FIRST WEDDING HELD AT NEW UAE SYNAGOGUE

The first Jewish wedding to take place at the newly-inaugurated Abrahamic Family House in the United Arab Emirates has been celebrated, writes Jotam Confino.

Avi Berkowitz, former assistant to US president Donald Trump, was married at the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue, one of three houses of worship in the interfaith building in Abu Dhabi.

Berkowitz worked alongside Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was the leading force behind the signing of the Abraham Accords which saw Israel normalise ties with the UAE and Bahrain.

The Abrahamic Family

House is the first of its kind in the Middle East and was designed by British architect

A member of the European Parliament was turned round at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport and sent back to her native Spain after attempting to enter Israel on a diplomatic mission to the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli officials said Ana Miranda, from the Galicia region, participated in a 2015 flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli law bans supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – US politicans Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar were also refused entry in 2019.

Sir David Adjaye, whose company was selected in 2019 to design the historic and pacesetting building.

“Essentially, the inspiration was to understand that the three religions really emanate from this extraordinary region,” Adjaye said last year.

The synagogue features a main sanctuary, two mikvot, beit midrash and a residence for a young rabbinical couple who will live on site.

It is located in the Saadiyat cultural district in the capital of the UAE with visitors now welcome to pray in the three houses of worship.

Public access and guided tours began this week.

Russia, which controls the skies over Syria that Israel uses to prevent Iran establishing a military presence on its northern border.

Thus far, Israel has agreed to provide Ukraine with $22.5 million in humanitarian aid and set up a field hospital to treat injured Ukrainians during the early days of the war.

NASA is set to launch Israel’s first space telescope in 2026, allowing scientists to observe the universe as never before.

The US space agency and Israel’s Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology have agreed a partnership to send the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite, or ULTRASAT, into highEarth orbit.

Israel’s Space Agency and the Weizmann Institute of Science are behind the project, saying the telescope is expected to “revolutionise scientists’ ability to detect and analyse transient events in the universe, such as neutron star mergers and supernova explosions”.

Compared to observatories on earth, ULTRASAT has an unprecedented field of view of 204 square degrees, which is a “100-fold leap in the extra-galactic volume accessible to scientists for the discovery of transient sources”.

ULTRASAT will also be able to measure ultraviolet light that can’t be measured from Earth and help unravel questions such as the impact of black holes on their environments.

However, Miranda’s ban has started a row after the US-based newspaper Politico obtained emails from Israel’s foreign ministry that appear to grant Miranda permission to visit.

Miranda told Politico: “It’s a diplomatic conflict [and] it’s intolerable that Israel exerts control over members of a delegation that’s going to Palestine, not going to Israel.”

EU parliament president Roberta Metsola said she was “deeply disappointed” by the incident and would be contacting Israel’s authorities to clarify what happened.