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Jewish Woman Appointed to High-Ranking Government Position in Bahrain

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In the tiny Middle Eastern island nation of Bahrain, a Jewish woman, Nancy Khedouri has just appointed to a prominent position within that country’s parliament.The Jewish community of Bahrain, an island kingdom located along the western shores of the Persian Gulf, is evidently small in size but large in influence.

According to the Gulf News, a Jewish woman from the Bahraini legislature has been appointed as deputy chairwoman of the country’s foreign affairs, defense, and national security committee.

Nancy Khedouri is the third Jewish Bahraini to have served in the Shura Council, the upper house of the kingdom’s legislature. The first was Ebrahim Nonoo, who sat on the legislature between 2002 and 2006. Houda Nonoo, Ebrahim’s cousin, replaced him and became the second Jewish parliamentarian in 2008, and now serves as the Bahraini ambassador to the U.S.

Admitted to the legislature in October 2010, Khedouri and her writings have come to symbolize the minority rights granted to Jews in Bahrain.

In 2007, Khedouri published From Our Beginning to Present Day, a book “[purporting] to trace the history of modern Bahrain’s Jewish community from its origins in the 1880s, with Iraqi Jewish traders from the Yadgar family, through the 36-member Jewish community of today,” according to an article published by Israel National News at the time of the book’s release.

Khedouri was quoted by Gulf News then as saying that her book “shows how Bahrain has practiced religious tolerance all these years and how privileged everyone should feel to be living in this beautiful Kingdom, which has always offered and will continue to offer peace and security to all its citizens.” In an earlier interview with the Bahrain Tribune, Khedouri said, “The peaceful co-existence we have with the Bahrainis is proof of the religious tolerance advocated by His Majesty the King, Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa,” according to concurrent Israel National News reports.

“We are not a deeply religious or orthodox people in the true sense of the word,” Khedouri said when discussing the religious quality of her Jewish community in Bahrain with the Bahrain Tribune. “Our religious practices are often confined to our homes. Fasting is among the most important of religious rites and observed in September-October. The religious festivals are Passover and the Jewish New Year.”

“Some of the older generation observe the Sabbath, with lighting the Sabbath candles,” the new deputy chairwoman added.

The Bahraini Jewish community, which numbered 1500 at its heights and 600 in 1948, has dwindled over the years due to mounting tensions between Israel and the Gulf state. But Jews still have a synagogue, a cemetery, and, according to the latest reports, the ability to ascend the political ladder.

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