Setting Facts on the Ground

If there were a global ranking of countries most central to Islam, Saudi Arabia would surely claim the top spot. It’s home to the religion’s holiest cities — Mecca and Medina — as well as the tomb of its prophet, Muhammad. Islam is the only officially recognized religion of the state. Against that background, it seems highly implausible that a functioning synagogue operates out of an apartment in Riyadh, complete with a rabbi who performs bar mitzvahs, oversees a kosher certification, offers spiritual support to the country’s Jews (yes, there are Jews in Saudi Arabia), and has even conducted Jewish weddings. But according to Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Herzog, this is just the beginning: Jewish life in Saudi Arabia, he says, is still in its infancy and has barely begun to tap into its full potential.

Much of Herzog’s optimism revolves around the monumental NEOM Project — an ambitious attempt to build a futuristic city in the Tabuk province of northwestern Saudi Arabia. Launched in 2017 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the project boasts a staggering budget exceeding $7 trillion and aims to employ hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands have already begun arriving, and, to Rabbi Herzog’s surprise and delight, a significant number of them are Jewish. Many have already turned to him to fulfill their spiritual needs.

“I’ve already done several bar mitzvahs in Riyadh,” Rabbi Herzog tells me in the living room of his home in Ramat Shlomo, Israel. “We’ve even performed chuppahs — mostly for couples who never had a religious ceremony. What I haven’t done yet in Saudi Arabia is a brit.” (Rabbi Herzog is also a certified mohel.)

And that’s not all. Rabbi Herzog imports chalav Yisrael dairy products from France and brings in kosher meat from the United States and Europe. “There was a time I did shechitah here in Saudi Arabia, but importing turned out to be more practical.” He’s even created his own kosher certification label, which oversees catering for events. At present, it is the sole kosher supervision operating in the kingdom’s hotels.

If this all sounds like self-promotion, Rabbi Herzog doesn’t mind. “Call the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia and ask them if they know of a rabbi. See where they send you.”

Herzog speaks wistfully of opening a kindergarten, and while he admits the idea is still premature, he’s already planning activities for the children of Jewish professionals relocating to Saudi Arabia for work.

He’s even raising funds to build a mikveh — and all of this in a country that does not recognize Judaism as a religion.

Which brings me to the obvious question. What about the authorities? Did they grant him formal permission? Is he violating any laws?

He waves away my concerns. Once again, his bold, unconventional approach worked in his favor.

“This isn’t the West, where you first get a permit and only then start working,” he explains. “Here it’s the opposite. You work — and the fact that nobody has stopped you means it’s allowed.”

He claims to know the culture well. “I understood, for instance, that one of their biggest concerns is that we don’t try to proselytize. So anytime a Muslim wanted to come visit us, I’d say, ‘You want to meet me on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? Fine. But if it’s Yom Kippur, I say no.’ Because many of them are curious, they want to see what this is about. And in America, fine — you can go to a synagogue and see. But here in Saudi Arabia, when we do something, it’s for Jews only. You have to draw a very clear line. Even if the person is intellectual and well-meaning, even if he just wants to observe. That’s a line we cannot cross.”

Opportunity Knocks

The roots of Rabbi Herzog’s interest in Saudia Arabia lie in what can only be called a textbook case of serendipity.

In 2007 he launched his own venture, Shneur Seeds, a company dedicated to exporting seeds to various parts of the world. And then the pivotal conversation took place. “A friend of mine from chutz l’Aretz — he’s not Jewish, but he’s had a big impact on my life, especially in business — said, ‘Jacob, you’ve got to go to Saudi Arabia.’ ” His reasoning was straightforward: the kingdom had emerged as a promising new market.

At this point, a bit of geopolitical context is essential. Since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman assumed power in 2017, Saudi Arabia has been undergoing a sweeping transformation. His ambitious blueprint, Vision 2030, aims to modernize the kingdom’s economy and soften its image in the eyes of the West. His plans include elements such as hosting major sporting events, easing restrictions on entertainment and gender segregation, and planning mammoth developments, like the NEOM Project.

