Yemenite Jews

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History of the Jews in Yemen
)

Yemenite Jews
Hebrew: יהודי תימן
اليهود اليمنيون
Yemenite family reading from the Psalms
Regions with significant populations
 Israel435,000
 United States80,000
 United Kingdom396[1]
 United Arab Emirates42[2][3][4]
 Bahrain5[5]
 Yemen1[6]
Languages
Hebrew, Judeo-Yemeni Arabic, Yemenite Hebrew
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Mizrahi Jews, Jewish ethnic divisions, Yemenis, Palestinians, other Arabs and Samaritans
Temani Jews in Jerusalem

Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Teimanim (from

Arabic: اليهود اليمنيون), are those Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen, and their descendants maintaining their customs. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the overwhelming majority of the country's Jewish population immigrated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. After several waves of persecution, the vast majority of Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, while smaller communities live in the United States and elsewhere.[7] As of 2022, Levi Marhabi is the last Jew in Yemen.[8]

Yemenite Jews observe a unique religious tradition that distinguishes them from Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and other Jewish groups. They have been described as "the most Jewish of all Jews" and "the ones who have preserved the Hebrew language the best".[9] Yemenite Jews are considered Mizrahi or "Eastern" Jews, though they differ from other Mizrahis, who have undergone a process of total or partial assimilation to Sephardic law and customs. While the Shami sub-group of Yemenite Jews did adopt a Sephardic-influenced rite, this was mostly due to it being forced upon them,[10] and did not reflect a demographic or general cultural shift among the vast majority of Yemenite Jews.

History

Ancient history

Ring-stone of Yishak bar Hanina with a Torah shrine, 330 BCE – 200 CE, found in Dhofar

Records referring to Judaism in Yemen started to appear during the rule of the

2nd century CE refer to the construction of synagogues approved by Himyarite kings.[11]

In the aftermath of the

Roman Judea to Yemen, which was then famous in the Greco-Roman world for its prosperous trade, particularly in spices.[12] The Christian missionary Theophilos the Indian, who came to Yemen in the mid-fourth century, complained that he had found great numbers of Jews.[13]

By 380 CE, Himyarite religious practices had undergone fundamental changes. The inscriptions were no longer addressed to

Attar but to a single deity called Rahmanan. Debate among scholars continues as to whether the Himyarite monotheism was influenced by Judaism or Christianity.[14] Jews became especially numerous and powerful in the southern part of Arabia, a rich and fertile land of incense and spices and a way station on the incense trade route and the trade routes to Africa, India, and East Asia. The Yemeni tribes did not oppose the Jewish presence in their country.[15]

Dynastic conversion to Judaism

In 390 CE, the Himyarite king

Sabaean praising the ruling house in Jewish terms for "helping and empowering the People of Israel".[23]

Abu Nuwas and intercommunal unrest

By 516, tribal unrest broke out, and several tribal elites fought for power. One of those elites was

Nisibis and bought by a king in Yemen, whose ancestors had formerly converted to Judaism.[27] Syriac and Byzantine sources maintain that Yûsuf 'As'ar sought to convert other Yemeni Christians, but they refused to renounce Christianity. The actual picture, however, remains unclear.[25]

In 2009 a

Mocha), and the fighters and military units in Najran, amounted to 12,500 war trophies, 11,000 captives and 290,000 camels and bovines and sheep.[24]

Historian Glen Bowersock described this as a "savage pogrom that the Jewish king of the Arabs launched against the Christians in the city of Najran. The king himself reported in excruciating detail to his Arab and Persian allies about the massacres he had inflicted on all Christians who refused to convert to Judaism."[30] There were also reports of massacres and destruction of places of worship by Christians, too.[31] Francis Edward Peters wrote that while there is no doubt that this was a religious persecution, it is equally clear that a political struggle was going on as well.[32]

According to 'Irfan Shahid's Martyrs of Najran – New Documents, Dhu-Nuwas sent an army of some 120,000 soldiers to lay siege to the city of

