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David Shasha
A Rabbi Takes His Family to Dubai: The Arab World’s New Kosher Vacation Mecca
By: Stu Halpern
Our quick family vacation, our first since making aliyah to Israel from New Jersey a few months ago, was to Dubai. It began with a charmingly warm welcome from the kandura-clad passport control officer at Dubai International Airport, who invited our kids to stamp their own passport and welcomed them in crisp English. Back in Israel, it ended, to put it lightly, in contrasting form.
Landing back in Tel Aviv around midday Friday, sweaty, tired, and anxious to get home in time for Shabbat, we tried in vain, using our broken Hebrew, to hail a taxi. “What do you mean you want your family of five to sit in one cab?! You need two cabs!” came the first response. “I’m not going as far as Modi’in today so I will not take you,” came the next. “What do you mean you can’t pay cash?! Who doesn’t carry cash?!” came the third (all this in angry Hebrew, of course). Finally, we managed to be rescued by a friendly airport taxi coordinator, who hailed a minivan for us and our bags—only to have that driver insist that I download a new app that links directly to my bank account and begrudgingly accept my multiple reassurances that we possess Israeli credit cards. Home has its own distinct charms, of course, but this wasn’t exactly the red-carpet treatment we’d received from the Emiratis.
Visiting Dubai from Israel is like the classic New York-to-Miami vacation Modern Orthodox Jews like myself are generally familiar with: Three-hour flight. New mix of kosher restaurants. Inexpensive hotels. Lots of Israelis all around. Our itinerary, which included suggestions from a friend and things I had scouted on a quick work trip I'd taken the previous year, amounted to a mad dash through the city’s family-friendly hits.
First stop was the towering Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, which I had first glimpsed in 2011 while clinging to my movie theater chair, nails dug into my seat cushions, hoping Tom Cruise’s suction cups wouldn’t fail him in the showstopping scene in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, unquestionably the greatest action movie of all time. (Spoiler alert: He didn’t fall.) The views of downtown Dubai, however far your eyes will take you before the Middle East fog kicks in, are spectacular. The borderline Tower of Babel vibes are kind of discomforting, but the interminable trip down was redeemed by the near-spiritual experience of joining hundreds of fellow tourists in watching, after evening set in, the Dubai Fountain dance to Enrique Iglesias’ “Hero” (Spanish version).
After a kosher breakfast in the hotel alongside fellow travelers from the United Kingdom and the United States, we visited the world’s largest natural flower garden (everything here seems to be “the world’s largest”), featuring Smurf Village and animatronic ballerina dancers.
Passing numerous “Ramadan Kareem” signs, we grabbed lunch at Mul Ha-Yam (Hebrew for “next to the sea”), a kosher pasta place with a view of the Burj Al Arab, which advertises itself as the world’s only seven-star hotel. I’m no expert here, but I think the official rankings experts haven’t yet formally passed five. After lunch we checked out La Mer, an area straight out of Tel Aviv, with art deco shops along the beach, plus the added luxury of a Dunkin Donuts. Then it was off to a safari with Captain Adil. I have my doubts about his military service, but he did wear a white cap that seemed official. An extremely warm and kind immigrant from India (“I love Israel!”), he guided us through ATV driving, camel riding, dune bashing (so nauseating, we asked him to stop around five minutes in, and he graciously obliged), and sand boarding. We passed on the fire show and the all-you-can-eat buffet, having, as would any good Jew, brought along peanut butter sandwiches in Ziploc bags.
Settling back into our hotel after a marathon day, I was surprised to get a call from the good captain long after he had dropped us off. “I noticed you accidentally overpaid me by $100,” he said. “I am sending my friend to your hotel to return the money.” I don’t know who is in charge of the military hierarchy in the United Arab Emirates, but if you ask me, the captain should be bumped up to major.
The rest of the trip included an indoor souk, the Dinosaur Park (more animatronics, less flowers) that only opens at 4 p.m. because of the daytime heat, dinner at the Kosher Place (points for literalism), and a day pass at the Atlantis. Sitting there watching the dolphins do their spinning-in-the-air thing, we bumped into a family from Bat Yam, Israel. I struck up a conversation, and they asked us how our aliyah has been so far. “Kef,” I awkwardly replied, using the Israeli word for “fun.” “Here in Dubai it is more kef,” they replied.
A few days after our trip, as we sat in the Israeli DMV to convert our American drivers’ licenses, we were, once again, anxious and nervous, kids in tow, bracing for all manner of linguistic and logistical challenges. A Yemenite office worker, a sparkle in his eye, reassured us all would be okay. Then he asked, “Is this your whole family?”
“Yes," my wife and our three kids replied.
“Nu, weren’t there twelve tribes in Israel?” he said.
Dancing fountains, self-proclaimed military and hotel rankings, and massive malls are pretty great. But you know what? It was good to be home.
Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His edited books include the recently released Esther in America, the first full-length treatment of the Megillah’s interpretation in and impact on the United States, as well as Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth and Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.
From Tablet magazine The Scroll, April 18, 2022