We all must have the courage to keep going, the humility to keep knowing, and the hearts to keep growing

I

have a confession to make. For most of my life, I bought into a stereotype. Supported by headlines and history, reinforced by wars, terror, and the chilling rhetoric that echoes from too many corners of the Middle East, I assumed that all Muslims and Arabs hate Jews, that deep down they want to destroy us and to eliminate the State of Israel. Then, on a recent trip to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, I discovered how incomplete that belief was. What I thought I knew could not hold up to the reality, the faces, the stories, the friendships, and the genuine feelings that we encountered.

A close friend, Eli Epstein, who has done business in the United Arab Emirates for more than thirty years, had long been urging me to see the reality with my own eyes.  The goal would be to meet Emirate leaders to express gratitude for the Abraham Accords and encourage its expansion.  Together, in partnership with his non-profit organization, Visions of Abraham, we arranged a small leadership mission of members of our shul, BRS, joined by our dear friends Eli and Shalva Paley from Israel. Eli Epstein’s mantra became our guideline: “To go is to know and to know is to grow.” He could not have been more correct. What we saw and whom we met changed what we know, and what we now know is already changing who we are.

The United Arab Emirates is a young nation, founded in 1971 by its benevolent ruler, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan on an intentional and courageous vision. From its inception, it committed itself to mutual respect, safety for different religions, valuing peace, and  embedding into law a zero tolerance for hate. Today roughly 1.5 million Emirati citizens live alongside more than 10 million residents from around the world. More than 200 nationalities live together there in peace and harmony. This is not coexistence by accident. It is harmony by design.

The modern beauty is breathtaking. The cities are clean, orderly, and meticulously maintained. Crime is extraordinarily low. But the most striking feature is not steel or glass, it is spirit and culture. We are now seeing the third generation raised entirely within this vision, and the values have trickled down from the top. The tone set by leadership is echoed by regular Emiratis. Respect is not performative. It is practiced, expected, and felt.

We understandably generalize that the Arab world is a monolith of hatred. We point to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran and conclude that the rest must be the same. Yet our own history reminds us otherwise. There are chapters of Jews and Muslims living side by side, golden ages of Jewish life in Muslim lands, including from the 8th to the 12th centuries in Al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, and in parts of the Middle East and North Africa. During that period, Jews thrived as scholars, poets, physicians, and administrators, contributing profoundly to philosophy, science, and literature. In the UAE, we discovered a modern echo of that golden age, made possible by a people who do not merely tolerate us, but who admire and respect us. They share many of our values, ethics, priorities, and even practices. They are deeply committed to their faith, yet they do not seek to impose it on others.

The proof is in their actions. The UAE was the first Arab country to condemn Hamas after October 7. While airlines around the world stopped flying to Israel, Emirates Airlines never stopped once and, during that time, even increased their service.

What moved me most were the stories we heard so often. Despite the message from the leaders, prior to the Abraham Accords and a meaningful Jewish presence in the UAE, many of those we met grew up with stereotypes about Jews, just as too many of us grew up with stereotypes about them. They were taught to feel hate until real encounters rewrote their hearts.

We met with Loay Alshareef, a Saudi-born Egyptian activist who now lives in the UAE. He told us, without flinching, that he hated Jews as a child because that is what he was taught. Then he went to France to study and boarded with a Jewish family. The hospitality he received and the decency he experienced shattered what he thought he knew. Today he is a proud and fearless online advocate for better relations between the Arab world and Israel, with a massive following among young Muslims.

We met a senior leader in the Abu Dhabi Investment Office who said he, too, grew up thinking he was supposed to hate Jews. At the age of six, he traveled with his family to New York. In JFK Airport, he saw a chassid praying and asked his father who it was. His father told him it was a Jewish person.

The boy said, “But he is praying just like us.”

His father replied, “Yes, we have much in common.”

That boy grew up to be a diplomat who worked on the Abraham Accords and today is building economic and human bridges between the UAE and Israel. He is eager for Jewish partnership and investment, not as a slogan but as a sincere invitation.

We met a successful Emirati businessman. He went to Cambridge without knowing English and was paired with an Israeli student who also did not know English. He called his father, anxious about studying with an “enemy.” His father answered gently, Jews are our cousins and our friends. That simple truth began a lifelong connection with the Jewish community.

