Senior Jewish rabbi visits Abu Dhabi “Jewish community in the UAE is no longer a secret”
The Jewish community in the UAE is no longer a secret, and its presence can help ease the tension between Islam and Judaism, said Rabbi Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Boland, in an interview with the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National.
He also said that the Jewish community in the UAE and Muslim citizens must work together for peaceful coexistence and tolerance. “Jews and Muslims have lived together peacefully for a thousand years, but it was only in the past century that we came on this tremendous tension. Let’s diminish the tension.”
“I saw a small and vibrant Jewish community that wants to live here, wants to be Jewish, who feel comfortable being Jewish,” said Schudrich, who visited Abu Dhabi recently. “This is something that was not obvious three to five years ago. So the fact the newest Jewish community is in an Arab country is a tremendous statement.”
Last month, in an unprecedented escalation of the shame of the UAE’s normalization with Israel, the UAE authorities were secretly allowed to set up a synagogue in Dubai.
After meetings in Jewish homes in Dubai, they rented a villa in a quiet residential neighborhood for three years. The building contains a prayer area, a kitchen and a few bedrooms for visitors or members of the community who do not work on Saturday.
“We’ve come a long way since I first started to go to Dubai 30 years ago,” said Eli Epstein, a New York resident who helped set up the synagogue. ” and I was told to try and avoid using my surname because it sounds too Jewish.”
Rulers of the UAE are keen to show the state in a way that opens up and eases restrictions on religions other than Islam. They appointed a minister of tolerance, which recently sponsored a World Conference on Tolerance, which included 1,200 Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews and others from all over the world.
“I call upon you to work together to eliminate misunderstandings about different religions and cultures, pluralism must become a positive and creative force for development and stability,” Minister of Tolerance Sheikh Nahayan Ben Mubarak told delegates dining in an outdoor courtyard in Dubai.
Members of the Jewish synagogue in Dubai have long asked visitors not to disclose their location or write about their activities.
“I prefer not to live like Marano,” said Ross Krill, a Johannesburg-born lawyer, and community leader. “In the 15th century, people in Spain practiced Judaism secretly, after forced conversions to Christianity.
“The government’s attitude to our community is that they want us to feel comfortable being here, praying here, and doing business here,” he said.
On Saturdays and Jewish holidays, worshipers, usually a few dozen of the 150 members, as well as corporate and university visitors, gather in the villa whose windows allow a minaret to be seen, and although the Jewish community does not have a rabbi, They visit it from time to time.
When chanting of the weekly portion of the Torah wraps up, the prayer leader intones a traditional Jewish benediction, tailored to local circumstances: “Bless and protect, guard and assist, exalt, magnify, and uplift the president of the U.A.E., Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, and his deputy, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, and all the rulers of the other emirates and their crown princes.”
The synagogue was encouraged by Jewish groups such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Dubai Government and Mohammed Alabbar, Chairman of Emaar Properties, which built the 163-storey Khalifa tower.
When Epstein donated Bible books three years ago, he gave one of them with a velvet cap with an Arabic inscription embroidered with gold for the ferry, which he had known since they ran an aluminum project in the 1990s.
“For decades, anything Jewish was avoided in the Arab world, and explicit signs of Jewishness were risky,” says Ghanem Nuseibeh, a co-founder of political risk consultants Cornerstone Global Associates Ltd., who occasionally visits the synagogue. before the UAE began to change the reality.
Recently, the UAE hosted ministerial delegations and Israeli sports teams amid an unprecedented frequency of reports of secret normalization between Abu Dhabi and Israel, particularly in the field of military cooperation and espionage techniques.
The UAE is also openly involved in supporting the suspicious American Century Deal to put an end to the Palestinian cause, despite its recognition of occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