And this is where Divine Providence — and a bit of youthful curiosity — played its part. After his family made aliyah from New York, when he was still a child, Rabbi Herzog was told he had to study a second language beyond Hebrew. Most of his peers opted for English, which obviously wasn’t an option for him, a native American. Instead, Yaakov Yisrael began learning Arabic. Years later, in the army, he honed his skills further, and his command of the language is a critical element of his success today.

“This friend of mine was talking to me about doing business in Saudi Arabia, and he introduced me to the CEO of NEOM,” Rabbi Herzog says. “But while he was talking, I was thinking something else entirely. If they want to build this huge city that’s going to bring in the best and the brightest from around the world — there are going to be Jews there, right?

“So I asked them, ‘What about religion? What’s the religious infrastructure going to be?’ They said the area would operate under a separate set of laws, but they didn’t really have an answer.”

That’s when Rabbi Herzog began to connect the dots. “NEOM was just one of the mega-projects underway. There were many others. And for all of them, they were bringing in consultants and specialists from across the globe — many of whom were Jewish.”

He did some back-of-the-envelope math. “At the time, there were about 100,000 foreign workers in the kingdom from the US. If even 1.5 to 2 percent were Jewish, that’s around 1,500 Jews right there. Then you’ve got French Jews, South African Jews, Belgian Jews… easily over 3,000 Jews in Saudi Arabia. That’s what grabbed my attention. The business side of things wasn’t what excited me.”

Could this be the opportunity he had been waiting for?

Dreaming Big

From a young age, Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Herzog was taught to pay close attention — not just to his own needs, but to the quiet signals coming from those around him. “I remember once asking my father if I could have fifty cents to buy a soda at school,” he recalls. “He gave me a dollar. ‘It’s only fifty cents!’ I told him.

“ ‘Maybe the friend next to you also wants one, and he doesn’t have money,’ he said to me. That moment stayed with me. Before you go off to enjoy something, look around. Maybe someone next to you is suffering. Maybe they’re hungry. It taught me a kind of sensitivity — to always be aware of the people around you.”

In retrospect, Rabbi Herzog sees that small exchange not just as a life lesson, but as an early form of shlichus — even before he identified with Chabad. “But for the past fifteen, maybe twenty years,” he says, “once I started getting closer to Chabad, I always knew I wanted to open a Beit Chabad.”

But while he harbored this dream for a while, he knew he needed the right setting to allow it take root. Rabbi Herzog is a man of action, a forceful personality with a commanding presence and a taste for challenge. “To be a rabbi in a quiet New Jersey suburb? That’s not for me,” he says, almost laughing. “I need somewhere with more action, more complexity. The people I work best with aren’t affiliated. They’re not connected to any community. Most of the chuppot and britot I do are for people who are coming in from the outside. And those are the people who, if they ask you something, they’re going to listen to what you say. I have no interest in being a rabbi of a community where everyone thinks they’re the rabbi and wants to argue about everything.”

“That’s what I was looking for,” he says. “A large-scale project.” So when he realized the latent opportunities available in Saudi Arabia, he realized he’d found a chance to satisfy his craving for impact.

“I said to myself: This is it. This is the challenge. There’s no shul, no Jewish infrastructure. Nothing.

“I want to open a Chabad house in Saudi Arabia,” I told my wife. “She looked at me. And then there was this silence — heavy silence you could cut with a knife. And then she said, ‘Look into it. Don’t drop all your other projects. But if you can show me there’s a place to live, and that this is real — b’ezrat Hashem, I’m in.’ ”

With the green light from his wife, it was time to start laying the groundwork.

News for the Jews

Launching a Beis Chabad in Saudi Arabia is not quite the same as opening one in Brooklyn or Boca Raton.

“The first thing I did was start reaching out to Jews who were living in Saudi Arabia,” Rabbi Herzog says, his casual tone belying the complexity of ferreting out Jews in a country where Judaism isn’t even an officially recognized religion.

He used social media for his search. “I went on LinkedIn and searched for classic Jewish surnames. I’d type in something like ‘Rosenfeld Saudi Arabia,’ and if I found someone, I’d message them.”

