Daily Briefing Apr. 19 – Dubai’s Jewish community comes fully out of the shadows

Welcome to The Times of Israel’s Daily Briefing: Your 15-minute audio update on what’s happening in Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish world, from Sunday through Thursday.

Today host Amanda Borschel-Dan is joined by The Times of Israel’s Ops&Blogs editor Miriam Herschlag, who discusses her recent trip to Dubai and its Jewish communities.

Herschlag’s first trip to the United Arab Emirates was in 2018 when she and a few other journalists were finally given the okay to write about Dubai’s decade-old Modern Orthodox Jewish community of expats.

Today, since the signing of the 2020 Abraham Accords, the Jewish communities there — now numbering at least three — are practicing their faith much more publicly and Jewish men feel comfortable walking the streets with their yarmulkes on their heads.

Herschlag attended the Dubai community’s first ceremony in honor of Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, and talks about a fledgling movement toward educating the public about the genocide of the Jews.

Discussed articles include:

Thoughts on Israel at 73 while flying over the Saudi desert

In new playground Dubai Israelis find parties, Jewish rites

For the first time, Dubai’s Jewish community steps hesitantly out of the shadows

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