Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Thursday, Oct 02, 2025

Ebrahim Nonoo’s family in Bahrain in the 1950s. (Photo/Courtesy Nonoo)

Meet the Jews of Bahrain. They've been there for 140 years.

Ebrahim Dahood Nonoo, the leader of Bahrain’s tiny Jewish community, was among the Gulf country’s approximately 50 Jews who thought peace with Israel would never arrive “in our lifetimes.”

“It just didn’t seem possible,” Nonoo told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from Manama, the capital city where he lives with his wife.

Tuesday’s signing of the agreements called the Abraham Accords is expected to open up routes for collaboration, trade and travel between Bahrain and Israel, which had all been restricted. It will have a significant impact on Bahrain’s Jews, many of whom have relatives in Israel they have not been able to visit.

Bahrain’s Jews weren’t the only ones shocked when President Donald Trump announced that he had brokered peace agreements between Israel and two Arab states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, within a month of each other.

Israel only has relations with two other Arab nations in the region, and most of its neighbors have long isolated the Jewish state and at times even gone to war with it.

“We can talk to our relatives and we can feel more comfortable now about going and coming. It actually changes quite a lot,” said Nonoo, a businessman who in 2001 became the first Jewish person appointed to serve on to the country’s Shura Council, the upper chamber of its National Assembly.


Ebrahim Dahood Nonoo’s family has been in Bahrain since the late 1800s.


The Jewish community in Bahrain, an island nation of some 1.5 million people, dates back about 140 years to the late 1800s, when a group of Iraqi Jews arrived in search of economic opportunities. Many were poor and lacked education but found jobs, and eventually success, in the clothing industry. Nonoo’s grandfather came as a 12-year-old together with his uncle and found a job picking silver threads out of discarded dresses and selling them.

“They were kind of misfits coming out of Iraq,” Nonoo said of the first arrivals. “In other words, they weren’t getting anywhere in Iraq, so they decided to try their luck in Bahrain.”

A smaller number of Jews also settled in Bahrain from Iran at around the same time. At its height in the 1920s and ’30s, the community had about 800 members, according to Nonoo, though others have said the number was as high as 1,500. Though community members mixed socially with Bahraini Muslims, they mainly married within the community and lived close to each other in Manama. Members continued to speak a Jewish dialect of Iraqi Arabic and still do.

In 1935, a member of the Cartier family, the Jewish clan who founded the eponymous jewelry company, passed through on a business trip and ended up donating money to build a synagogue and bring in a rabbi, according to Nonoo. Over the next 10 years, the community continued to flourish economically and gathered in the synagogue for services.

“[That] was a fantastic time for all of them,” Nonoo said.

But things took a turn for the worse following the 1947 U.N. Partition vote, which recommended the creation of a Jewish state in then-Palestine alongside an Arab one. The move led to antisemitic riots throughout the Arab world, including in Bahrain.

A group of rioters — Nonoo said they were migrants from other Arab countries — burned the synagogue to the ground and stole the country’s only Torah scroll. Most of the community left after the attack or in the decade and a half following, settling in Israel.


Manama still has a functioning Jewish cemetery.


The few who remained or their descendants make up the 50 or so Jews living in the country. There is an active Jewish cemetery, but the synagogue — rebuilt by Nonoo’s father in the 1980s — never officially reopened and most of the community continues to pray at home. Nonoo is renovating the building and hopes to reopen it next year as a house of worship and museum.

And on Monday, Jared Kushner, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law who serves as his senior adviser, gifted Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa a Torah scroll for the synagogue.


Most of the community members today are financially successful and continue to be represented in the Shura Council, which has designated a seat each for representatives of the country’s Jewish and Christian populations. Nonoo’s successor was Houda Nonoo, who later went on to serve as Bahraini ambassador to the United States. She was succeeded by Nancy Khedouri, a relative of the powerful Kadoorie family, a Hong Kong-based Jewish family of Iraqi origin who went on to become one of the wealthiest families in Asia (and transliterated the surname differently). Houda Nonoo and Khedouri are Ebrahim Nonoo’s cousins.

“It is indeed a privilege to be part of the Law-making process with my multi-faith Colleagues, where we all enjoy Equality and Freedom of Expression and where we continue to strive to draft out Laws to be implemented, that will be fair, serving in the best interests of our Country and to all Citizens, regardless of Religious differences,” Khedouri told JTA in an email.


Jewish representative Nancy Khedouri, second from left, and other Bahraini officials meet with foreign representatives, including U.S. Ambassador Justin Siberell, far left.


Still, the local Jewish community is aging, as many young people leave to study abroad and often choose to remain in other countries after their studies — including Nonoo’s children, who both live in the United Kingdom.

“Hopefully they’ll be back soon,” he said.

Nonoo hopes the new agreement with Israel will turn around the trend and that plans to build the Abrahamic Family House, a site that will host a church, mosque and synagogue in the nearby United Arab Emirates, may draw more Jews to settle in the Gulf.

“We are very, very happy to see that that’s going to be a place that many Jews can stay in the UAE and build up families there, so we’re hoping that with that we will get Jews coming to Bahrain,” he said.

For his part, Nonoo doesn’t see himself settling anywhere else.

“Our religion is Jewish, but really our culture is very Arabic, and we feel very at home,” he said. “I honestly could not see myself living anywhere else.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
Dubai Property Boom Shows Strain as Flippers Get Buyer’s Remorse
Top AI Researchers Are Heading Back to China as U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
UAE-US Stargate Project Poised to Make Abu Dhabi a Global AI Powerhouse
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Kuwait opens bidding for construction of three cities to ease housing crunch.
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
Turkish authorities seize leading broadcaster amid fraud and tax investigation
Qatari prime minister says Netanyahu ‘killed any hope’ for Israeli hostages
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Did the Houthis disrupt the internet in the Middle East? Submarine cables cut in the Red Sea
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Iran Faces Escalating Water Crisis as Protests Spread
More Than Half a Million Evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki Heads for Vietnam
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Cristiano Ronaldo Makes Surprise Stop at New Hong Kong Museum
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
×