To his surprise, many replied. “Some would say, ‘Yes, I’ve been working here for three years,’ others five. That’s when I started realizing that the world has a major misconception about Saudi Arabia. There’s no anti-Semitism here. They may have a political issue with the State of Israel, but not with Jews. And as someone who’s very well-versed in the Middle East, in Islam, in regional politics, I realized something wasn’t adding up. The world thinks one thing — but the reality is something else entirely.”

It was here that a core aspect of Herzog’s personality came into play — his fearlessness.

“I said to myself: I need to see this with my own eyes. So I got a visa — it was right when they started offering tourist visas, around five or six years ago — and I told myself, I’m going to get off the plane exactly like this.” He gestures at his frock coat and wide-brimmed black hat. “I wasn’t going to hide in diplomatic areas. I was going to walk right through the streets of Riyadh like this.”

The logic, as he tells it, was simple: “People think if they wear a Yankees cap, they’ll blend in. But Arabs can tell you’re Jewish anyway — and worse, they can tell that you’re afraid. And when they sense fear, that’s when they pounce. It’s in their DNA.”

So off he went. Fully dressed in chassidic garb, beard and all, he strolled through some of Riyadh’s most down-to-earth neighborhoods. And not only did nothing happen — he wasn’t accosted, heckled, or followed—but people actually approached him. They greeted him, struck up conversations, even offered him coffee and gifts.

“That’s the Arab mentality,” Herzog says confidently. “They respect people who are proud of who they are — especially Jews. They know about Moshe Rabbeinu. They know about Yetzias Mitzrayim. They know what Shabbat is, what Yom Kippur is. So when they see a Jew eating pork or working on Shabbat, it causes a kind of cognitive dissonance for them. Because they know it’s wrong. They don’t understand our internal Jewish conflicts. So when they see someone like me — clearly identifiable, living by what I believe — it actually earns their respect.”

Convinced his instincts were right, Herzog called his wife from his hotel room. “This is the place,” he told her.

Back in Israel, he began preparing for his return. While futuristic developments like NEOM are located far from the capital, the executives, consultants, and project managers that power these initiatives tend to live in Riyadh. So Herzog knew he had to plant roots there. Ahead of his next trip, he preemptively reached out to the Jews he’d identified online. He let them know he’d be staying at a hotel in Riyadh for a week and that they were welcome to stop by.

“I’d invite them up to my room, help them put on tefillin, give a little shiur, listen to their stories, visit their homes.”

He did this again and again, for four months straight — each time doing weeklong stints in Riyadh, and word began to spread.

“People started saying, ‘There’s a rabbi in town!’ And not just Jews — gentile businessmen would tell their Jewish employees to go meet me. The Jews didn’t believe them, so the gentiles would actually send them the link to my website!”

Herzog invested a lot of effort into his online presence, which he says is now one of the primary ways he connects with his scattered flock.

After four months of commuting, he took the next step: He rented his own apartment in Riyadh, mezuzah on the door and all. It’s now the de facto Jewish center in the kingdom.

Silent Approval

One of Rabbi Herzog’s more provocative stances is the ease with which he refers to himself as the chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia. It’s a designation he coined himself, and one that raises eyebrows, but he stands by his title.

“I am the chief rabbi,” he insists.

I point out, again, that this can’t be technically true. There’s no official recognition, no communal infrastructure, and no government endorsement, but he isn’t deterred.

“It doesn’t have to be official. That’s irrelevant. The bottom line is: I’m the one in contact with the Jews here. I’m the link to the community. You have to understand — Saudi Arabia is the most important Muslim kingdom in the world. So how exactly this will work — internally, or with the wider Arab world — I don’t know. But the reality is, I get things done. We’re adding value to Saudi Arabia. I think they understand that. The rest is semantics.”

It’s an argument rooted in the region’s realities. In the Arab world, especially in absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia, legitimacy often comes not from paper but from presence.

And Rabbi Herzog is certain he has the backing of the one figure whose opinion actually matters: Mohammed bin Salman.

In Saudi Arabia, nothing happens without MBS’s nod. So I ask the obvious question: Has he ever met the crown prince?

“No, never,” Rabbi Herzog says. “But I’m very clear on the fact that he knows who I am, knows what I’m doing, and is clearly okay with it. If not, I would have heard about it.”

