Is this hotel Elul-washing? A rabbi blows the whistle on Qatari High Holiday hosts

An advertisement for High Holiday services at the Maybourne, a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills that is owned by Qatari royals. Image by screenshot/YJP Los Angeles

By Louis Keene September 15, 2025

With the Jewish season of repentance in full swing, one Orthodox rabbi is calling on another to change his ways – and his venue. The colleague in question is holding High Holiday services at a hotel owned by Qatari royals.

Rabbi Pini Dunner, the spiritual leader of the Young Israel of North Beverly Hills, says the owners of the Maybourne, a luxury hotel in the heart of the affluent Los Angeles suburb, are using the services to launder their reputation as enemies of the Jewish people.

Dunner has launched a petition to pressure Rabbi Mendel Simons, who is organizing High Holiday services and hospitality at the Maybourne, to relocate somewhere not connected to Qatar. The tiny monarchy is a key financial supporter of Hamas and currently provides a haven for some of the terrorist group’s leaders.

“These people who purport to be neutral mediators are totally unashamed of their complete and utter support for Hamas, for terrorism and for everything that Islamic fundamentalists are doing in the West,” Dunner said. “How is it we can publicly have an event on the holiest day of the year to pray with other Jews for forgiveness?”

Dunner’s objection comes as the tune from Israel has changed on Qatar, a crucial intermediary for Israel’s negotiations with Hamas over the release of hostages taken on Oct. 7. In an unprecedented escalation, Israel bombed a Qatari building last week where it said Hamas officials were staying. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who once relied on Qatar to funnel millions of dollars a month to Hamas — said following the attack that Qatar “gives its terrorist chieftains sumptuous villas.”

The leaders of the Constellations Hotel Group, a holding company that owns the majority of the Maybourne, are part of the reason Hamas was in Qatar to begin with. Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani and Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the company’s principals, were respectively Qatar’s prime minister and its ruling Emir when Hamas party leadership arrived in Doha in 2012.

Qatari officials maintain that the country hosts Hamas at the behest of the U.S. government, which wants at least until recently to keep communication channels open to the entity that controls Gaza.

Dunner, whose synagogue is less than a mile from the hotel, called the two sheikhs “unreconstructed Islamist extremist antisemites.” He pointed to their refusal to denounce the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel and the country’s enormous financial support of Hamas both before and after the attack. After Israel assassinated Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader and the architect of the Oct. 7 mass killings, al-Thani’s mother, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, mourned his death on X.

The rabbi has been a thorn in the hotel’s side since the Qataris acquired it in 2019. He brought a group to picket outside the hotel and at al-Thani’s house last year, and he has privately lobbied businesses to avoid establishing ties. He said he convinced the Tel Aviv Philharmonic to relocate a function originally set at the Maybourne, and that some caterers refused to work with the hotel because of his effort.

Now Dunner feels that work is being undercut by a rabbinic peer. Simons, a Chabad rabbi, runs a group called Young Jewish Professionals Los Angeles. The Maybourne program, which includes Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services and a hotel block with a discounted rate of $425 per night is billed as suitable for all ages.

The program, Dunner said, “gives credence to the Qatari claims that they are not antisemites. And it allows them to say, ‘This crazy guy, Rabbi Dunner, who has been protesting outside our hotel, doesn’t represent the Jewish community. He doesn’t represent anyone but himself.’”

Dunner said he had discussed his opposition to no avail with the rabbi himself. Simons’ explanation, Dunner said, is that the hotel staff are not antisemites, and feel bad about the ownership situation.

“To which I say, if the owners of the hotel were Nazis or Ku Klux Klan, would you have the event there, even if the staff at the hotel were very nice?” Dunner said. “Obviously the answer is no. So it’s merely a fig leaf for them to use the hotel, which I’m sure is giving them a very nice rate.”

Simons did not respond to inquiries on WhatsApp and Instagram. The Maybourne hotel did not respond to a request for comment.

If the petition, which is as of this writing a few hundred short of the 500 signatures Dunner sought, does not persuade Simons to move elsewhere, it won’t be the first Jewish event the Maybourne has hosted. A different Chabad group has occasionally hosted services there, Dunner said, but Simons’ program was the first to tout the hotel’s name and image.

Rabbi Yossi Cunin, Simons’ co-organizer, hung up when reached by a reporter Monday and did not respond to subsequent messages.