Tishri). The city had revolted against the king and they refused to deliver it up unto the king. About three hundred of the city's inhabitants surrendered to the king's forces, under the assurances of an oath that no harm would come to them, and these were later bound, while those remaining in the city were burnt alive within their church. The death toll in this account is said to have reached about two thousand. However, in the Sabaean inscriptions describing these events, it is reported that by the month Dhu-Madra'an (between July and September) there were "1000 killed, 1500 prisoners [taken] and 10,000 head of cattle."[33]

Sabaean Inscription with Hebrew writing: "The writing of Judah, of blessed memory, Amen shalom amen"

There are two dates mentioned in the "letter of Simeon of Beit Aršam." One date indicates the letter was written in Tammuz in the year 830 of Alexander (518/519 CE), from the camp of GBALA (Jebala), king of the 'SNYA (Ghassanids or the Ġassān clan). In it, he tells of the events that transpired in Najran, while the other date puts the letter's composition in the year 835 of Alexander (523/524 CE). The second letter, however, is actually a Syriac copy of the original, copied in the year 1490 of the Seleucid Era (= 1178/79 CE). Today, it is largely agreed that the latter date is the accurate one, as it is confirmed by the Martyrium Arethae, as well as by epigraphic records, namely Sabaean inscriptions discovered in the Asir of Saudi Arabia (Bi'r Ḥimâ), photographed by J. Ryckmans in Ry 507, 8 ~ 9, and by A. Jamme in Ja 1028, which give the old Sabaean year 633 for these operations (said to correspond with 523 CE).

Jacques Ryckmans, who deciphered these inscriptions, writes in his La Persécution des Chrétiens Himyarites, that Sarah'il Yaqbul-Yaz'an was both the tribal chief and the lieutenant of Yûsuf 'As'ar (the king) at the time of the military campaign, and that he was sent out by the king to take the city of

Mokhā (al-Moḫâ) and the strait known as Bāb al-Mandab. The Ethiopian church in Ẓafâr, which had been built by the king of Yemen some years earlier, and another church built by him in Aden (see: Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius, Epitome of Book III, chapter 4), had been seen by Constantius II
during the embassage to the land of the Ḥimyarites (i.e. Yemen) in circa 340 CE. By the 6th-century CE, this church was set on fire and razed to the ground, and its Abyssinian inhabitants killed. Later, foreigners (presumably Christians) living in Haḏramawt were also put to death before the king's army advanced to Najran in the far north and took it.

Byzantine emperor Justin I sent a fleet to Yemen and Joseph Dhu Nuwas was killed in battle in 525 CE.[34] The persecutions ceased, and the western coast of Yemen became a tributary state until Himyarite nobility (also Jews) managed to regain power.[35]

Tradition

There are numerous accounts and traditions concerning the arrival of Jews in various regions in Southern Arabia. One tradition suggests that

Abu-Alfada that the Jews of Yemen settled in the area in 1451 BCE.[37]

Another legend says that Yemeni tribes converted to

Jeremiah some 75,000 Jews, including priests and Levites, traveled to Yemen.[40]

Another legend states that when Ezra commanded the Jews to return to Jerusalem they disobeyed, whereupon he pronounced a ban upon them. According to this legend, as a punishment for this hasty action, Ezra was denied burial in Israel. As a result of this local tradition, which cannot be validated historically, it is said that no Jew of Yemen gives the name of Ezra to a child, although all other Biblical appellatives are used. The Yemenite Jews claim that Ezra cursed them to be a poor people for not heeding his call. This seems to have come true in the eyes of some Yemenites, as Yemen is extremely poor. However, some Yemenite sages in Israel today emphatically reject this story as myth, if not outright blasphemy.[41]

Because of Yemenite Jewry's cultural affiliation with Babylon, historian Yehuda Ratzaby opines that the Jews of Yemen migrated to Yemen from places in Babylonia.[42] According to local legends, the kingdom's aristocracy converted to Judaism in the 6th century CE.[43]

Middle Ages

Jewish–Muslim relations in Yemen

Jews of Maswar, Yemen, in 1902

As People of the Book, Jews were assured freedom of religion in exchange for payment of the jizya or poll tax, which was imposed on non-Muslim monotheists. Feudal overlords imposed this annual tax upon Jews, which, under Islamic law, was to ensure their status as protected persons of the state. This tax (tribute) was assessed against every male thirteen years and older and its remittance varied between the wealthy and the poor.[44] In the early 20th century, this amounted to one Maria Theresa thaler (riyal) for a poor man, two thalers in specie for the middle classes, and four or more thalers for the rich.[45] Upon payment, Jews were also exempt from paying the zakat which must be paid by Muslims once their residual wealth reaches a certain threshold.

