UAE Rabbi Levi Duchman: Solly Wolf has passed away
The UAE's first resident Chief Rabbi reported on X that Solly Wolf, Jewish businessman and President of the UAE's JCC, has died.


Rabbi Levi Duchman, the first resident Chief Rabbi of the United Arab Emirates, announced today (Tuesday) on X that Solly Wolf, the President of the UAE's JCC, has passed away.
In his statement, Rabbi Duchman said:
"The Jewish Community of the UAE lost our beloved Saba - or Grandfather - earlier today. Solly Wolf, who had proudly called the Emirates home for over thirty years, passed away this afternoon. Solly was special. In every community he served from near and far, he was trusted and admired for his sage wisdom and unwavering empathy. Not to mention, Solly knew how to tell a story. And he had so many worth telling. We - and anyone who was fortunate enough to know him - will miss Solly dearly. May his memory be a blessing."
Wolf gave an interview to Ami Magazine in 2020 about his life and how he ended up in the UAE.
Wolf, who was born in Britain, said that his home was a traditional one:
“We had a traditional home. My zeidy was a Sadigura chasid with a long beard. My father was also traditional. He davened and put on tefillin every day, and even donated a few sifrei Torah to shuls, but he wasn’t a chasid."
Solly said that he was initially reluctant to move to the UAE, as he had a good life working in Britain and then in Germany, but he ultimately decided to give it a try and fell in love:
"In 2002, I came to Dubai for a trial run. I stayed for a month and then went back to Germany for two months, and then repeated the cycle. Eventually I got tired of all the traveling, so I moved the whole operation to Dubai, and I’ve never looked back. My late wife decided not to join me here, but she visited very often."
He also explained the attraction between Israel and the UAE in terms of mutual interests and innovation culture:
"Of course! It’s a very innovative place. Anybody who has any kind of innovation can bring it here. By the way, that’s why Israel is very attractive to Emiratis, because new things are being invented in Israel every day. Just yesterday I saw a new Israeli invention that enables people to open door handles without actually touching them, which was developed because of the coronavirus. Emiratis are into all kinds of technology, security and cyber innovation. I’m sure there’s a lot of potential for collaboration."
Describing the Jewish community that has emerged and whose development he led in the UAE, Solly said that "a very large part of the community consists of Sephardic Jews from Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Egypt who are here for business. These are families with children. Rabbi Levi has been educating the Jewish children of the Emirates from the day he arrived here. Baruch Hashem, we now have a proper talmud Torah with over 40 students in its own building that serves as the Jewish educational headquarters for the entire UAE. The community is being built up one step at a time. We recently got a big shipment of kosher meat from the United States that made headlines. We had been schechting our own chickens for a while, but beef was really hard to come by."