Jewish, Arabic-speaking (Bahrain)

Bahrain's Jews are the only native Jewish community in the Gulf Arab states. The modern community began in the 1880s when Iraqi Jewish traders, the Yadgar family among the first, and some Iranian Jews settled in Manama; Jews had lived on the Gulf coast in antiquity and medieval times, but that earlier presence had long disappeared. The community peaked at perhaps 800-1,500 people in the 1930s and 1940s as money changers, cloth merchants and traders in the Manama souq. Anti-Jewish riots on 5 December 1947 looted homes and shops, destroyed the synagogue and killed an elderly woman; most Jews then left for Bombay, Israel, Britain and the United States, and the 1967 war prompted more departures. About 100 remained in 1968 and some 35-50 today, members of a few long-established families such as the Nonoo, Khedouri, Rouben and Yadgar. They are Bahraini citizens who speak Bahraini Arabic and English; their grandparents spoke the Jewish dialect of Iraqi Arabic.

A small, prosperous and closely linked set of families prominent in banking, money changing, textiles and retail. Members have held public office: Ebrahim Daoud Nonoo and Nancy Khedouri served in the appointed Shura Council, and Houda Nonoo was ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2013, the first Jewish ambassador of an Arab state. Iraqi Jewish food and holiday customs survive in family homes, and Nancy Khedouri wrote the community's history, From Our Beginning to Present Day. Many young people study and settle abroad, especially in London.

For decades after 1947 the community prayed privately. The House of Ten Commandments synagogue, built in the 1930s by Iranian-born Shimon Cohen on Sasa'ah Avenue in the Manama souq, was restored after the 2020 Abraham Accords and reopened for public Shabbat prayers in 2021 for the first time since 1947; Passover and other festivals are now held there, often with foreign Jewish visitors making up a minyan. The community maintains the Jewish cemetery in Manama. Ebrahim Nonoo leads the community and heads the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities (founded 2021), which runs the Beth Din of Arabia and kosher certification for the Gulf.

No known Christian outreach to Bahraini Jews. Arabic and English Bibles are freely available in Bahrain and the Jesus Film exists in Arabic, but the community is tiny, closely knit and defined by Jewish identity; the only realistic contacts are personal and professional relationships.

On 5 December 1947, days after the UN vote to partition Palestine, crowds in Manama attacked the Jewish quarter: homes and shops were looted, the synagogue was destroyed and an elderly Jewish woman was killed. The riots ended the community's growth: within a few years most of its several hundred members had left for Bombay, Israel and Britain, and the 1967 war prompted further emigration, leaving the small group of families that remains today.