The tribulations of the self-proclaimed “chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia”

2023-09-18 20:00:09
Jacob Herzog, in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), November 30, 2021. FAYEZ NURELDINE / AFP

In this land of the two holiest places of Islam, the “chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia” officiates. Jacob Herzog claimed this title two years ago. In the streets of Riyadh, this Hasidic Jew from the Chabad movement does not go unnoticed with his long beard and his costume typical of Orthodox Jews. He even likes to broadcast videos of himself dancing in the street with Saudis, laughing at this incongruous encounter.

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The forty-year-old, a native of New York, who left for Israel at a young age, had already traveled through Iran and Malaysia when he heard, in 2018, about Neom, the futuristic city under construction in the northwest of the kingdom. , which the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed Ben Salman, intends to showcase his modernizing ambitions and which, to this end, could obtain extraterritorial status. “The concept of a city of 7 million people, with laws separate from the rest of the kingdom, fascinated me. I told myself that we would have to meet the spiritual needs of people of other religions who would live there”says Rabbi Herzog from Israel, where he says he stayed for the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.

He then sets out to see with his own eyes this Arabia in search of openness, determined to break with the rigorism of Wahhabi Islam, where expatriates flock. “Whatever people say about Arabia, Jews and Muslims have always worked side by side there. The last Jews left in 1945 but, for fifty years, Jewish expatriates have worked for Aramco [la compagnie pétrolière nationale] without having to hide”defends Rabbi Herzog.

Without anyone’s approval

He made his calculations – without guarantee of scientificity: “Among an expatriate population of approximately 750,000 people, there are 2% of Jews from the United States, France, Great Britain, Latin America… who have no structure for their spiritual needs. » Determined to test the willingness of the Saudi authorities to accept him as rabbi, he improvised a Jewish center in Riyadh, whose doors are open to passing visitors and expatriates.

Rabbi Herzog reported his action to the authorities “as a courtesy and to convince them of the added value of [sa] presence “. However, it was without anyone’s approval, and without any other contender for the position, that he proclaimed himself “chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia”. “I don’t have to hide my identity, Saudi Arabia has no problem with the Jewish people. We do nothing in our rites that contradicts Islam: we even replace wine with grape juice to sedate it. [le repas de la Pâque juive] », he emphasizes. It does not carry out any conversion. It also does not carry out interreligious dialogue as in Abu Dhabi where the Emirati authorities inaugurated the Abrahamic Family House in 2019, a complex which houses a mosque, a church and a synagogue.

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