JERUSALEM (AP) – Half a year after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain established diplomatic relations with Israel, discreet Jewish communities in the Gulf Arab states that once lived in the shadow of the Arab-Israeli conflict are taking on a more public profile.
Kosher food is now available. Jewish holidays are celebrated openly. There is even a religious court that is beginning to resolve issues such as marriages and divorces.
“Slowly, slowly, it is improving,” said Ebrahim Nonoo, the leader of the Jewish community in Bahrain, who recently hosted an online Purim holiday for Jews in the Arab region of the Gulf.
Nonoo is one of the founders of the Association of Jewish Communities in the Gulf, a new umbrella group for small Jewish populations in the six Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Their goal is to gain greater acceptance of Jewish life in the region.
“It will take some time before we see a Jewish restaurant or a kosher restaurant springing from somewhere,” said Nonoo, a former member of parliament in Bahrain.
Even a modest online gathering, such as the Feast of Purim, would have been inconceivable a few years ago, when relations with Israel were taboo and Jews kept their identities out of the public for fear of offending Muslim hosts.
That changed with last year’s agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which brought thousands of Israeli tourists and businessmen to the region and led to a new industry of Jewish weddings and other holidays for Israeli visitors. The Emirati and Bahraini authorities have launched a public relay to cultivate the image of a Muslim paradise of inclusion and tolerance for Jews, in stark contrast to regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.
“A door has been opened,” said Elie Abadie, the new senior rabbi of the Jewish Council of the Emirates. “I think there is more openness and more welcome and enthusiasm for the presence of a Jewish community or Jewish individuals or Jewish tradition and culture.”
Abadie, born in Lebanon, a member of the Association of Jewish Gulf Communities, said he was confident the change would take place across the Gulf, not just in the United Arab Emirates.
The association aims to provide support and services for small Jewish populations in Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. These could include kosher certifications for hotels, restaurants and food, a rabbinical court and pastoral guidance for religious events such as bar mitzvahs, circumcisions and funerals.
Their small Jewish populations are made up almost of foreign nationals who have come to the region for business. Only Bahrain has a deep-rooted Jewish community. About 80 of its members are descendants of Iraqi Jews who arrived in the late 19th century in search of trade opportunities.
The Jewish community in the UAE is the largest, with about 1,000 members. He is also one of the newest and Abadie said he has to “start from scratch”.
Only about 200 are active members of the community. The rest, like most Jews in the Arab states of the Gulf, keep a low profile. Given the growing enthusiasm for Jewish life in the UAE, Abadie said he expects “more of them to come to light.”
Jewish communities had flourished throughout the Islamic world for centuries. For long periods, they enjoyed a protected status and occasionally, as in medieval Muslim Andalusia, they prospered in a golden age of coexistence. Most of these communities disappeared after the founding of Israel in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled or fled.
Given the large number of Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptians and Pakistanis living in the Arab Gulf countries, some Jews have felt uncomfortable in recent years sharing their religious identity in public. Residence permits in the United Arab Emirates, for example, require applicants to declare their religion, and “Jewish” is not an option.
Most Arab states have conditioned a normalization of diplomatic ties with Israel to end the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the Israeli occupation of the land Palestinians are seeking for an independent state.
But recently, these attitudes have eroded among Arab leaders, even though hostility toward Israel – in part because of its policies toward the Palestinians – has persisted among their populations.
The Arab monarchies in the Gulf have a few remnants scattered by past Jewish communities, said Jason Guberman, executive director of the Sephardic American Federation.
Saudi Arabia is home to sites that predate the emergence of Islam in the 7th century, and Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman have old Jewish cemeteries. The UAE in Ras al-Khaimah is home to a lone Jewish tombstone, possibly from a traveling merchant – just like most Jews arriving in Dubai today.
“Jews have been in the Gulf for a very long time, and now it’s kind of a return to this historical pattern of people coming to trade,” Guberman said, adding that it’s very interesting to see some of this return of the pluralist past Middle East. ”
Jean Candiotte, a seven-year-old New York TV director who has been in Dubai, said the new atmosphere is liberating.
“I was this little Jewish family. We will find each other in hidden ways and everyone thought they were alone, “she said. “We were sensitive to the fact that we were in a Muslim country and we didn’t know if everyone was ready for us.”
“Now it feels exactly the opposite,” she said. “I really feel that I can be here myself, participating more openly in Jewish ceremonies and celebrations. Jewish life here is more like Jewish life anywhere else. ”
However, this new reality remains fragile. Some countries have changed more slowly. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have long been criticized for promoting anti-Semitic attitudes in textbooks.
Security remains a concern, as illustrated by the recent attack on an Israeli-owned ship in the Persian Gulf. Israel has blamed the enemy Iran and officials fear that other Jewish and Israeli targets could be vulnerable. Many Jews in the region keep their religious identities a secret.
A Jewish businessman who has lived and worked in Oman for decades has said he is one of 20 Jews living in the sultanate.
He said the country had a more tolerant approach to religious diversity than its neighbors, but insisted on anonymity because he was concerned about the repercussions of local officials.
During the coronavirus pandemic, he said the Zoom Sabbath services organized by the Jewish community in the United Arab Emirates on Friday night were a lifeline for him. He said he hoped the new Gulf communal organization “would generate a sense of security to get out of the closet, so to speak.”
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Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre of Dubai, UAE, contributed to the report.