Miller’s largest audience, by far, is in Saudi Arabia, which amuses and mystifies him.
“Saudi Arabia is like the Bnei Brak of the Arab world: it is the most conservative Arab country,” says Miller, who recently turned 40. “In addition, there has been no Jewish presence there for 1,400 years since the time of Mohammed, so Jews are seen as almost mythical creatures. Also, there is an affinity because my content is about religion, and many Saudis are interested in religion and theology.”
“Saudi Arabia is like the Bnei Brak of the Arab world: it is the most conservative Arab country. In addition, there has been no Jewish presence there for 1,400 years since the time of Mohammed, so Jews are seen as almost mythical creatures. Also, there is an affinity because my content is about religion, and many Saudis are interested in religion and theology.”
Rabbi Elhanan Miller
So far he’s done 15 animations, the most recent in May. He says each animation takes at least two months to produce, including the script and the animation.
In addition to the “People of the Book” project, he has done a series of interviews with Jews from Arab countries, such as a recent one with Avraham Hasson, who made aliyah from Syria in 1962.
“He spoke of his mistreatment as a Jew in the early ’60s in Syria, and you could see the hurt he still feels,” Miller says. “This post went viral and got two million views in 48 hours.”
Little about Judaism in Arabic
Miller began his project when he realized that there was very little content about Judaism being produced in Arabic.
“I specialize in the Arab world academically and professionally,” says Miller. “I’m happy that they are reaching countries that I physically can’t. I can’t go to Lebanon or Iraq, but people there know me.”
Miller studied Arabic in high school in Israel and perfected it during his army service in the 8200 intelligence unit. He can do simultaneous translation from Arabic to English and even more impressively from English to Arabic. He has taught spoken Arabic in several places, including the West Bank Jewish settlement of Tekoa.
He is also an ordained Orthodox rabbi, having received semikha from Beit Midrash Harel in 2019.
Miller says he tries hard to keep politics out of his content.
“I felt like there was enough political material being sent out from Israel and the Jewish world that is more hasbara (public diplomacy), trying to justify Israel as a country,” he says. “I want to achieve that goal at the end, but it requires an incremental understanding of who Jews are. Before we talk about Israel, you have to understand Jewish peoplehood and why Jews came to Israel.”
He says that by interviewing Jews who have made aliyah from various Arab countries, he aims to give a more nuanced view of Israel as more than just “a colonial outpost of Europeans.”
“If I throw hasbara in their face, it won’t stick,” he says. “They don’t have the cultural or historical background to conceptualize it.”
Miller’s funding is from private donors and family foundations, with the majority from the Atkin Foundation in London.
He started his project five years ago, well before the Abraham Accords, but says the normalization agreements have given his project a further boost.
“Both the Abraham Accords and my videos create a cognitive dissonance,” Miller says. “They take the notion of Israel as the enemy of the Arabs and reshape it into something that creates interest in Israel and Judaism.”
Miller has visited the UAE several times, and says he hopes that someday he will be able to meet his viewers in other states in the Arab world, like Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Until then, he’ll have to reach them through social media. ■