According to Rabbi Herzog, his work aligns well with Saudi Arabia’s new ethos — its campaign for modernization, diversification, and international acceptance. In that context, having a visible Jewish presence, even an unofficial one, becomes a kind of diplomatic currency.

“That’s my sales pitch,” he says. “I tell them, ‘Listen, if the world sees that you’re allowing this to happen, it’ll boost foreign investment.’ Think about how many people need to sign off on a major investment deal. There’s a lot of debt being raised, a lot of stakeholders involved. Many of them are Jewish — or even if they’re not, they’re watching. If they see that what you’re doing isn’t just talk, that there’s actually a guy walking around in a black hat in Riyadh, and the government is allowing some form of Jewish gathering, however modest — that builds confidence. That tells people the government is stable, progressive, pragmatic. So yes, we’re meeting the needs of Jews here. But more than that, we’re giving Saudi Arabia positive publicity. And it doesn’t cost them a thing.”

Well — at least not yet.

“If one day they decide they want to fund a Jewish center — and I think it would be in their best interest to do so, because they probably don’t want foreign entities meddling — I’ll probably be the guy.”

Rabbi Herzog maintains an impressive sangfroid in the face of the criticism he fields, from people who dislike his loud presence, his “in your face” approach. These are the voices that argue for discretion, for keeping a low profile, for blending in rather than standing out.

“Everyone is entitled to their own approach,” he says, “and my style may not be to everyone’s taste. That doesn’t concern me. I don’t care what people say about me. I make things happen. Thanks to what I do, fifty families are able to give their children chalav Yisrael milk every day. They can eat kosher food, not just in Riyadh, but in cities like Jeddah and Dammam. We organized a Pesach seder for several families. That’s what matters.”

Crossroads

There are 6,500 miles between New York and Riyadh. But it’s not only miles that separate his birthplace and the center of his life’s work today; his journey spanned more than just geography.

I was born in New York City — in Manhattan,” Rabbi Herzog says. His English is punctuated by frequent bursts of Hebrew, tinged with a heavy American accent. “Until the age of twelve, I went to Mesivta Tiferes Yerushalayim, the yeshivah of Rav Moshe Feinstein, and we lived in Greenwich Village.”

He recalls with reverence the proximity to giants. “We had interaction with them when I was younger. Around the time I was six, Rav Moshe began davening at home, and whoever earned a reward or did well would be invited to Shacharit in his house.”

“You don’t forget that,” he says, his voice softening. “It was a very influential place for me. Every morning you’d be davening in the beit medrash where people like Rav Moshe Feinstein prayed and learned. You saw the kollel guys — serious people — and even when I got kicked out of class, where would we go? Down to the beit medrash. In the end, it was a foundational experience.”

But before his bar mitzvah, the Herzogs had already made aliyah, a move that was fueled by his mother’s concern for her children’s Jewish future. “Life in the city was very interesting,” he says delicately. “My parents, but especially my mother, was very concerned about intermarriage. She came to the conclusion that the best way to prevent that was to move to Eretz Yisrael.”

The Herzogs settled in Jerusalem, a place that bore little resemblance to today’s sprawling metropolis. “It was a much smaller city — quieter, with fewer foreigners. When we moved to Shaarei Chesed, for example, I had the merit of meeting all the original residents. Today it’s an American neighborhood. Israelis call it ‘Ameridosing’ — they’ve taken away the essence, the soul of the old Jerusalem.”

As a child, he recalls, there were surreal moments of holiness tucked into the mundane. “We used to run into Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach on the street. He would talk to us. If our ball rolled away, he’d bring it back.”

Despite the reverence he holds for both Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Shlomo Zalman, Herzog didn’t quite fit the mold of the classic chareidi boy, and by the age of 18, he found himself at a crossroads. “Ten days before Rav Shlomo Zalman passed away, I had a personal meeting with him — forty-five minutes long. We spoke about many things, but one issue in particular: whether or not I should enlist in the army.”

He pauses, perhaps to weigh his words. “I know this is a very sensitive issue. And it was even then. A lot of people were against me going to the army. So I said to myself: let’s hear what the gadol hador has to say.

