The Jewish community’s furtive Friday night Shabbat meal has transformed into celebrations at two cavernous banquet halls with spillover seating for Israeli visitors. A 12-foot (3.5-meter) Hanukkah menorah appeared under the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, where Jews gathered to light the candles and take selfies as festive Hebrew songs blared across the massive fountain downtown.

The modest expat Jewish community in the federation of seven sheikhdoms kept a low profile and prayed in an unmarked villa.īut the arrival of 70,000 Israeli tourists, according to travel agents’ estimates, on 15 daily nonstop flights in December changed everything. Despite the countries’ long-secret ties, the UAE had considered Israel a political pariah over the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The dizzying pace of normalization has stunned even the skeptics. But in Dubai the sight of his kippah prompts “Emiratis to come up and tell me ‘Shalom,'” he said. Her French father, Igal Azerad, said he always hides his skullcap in his pocket for fear of assault on the streets of Paris.

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