Rabbi Eliahu Birnbaumis the director of Ohr Torah Stone’s Beren-Amiel and Straus-Amiel Emissary Training Institutes, with over 300 rabbinical and educational emissaries currently serving Jewish communities, campuses and congregations across the globe.
The recent kidnapping and murder of Chabad emissary Rabbi Zvi Kogan in Abu Dhabi, along with the recommendation from the Israeli government to avoid non-essential travel to the UAE, has created not only deep sadness, but a large disconnect with the sense of security I felt during my visit to the country, just two weeks ago and as someone who knows the local Jewish community well.
As Jews, our presence in Muslim countries is often accompanied by many fears and anxieties. But for me, as someone with a distinctly Jewish appearance, including not only a long beard but also a prominent kippah on my head, this has not been the feeling during my visits to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. While in other Muslim countries I sometimes wear a hat, I felt welcomed as a Jew on the streets of Abu Dhabi—where vendors and passersby greeted me with "Salaam Alaikum."
For this reason, the news of Rabbi Kogan’s kidnapping and murder was a great and tragic shock. Until recent days, the Emirates had been a symbol of both coexistence and security. For more than a decade, both the ruling regime and the Jews living there have been doing everything they can to build an ideal society living in harmony. One, clear symbol of this was the establishment of the Abrahamic House—a 7,000-square-meter complex that includes a synagogue, mosque, and church, built around a central waterway. This is the harmony and vision that the UAE government seeks to present to its residents and the world, both ideologically and practically.
It’s important to understand that the creation of Jewish life in the UAE, which began even before the Abraham Accords, differs from what we are used to seeing in other Muslim countries. In 2010, Jews began arriving in the Emirates, mainly to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, establishing businesses and homes in a fast-growing global economic hub, creating a Jewish community from scratch in a Muslim country.
Unlike in places like Algeria, Libya and Morocco, where there were ancient Jewish communities lasting until the establishment of the state of Israel, there was not a significant historic presence of Jews in the UAE. That makes the modern movement of Jews to the Emirates a creation of a new reality, not based on shared history or a return to the past. At the same time, the goal of the Jews in the Emirates is to renew a model of Jewish life in a Muslim country, based on coexistence and sensitivity to the political issues of the global agenda.
Community leaders in Dubai aim to build a Jewish future not only through constructing buildings but by shaping a new Jewish community in a Muslim country and developing Jewish life with a unique character that aligns with the compassion and tolerance ethos of the UAE. Jews who have come to the country believe that their presence strengthens the Abraham Accords, and serves as a model for normalizing relations and daily coexistence between Jews and Muslims everywhere.
Indeed, according to the local constitution, Islam is the official religion of the UAE. However, at the same time, the country has adopted an admirable stance of respect for other religions, and the local government demonstrates a positive and supportive attitude towards the Jewish community and Jewish life in the country. The combination of religious tolerance and strict laws against violence is what created the feeling that it was safer to walk with a kippah in Abu Dhabi than in Paris, Amsterdam or other European cities where Jews have recently been harassed and attacked. And I believe this feeling of peace and security in the country will be maintained in the future. It must; for everyone’s sake.
I am not a security expert, but as a Jewish person and a leader of Jewish communities abroad, I believe it is important and necessary for Jews to continue moving proudly, freely and normally around the world, including in the UAE. Otherwise, we create a situation where we enter hiding, live in ghettos, live as forced converts—and that is not Jewish life. It is especially not the sort of life that Rabbi Zvi Kogan exemplified.