“I won’t share what he told me,” he says, of their private conversation. “It was personal guidance, based on my situation.”

Still, the meeting gave him clarity — and resolve. “Baruch Hashem, I felt his blessing. And I enlisted.”

It was a pivotal moment — one that launched Herzog into a trajectory unlike that of most of his peers. The army experience toughened him, broadened his horizons, and — ironically — prepared him for the unorthodox diplomacy he would one day pursue.

After enlisting in the Israel Defense Forces, Rabbi Herzog became a logistics officer and then a chaplain. Since then, he’s racked up more than a thousand days of reserve duty. Even now, as Israel navigates multiple armed conflicts on different fronts, Herzog continues to serve in uniform as a miluimnik.

After completing his military service, Herzog faced the unofficial rite of passage for many Israeli soldiers: the post-army trek. The world was wide open. Where would he go?

“Well, I already knew the US,” he says. “Europe didn’t seem that exciting. Then I heard I had a relative in Malaysia. That’s it! I thought. I’m going to Asia.”

He arrived in Malaysia full of curiosity and youthful energy, but within two days, he was already bored. So when his relative suggested he come see his factory, he had no objections. “Listen, I’ve got a factory here. If you’re so bored, why don’t you come see what we do?”

The factory specialized in rebuilding automotive parts. They would import scrap from around the world, refurbish it, and sell the components back to major car manufacturers. Herzog was intrigued, and the casual visit soon morphed into a full-time position in international trade.

“It turned out to be a very good experience,” Rabbi Herzog says. “It gave me tools for doing business across borders — tools I still use today.”

He stayed for a year and a half. The money was good. The contacts were valuable. He could have stayed longer. But then came a turning point — quiet, unexpected, but decisive.

“I was back in Malaysia after a quick visit to Israel, sitting in the lobby of a beautiful hotel, having a drink, chatting with people. Everything looked great. And I thought to myself, I could do this for the next twenty, thirty, forty years. It’s wonderful, right?”

He pauses, then delivers the line that changed everything.

“But what’s going to come out of this?”

He saw men in their fifties and sixties, some of them Jewish, many partnered with non-Jews, all of them enjoying the tropical comfort of Southeast Asia. “And I realized — if I don’t pull the handbrake now, go back to Israel, then I’m not going to have a family, nothing’s going to work.”

The very next day, he thanked his relative for the opportunity. He stayed on for a few more months to ensure a smooth transition out of his responsibilities, but his decision had already crystallized.

He was going back to Eretz Yisrael.

Expulsion and Expansion

There’s a phrase Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Herzog returns to again and again over the course of our conversation: “upping my game.” He uses it like a mantra, a kind of shorthand for a life shaped by discipline, ambition, and the stubborn refusal to coast. It’s not just about learning more Torah, though that’s part of it. It’s about accumulating tools — real, tangible tools — that can serve both the body and the soul, the neshamah and the bottom line.

“All along those years,” he says, “I always was upping my game to the limit. Because when you get the foundation, you have to develop it. Even now, at the age of forty-eight, I’m always moving forward. Every year I take on a new project.”

A few years ago, that project was halachic business law, the dry, detail-heavy realm of ribbis, heter iska, and the halachic parameters of lending and interest.

“That’s an area where even a lot of serious talmidei chachamim, who are brilliant in other parts of Torah, don’t know much,” he explains. “But it’s something that everybody runs into. Everybody has a credit card, everybody has a bank account. Even if you live in chutz l’Aretz, you might be banking with a Jewish-owned institution — and most people don’t even realize they’re stepping into halachic minefields.”

So he learned the laws, deeply, and systematically. Because, as he says, “You always have to up your game.”

That same drive led him to become a certified shochet and a trained mohel, both of which he says give practical tools for the classic shaliach, someone ready to travel to a remote Jewish community and provide for its needs.

The irony was that at the time he wasn’t yet affiliated with Chabad. That would come later — just before he turned 30.

“When the State of Israel abandoned Gush Katif in 2005, for me, it was traumatic,” he says quietly. What broke him, he says, was watching 19- and 20-year-old soldiers — kids, really — dragging Jewish families from their homes in Gush Katif. He recognized some of them from the army. “Wonderful youth, in general,” he says. “But they were brainwashed. Victims of the system.”

