As Thousands Of Israeli Tourists Visit Dubai, A Small Jewish Community Gets A Boost
In the six years that Brooklyn native Rabbi Levi Duchman has lived in the United Arab Emirates, he's never been this overwhelmed.
On Hanukkah, the 27-year-old rabbi hurried from one party to another, dashing into a Dubai Hilton hotel ballroom to briefly light candles with a group of Orthodox Jewish tourists from Israel, many of them visiting an Arab country for the first time.
One of them approached the rabbi with a query: Did the local Starbucks use camel milk, which is not kosher, in its coffee machines?
"I think it's fine, but you have to find out," Duchman advised.
Days later, the rabbi broke ground on the UAE's first mikvah, a Jewish ritual bath. Meanwhile, his brother, a butcher and kosher food supervisor at a year-old, high-end kosher restaurant in
