The gleaming new industrial kitchen on the grounds of one the Arab world’s busiest airport wouldn’t be remarkable except for one fact: it’s kosher.
Kosher Arabia at Dubai World Central (DWC) airport is a registered producer of kosher food in the United Arab Emirates, set up in partnership with Emirates Flight Catering and CCL Holdings.
Inside the 20,000 square-foot facility, a team of just 20 chefs none of whom are Jewish work to prepare a variety of innovative kosher meals. Hailing from New Zealand, Syria, Morocco, Egypt, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, the chefs work in unison in Kosher Arabia’s sleek kitchens, moving between variously sized pots and pans, sizzling and simmering with different parts of a variety of meals.
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When Marcy Grossman celebrated Hanukkah in the United Arab Emirates last year, it was a subdued, underground affair.
“It was basically like 75 people in a residence, we lit candles, ate latkes, that was it,” said Grossman, who has served as Canada’s ambassador to the UAE since October 2019. The gathering was held in what was known as “the villa,” Dubai’s secret, unmarked synagogue. But this year, just a few months after the signing of the Abraham Accords codifying peace between Israel and the UAE, the celebrations reached another dimension.
“It’s a different world,” Grossman told
Jewish Insider in a video interview from Abu Dhabi on the seventh night of Hanukkah. “I was in Dubai last week for the start of Hanukkah… there were three major Hanukkah celebrations to choose from, there was a 12-foot menorah put up in front of Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, there was ‘
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“Lights across the Middle East,” the first-ever joint Hanukkah candle-lighting in Bahrain, UAE, Canada and Israel. From top left, Rabbi Idan Scher of Cong. Machzikei Hadas in Ottawa, Canadian Amb. to the UAE Marcy Grossman, Amb. Houda Nonoo, MK Michal Cotler-Wunsch, and Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Council of the Emirates Yehuda Sarna