Stephen Wise Temple’s Rabbi David Woznica is part of a diplomatic delegation of American rabbis traveling in the Middle East to celebrate the Abraham Accords between the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Israel. Rabbi Woznica and 11 other rabbis (representing Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative communities) were brought to the UAE last week on a trip sponsored by the UAE and Bahrain, both of which are Muslim-majority countries.
During the trip, which began on June 20, Rabbi Woznica and the rest of the delegation are meeting with government officials and other leaders. They will head to Israel this week. On June 23, Rabbi Woznica met with the Israeli consul general to the UAE, Liron Zaslansky, in Dubai (pictured above), and the chair of the Manara Center. Zaslansky, 44, has served six missions from Europe to South America and the Arab world. She is Israel’s first-ever consul general in Dubai, and lives there with her husband, Ohad Horsandi, who is Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UAE in Abu Dhabi.
The delegation’s trip is in celebration of the Abraham Accords, a series of joint normalization statements mediated by the United States in 2020. The Accords helped establish diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. A game-changer in Middle East diplomacy, the Accords marked the first instance of Arab-Israeli normalization since the Israel-Jordan peace treaty was signed in 1994 by King Hussein and Yitzhak Rabin (Z”L).
As Rabbi Woznica continues his trip, he looks forward to sharing his experience and observations with our Stephen Wise Temple community.
