Becoming a Man in Manama: Bahrain Synagogue Celebrates First Bar Mitzvah in 16 Years

For the first time in 16 years, the Jewish community in the Kingdom of Bahrain celebrated a bar mitzvah, marking a Jewish child’s “coming of age,” over the weekend. The House of Ten Commandments, Bahrain’s oldest functioning synagogue, hosted the event, at which the bar mitzvah boy read from the Torah scroll donated by former White House adviser and US presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner in honor of the King of Bahrain Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. It comes one year after Kushner helped negotiate a normalization agreement between Bahrain and Israel. Association of Gulf Jewish Communities President Ebrahim Dawood Nonoo congratulated the bar mitzvah boy and his family and expressed his hopes for future Jewish celebrations in the region.