The World Zionist Organization has selected a young couple as pioneer permanent emissaries to the Jewish community in Dubai.
According to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, which said that it received an update on this from WZO, Yaacov and Zolty Eisenstein will establish and run a kindergarten to educate Jewish kids about the heritage of their people and the State of Israel.
The Eisensteins also will create an ulpan for the study of Hebrew and organize community events during Jewish holidays.
Their mission is part of the “Ben Ami” program of the WZO Center for Religious Affairs in the Diaspora, which has 36 emissaries operating in 23 countries. The Eisensteins have the distinction of becoming the first emissaries sent to a Jewish community in an Arab country.
“This is an important milestone in the history of the Zionist movement through all its years of existence,” said WZO chairman Avraham Duvdevani.
The “milestone” was made possible by the U.S.-brokered “Abraham Accord” that normalizes relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the PMO stated, claiming that the subject of Jewish emissaries to the Gulf state was even discussed during meetings in Abu Dhabi this week between members of the Israeli delegation to the UAE, headed by National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat, and their Emirati counterparts.
Ben-Shabbat joined Jared Kushner, senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and other Israeli and American officials on the first-ever commercial flight from Israel to the UAE on Aug. 31.
El Al Flight 971—numbered to represent the UAE’s international dialing code—made the trip in just three hours, having been granted permission to traverse Saudi Arabia’s airspace, usually off-limits to Israeli air traffic.
