Meet Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Herzog, the Rabbi of Riyadh

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

Beneath the black and white rabbinic garb, the self-styled chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia is a colorful figure with outsized dreams. For Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Herzog, geopolitics take a back seat when it comes to building proud Jews — even in the most ardent of Sunni states

AT first glance, the video seems like a hoax. Surely these are actors — someone staging a joke, aiming to go viral. After all, the scene defies logic, especially considering relations between Israel and the Arab world today as tensions rise in the face of Israel’s recent attack on Hamas operatives in Qatar and the Gaza war drags on. In the film, a tall, broad-shouldered rabbi, dressed in a black frock coat and homburg, dances hand in hand with an Arab man clad in flowing white robes and a red-checkered kaffiyeh. The pair sway to the beat of an unmistakably Arabic tune. After a few seconds, they part ways with a warm “shukran” — Arabic for thank you.

And while the footage is bizarre enough, it doesn’t stop there. The setting takes things up another notch — it isn’t a multicultural enclave in the US, or even East Jerusalem. It was filmed on the streets of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Welcome to the utterly unconventional world of Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Herzog — Manhattan native, IDF officer, Arabic speaker, serial entrepreneur, adoptee of Chabad and now self-styled Chief Rabbi of Saudi Arabia.

For many people, the clip of Rabbi Herzog dancing was unsettling, coming across as self-promotional kitsch, or a spiritual influencer’s PR stunt. Did a rabbi really need to be filmed dancing with an Arab in the middle of Riyadh?

The pioneering rabbi of Riyadh is fully aware that he has his detractors. But meet the man and a more complex picture emerges: that of an unconventional figure who dreams big about making a Jewish mark on an inhospitable place. Here is a serious man, articulate and accomplished, who has produced tangible results in terms of building Jewish life on the ground.

Like his style or not, anyone who meets him has the same list of questions: Did he really meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman? Is it true that he spends extended periods of time in Saudi Arabia? And perhaps most pressing: What, exactly, is he hoping to achieve by plunging into the complex and often treacherous waters of the Arab world’s dominant power?