Active persecution of Jews did not gain full force until a Zaydi clan seized power from the more tolerant Sunni Muslims, early in the 10th century.[46] The legal status of Jews in Yemen started to deteriorate around the time the Tahirids took Sana'a from Zaidis, mainly because of new discrimination established by the Muslim rulers. Such laws were not included in Zaidi legal writings till comparatively late with Kitab al-Azhar of al-Mahdi Ahmad bin Yahya in the first half of the 15th century. This also led to deterioration of the economic and social situation of Jews.[47]

Jewish intellectuals wrote in both Hebrew and Arabic and engaged in the same literary endeavours as the Muslim majority. According to a late-9th-century document, the first Zaydi imam

Sulayhids' capital of Dhu Jibla.[48] The city was founded by Abdullah bin Muhammad al-Sulaihi in the mid-11th century, and according to Tarikh al-Yamman of the famed Yemenite author Umara al-Yamani (1121–74), was named after a Jewish pottery merchant.[49]

During the 12th century,

Ceylon. The community developed communal and spiritual connections in addition to business and family ties with other Jewish communities in the Islamic world. They also developed ties with and funded Jewish centers in Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt. Due to the trade, Jews also emigrated to Aden for mercantile and personal reasons.[50][51]

Yemenite Jews experienced violent persecution at times. In the late 1160s, the Yemenite ruler

martyrdom.[52][53] Mahdi also imposed his beliefs upon the Muslims besides the Jews. This led to a revival of Jewish messianism, but also led to mass-conversion.[53] While a popular local Yemenite Jewish preacher called on Jews to choose martyrdom, Maimonides sent what is known as the Epistle to Yemen requesting that they remain faithful to their religion, but if at all possible, not to cast affronts before their antagonists.[54] The persecution ended in 1173 with the defeat of ibn Mahdi and conquest of Yemen by Turan-Shah, the brother of Saladin, and they were allowed to return to their faith.[53][55]

According to two Genizah documents, the Ayyubid ruler of Yemen al-Malik al-Mu'izz al-Ismail (reigned 1197–1202) attempted to force the Jews of Aden to convert. The second document details the relief of the Jewish community after his murder and those who had been forced to convert reverted to Judaism.[56]

The rule of

Rasulids which lasted from 1229 to 1474 brought stability to the region. During this period, Jews enjoyed social and economic prosperity. This changed with the rise of the Tahiri dynasty that ruled until the conquest of Yemen by the Ottoman Empire in 1517. A note written in a Jewish manuscript mentions the destruction of the old synagogue in Sana'a in 1457 under the rule of the dynasty's founder Ahmad 'Amir. An important note of the treatment of Jews by Tahirids is found in the colophon of a Jewish manuscript from Yemen in 1505, when the last Tahirid Sultan took Sana'a from the Zaydis. The document describes one kingdom as exploitive and the other as repressive.[47]

The Jewish communities experienced a messianic episode with the rise of another Messiah claimant in Bayhan District, mentioned by Hayim bin Yahya Habhush in History of the Jews in Yemen written in 1893 and Ba'faqia al-Shihri's Chronicle written in the 16th century. The messiah was acknowledged as a political figure and gathered many people around him into what seemed to be an organized military force. The Tahirid Sultan Amir ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab attacked the messiah, killing many Jews and crushing the movement. He saw it as a violation of the protection agreement and liquidated the Jewish settlement in Hadhramaut as collective punishment. Presumably some of them were killed, many converted to Islam or migrated to Aden and the adjacent mainland of Yemen. It seems, however, that the liquidation was not immediate. Jews of the place are recorded by 1527, but not by the 1660s. After the 15th century, Jewish communities only existed in the Hadhramaut's western periphery. The oppression at the hands of pious Muslim rulers and endangerment of the community because of the plots of a few Jewish messianists are common themes in the history of Yemenite Jews.[57][47][58]