We saw the fruits of those connections. There are approximately 500 Jews living in Abu Dhabi and about 2,000 in Dubai. There are daily minyanim, shuls, kosher restaurants, a mikvah, and a Jewish school which we visited. Even our guide, Houda, who wore her hijab proudly throughout the trip, spoke about the kinship she feels with the Jewish community and the many Jewish clients she has guided. She delights in comparing customs, traditions, and practices, in discovering the familiar within the foreign. It is easy to demonize and vilify the other when they remain a stranger. It is much harder when the other becomes a neighbor, a colleague, a friend.

The Hebrew word for “cruel” is achzar, a combination of ach and zar — “but a stranger.” We become cruel when we decide someone is a stranger, when we allow distance to define them, when we insist we have nothing in common. The UAE taught us how quickly cruelty can soften when strangers become familiar.

One of the most moving experiences was our visit to the Crossroads of Civilization Museum for a private tour with its founder, His Excellency Ahmed Al Mansoori, former member of the UAE Parliament. The museum celebrates the contributions of many faiths and cultures, and at its heart stands a powerful Holocaust exhibit. In an era of denial and distortion, standing before a Holocaust exhibit in the heart of a Muslim country was deeply meaningful and appreciated. It was a testament to the UAE’s commitment to truth and to the museum’s founder’s commitment to fight hate against all, including and especially against the Jewish People.

The highlight of the trip was an extended glatt kosher dinner hosted by His Excellency Dr. Ali Al Nuaimi, Chairman of the Defense Affairs, Interior and Foreign Affairs Committee of UAE. He described the UAE dream, an open and inclusive country for everyone, pointing to its multinational population. He reminded us that the UAE was the first country to combat Al-Qaeda and sent troops after September 11 to fight alongside the United States because terrorism is a threat to all humanity.

He spoke with conviction about how peace requires investment in people, not just signatures on paper. In the UAE hate speech is a crime. Hateful comments based on religion, nationality, or ethnicity carry legal consequences. He believes this model of coexistence must become the standard throughout the Middle East. He drew a distinction that has stayed with me. The goal should not simply be normalization, which is cold and transactional. The goal should be genuine human connection, friendships between peoples. The UAE does not want others to follow the old model of peace between governments; it wants to model and promote peace between people.

He also shared a concern born of friendship. Before October 7, he warned counterparts in Israel about the dangers of internal division. If you want to get along with those from without, he said, you must get along with those from within.

That lesson pierced. The same phenomenon of demonizing and vilifying those we disagree with exists within the Jewish community itself. We, too, can be quick to judge Jews who are not like us. The Torah tells us that when Yosef approached his brothers, vayir’u oso mei’rachok, they saw him from a distance and began to conspire against him. Distance breeds distortion. Tensions between brothers, and between fellow Jews, arise when we see each other from afar, when we refuse to come closer. Had they seen Yosef up close, had they spoken and listened, their hearts would have softened. Within our own people, we need to listen, to learn, and to find common ground.

This trip was not about tourist sites or luxury hotels. It was a mission to open hearts and minds and to bear witness to a model of coexistence that is not theoretical but real.  There is no doubt it needs work in both directions, as each side is still overcoming stereotypes, deepening connections, reinforcing built bridges and building new ones.

Those bridges should connect us in matters of technology, innovation, economics and more, but as one Emirati pointed out to us, they should also create connection over something even more real, something eternal.  He said that when he has visited Israel and when Israeli leaders have come to the UAE, they talk about Israel as the Start-Up Nation and focus on Israeli innovation, while omitting what makes Israel and the Jewish people uniquely special.  He yearns to hear about the Israel that is the land of Abraham and the Jewish People that gave the world ethical monotheism and Biblical values.

Listening to him, it became clear that while there is a significant role for government, political leaders and titans of industry to play in deepening connections with the UAE and moderates in the Muslim world, there is a critical role for Torah Jews to play as the ambassadors of the Abrahamic legacy and the representatives of living those Biblical values.

We are not so naive as to assume that what we saw in the UAE reflects the majority or even many in the broader Muslim world. We remain acutely aware of the venomous hate that is preached and practiced and of the dangers posed by enemies of our people. But our conclusion from this mission is clear: The same passion we pour into confronting our enemies in the Muslim and Arab world must be matched by the passion to celebrate and elevate our genuine friends from all worlds.

To go is to know and to know is to grow. The mission of our trip was accomplished. But, the larger mission, building bridges of understanding, trust, and genuine human connection, within the Jewish People and beyond, has only just begun. We all must have the courage to keep going, the humility to keep knowing, and the hearts to keep growing.

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg is the rabbi of Boca Raton Synagogue and the founder of Yeshiva of South Florida.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1091)