Chabad in Saudi Arabia openly offers Jewish religious services to Jewish expats
'There are many Jewish expats coming to the kingdom to work,' says Saudi chief rabbi
The New York-born dual American-Israeli Chabad Rabbi Jacob Yisrael Herzog, who has proclaimed himself the first chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia, says that Jewish expats working in the Saudi Kingdom are coming out of the shadows in the Muslim nation.
“There are many Jewish expats coming to the kingdom to work,” Herzog told i24NEWS.
Of the 75,000 Americans currently working in Saudi Arabia, reportedly about 1% are Jewish, and there are more coming from France, the United Kingdom and South America.
Rabbi Herzog estimates that some “15,000 Jewish people work in the kingdom on different employment contracts.”
The rabbi made a decision to take care of the needs of the sizable Jewish community in the kingdom, including keeping Pesach and other holidays.
“There was nobody there, and there was this perception that it would be forbidden to do something like this in Saudi Arabia,” the rabbi said.
“After I aligned myself with what I want to do, and the current situation in Saudi Arabia and Islam in general, I realized that with the Jewish people, they won’t have a problem,” he added.
However, Herzog noted that being based in Saudi Arabia also means there are limitations as to what he can and cannot do, such as serving alcohol with holiday meals.
“Of course, on Passover, we don't have wine at our seder, we have grape juice," Herzog explained. “We basically looked at the current Saudi law book, and we tested the waters.”
Chabad plans to build a Jewish infrastructure for servicing the needs of Jewish expats.
Herzog said the Chabad leaders “want to build a proper center, a proper mikvah ritual bath, a synagogue, a day school for children, and whatever a Jewish person in the kingdom would need in order to have a fulfilling Jewish life.”
The rabbi claimed that Saudis were very welcoming to other cultures and religions.
“Everywhere I go, in Sunni areas, Shia areas, all over the country, the Saudis are very welcoming to other cultures, to other religions. They have a very deep knowledge of who the Jewish people are, what the Jewish people are all about… Thank God, they have been very welcoming and very respectful,” Herzog said.
The All Israel News Staff is a team of journalists in Israel.
