joke, aiming to go viral. After all, the scene defies logic, especially considering relations between Israel and the Arab world today as tensions rise in the face of Israel’s recent attack on Hamas operatives in Qatar and the Gaza war drags on. In the film, a tall, broad-shouldered rabbi, dressed in a black frock coat and homburg, dances hand in hand with an Arab man clad in flowing white robes and a red-checkered kaffiyeh. The pair sway to the beat of an unmistakably Arabic tune. After a few seconds, they part ways with a warm “shukran” — Arabic for thank you.
And while the footage is bizarre enough, it doesn’t stop there. The setting takes things up another notch — it isn’t a multicultural enclave in the US, or even East Jerusalem. It was filmed on the streets of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Welcome to the utterly unconventional world of Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Herzog — Manhattan native, IDF officer, Arabic speaker, serial entrepreneur, adoptee of Chabad and now self-styled Chief Rabbi of Saudi Arabia.
For many people, the clip of Rabbi Herzog dancing was unsettling, coming across as self-promotional kitsch, or a spiritual influencer’s PR stunt. Did a rabbi really need to be filmed dancing with an Arab in the middle of Riyadh?
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