And then it hit him.

“It dawned on me,” he says, “that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, already back then, had been banging on the table for sixty years, warning that this is what would happen. That we need to come and save Am Yisrael. And he didn’t just talk. He had a manifest, a whole system, a whole way of doing things.”

Though he’d grown up in New York and had been exposed to Chabad from a distance, it was only at that moment — watching Gush Katif unravel — that Herzog embraced his identity as a Lubavitcher chassid. But while he kept learning and began promoting the Rebbe’s teachings to those around him, his life was still centered on business.

After serving in the Second Lebanon War, a friend introduced him to the world of agriculture. One thing led to another, and soon he had launched his next venture, Shneur Seeds… which led to that fateful phone call from a friend, urging him to look into Saudi Arabia.

Safety Concerns

The obvious question that comes to mind when speaking with a chassidic rabbi operating in an Arab country is the issue of safety. The historical conflict between Muslims and Jews has only been inflamed by the events of recent months. I soberly mention the murder of Rabbi Tzvi Kogan Hashem yikom damo, the Chabad emissary killed in the United Arab Emirates in November 2024. Doesn’t Rabbi Herzog fear for his life as he walks the streets of the Arab world’s most powerful capital, I wonder?

“Most of the hatred is in people’s minds,” Rabbi Herzog says, turning serious. “And most of the hatred didn’t come from Arab countries. What happened to the rabbi in the UAE was a real tragedy, but it was one incident — in a country that’s been hosting tens of thousands of Jews for years. It made headlines because it happened in an Arab country. But statistically speaking, that case is far less common than the anti-Semitic crimes happening in the West. Look at Columbia University! Look at Harvard! In the places with the largest Jewish populations in the world, people have lost their minds.”

He pauses, then adds, “I grew up in New York — ‘Jew York,’ they used to call it. And look at it now. Let me be clear: The problem isn’t in the Muslim world. The problem is in the Western world. It’s safer today for a Jew to walk down the streets of Riyadh than the streets of New York.”

Before the war, Rabbi Herzog was spending as much as 75 percent of the year in Saudi Arabia. But since October 7, he’s taken on a more formal role within Israel’s Ministry of National Security in the logistics area, which has made frequent travel difficult. Still, he keeps a close eye on developments inside the kingdom, and has trusted contacts living there and coordinating with travelers, whether Jews visiting for business or simply passing through for other reasons.

Ever since Donald Trump’s high-profile visit to the kingdom, there has been much speculation about Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, and persistent rumors of a deal with Israel — rumors that have, so far, failed to materialize.

When I ask Rabbi Herzog what he thinks, he says the key to any agreement doesn’t lie in Washington or Riyadh. It begins in Jerusalem — with Israel’s own sense of self.

“None of the countries that signed the Abraham Accords are truly representative,” Herzog says bluntly. “Morocco signed it because there was already a de facto relationship. The UAE and Bahrain? They’re not significant players. Sudan needed it for image laundering. The real goal has always been Saudi Arabia. And that will only happen when Saudi Arabia sees a genuine benefit in signing.”

What about Iran? I ask. Surely a shared threat might push the kingdom into Israel’s arms?

“On the contrary,” he says. “Saudi Arabia sees Israel solving the Iran problem on their behalf, and for free. Israel is acting in its own interest, which means the Saudis don’t need to commit to anything.”

So what, then, would it take for Saudi Arabia to finally sign?

“Obviously, I don’t know whether it will happen or not. What I am sure of is this: For it to happen, Israel has to embrace its identity. Anyone who knows anything about the Arab world knows that power is strength. If Israel wants respect in this region, it needs to be proud of being a Jewish nation. I’m not saying individuals should be forced to be religious — everyone can do what they want in their own homes. But as a state, Israel must define itself as a Jewish state.”

He draws a comparison to the US president. “Trump appealed to them because he didn’t pretend to be something he’s not. Mister Trump came and said, ‘This is who I am. I’m authentic.’ Until we accept who we are, they won’t accept us. We have to be proud of who we are — not try to be something else.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1081)