Maimonides

Maimonides (1138–1204), the 12th-century philosopher, scholar and codifier of halakha, was adulated by the Jews of Yemen for his interventions on their behalf during times of religious persecution,[59] heresy,[60] and heavy taxation.[61]

When the writings of Maimonides reached the heads of the community, they continued to address their questions unto him and sent emissaries to purchase several copies of his books, just as he acknowledged.[62] In all the subjects of the Torah, Yemenite Jews customarily base their rule of practice (halakhah) on Maimonides' teachings, and will instruct following his view, whether in lenient or strict rulings, even where most other halakhic authorities disagree.[63] Even so, some ancient customs remained with the Yemenite Jews, especially in those matters committed unto the masses and to the general public, which are still adhered to by them from an ancient period, and which they did not change even though Maimonides ruled otherwise.[63] In common Jewish practice, the Jews of Yemen dissented with Maimonides' rulings in more than 50 places, ten of which places are named explicitly by Yosef Qafih.[64]

Early modern period

The

Zaydi enforced a statute known as the Orphan's Decree, anchored in their own 18th-century legal interpretations and enforced at the end of that century. It obligated the Zaydi state to take under its protection and to educate in Islamic ways any dhimmi (i.e. non-Muslim) child whose parents had died when he was a minor. The Orphan's Decree was ignored during the Ottoman rule (1872–1918), but was renewed during the period of Imam Yahya (1918–1948).[65]

Under the Zaydi rule, the Jews were considered to be impure and therefore forbidden to touch a Muslim or a Muslim's food. They were obligated to humble themselves before a Muslim, to walk to the left side, and greet him first. They could not build houses higher than a Muslim's or ride a camel or horse, and when riding on a mule or a donkey, they had to sit sideways. Upon entering the Muslim quarter a Jew had to take off his foot-gear and walk barefoot. If attacked with stones or fists by youth, a Jew was not allowed to fight them. In such situations, he had the option of fleeing or seeking intervention by a merciful Muslim passerby.[66]

Sana'a
(1937)

Ottoman rule ended in 1630, when the Zaydis took over Yemen. Jews were once again persecuted. In 1679, under the rule of Al-Mahdi Ahmad, Jews were expelled en masse from all parts of Yemen to the distant province of Mawza, in what was known as the Mawza Exile, when many Jews died of starvation and disease as a consequence. As many as two-thirds of the exiled Jews did not survive.[67] Their houses and property were seized, and many synagogues were destroyed or converted into mosques.[68]

The Jewish community recovered partly because of Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, also called "Sahib al-Mawahib", who protected them and allowed them to return to their previous status. He rejected the pleas for Jewish deportation by the clerics and maintained ties with the Jewish 'Iraqi family which was charged with the mint house. From the end of the 17th century, the Jews ran the mint house of the imams. In 1725, Imam Al-Mutawakkil ordered closure of synagogues because of the Jews selling wine to Muslims. However, their closure was rejected by a religious legal ruling that these synagogues were permitted by his predecessors.[69]

The Jews of Yemen had expertise in a wide range of trades normally avoided by Zaydi Muslims. Trades such as silver-smithing, blacksmiths, repairing weapons and tools, weaving, pottery, masonry, carpentry, shoemaking, and tailoring were occupations that were exclusively taken by Jews. The division of labor created a sort of covenant, based on mutual economic and social dependency, between the Zaydi Muslim population and the Jews of Yemen. The Muslims produced and supplied food, and the Jews supplied all manufactured products and services that the Yemeni farmers needed.[70]

The Jewish community headed by Shalom 'Iraqi recovered from this affair and the position of 'Iraqi strengthened under Imam

Mocha. The German researcher Carsten Niebuhr who visited Yemen in 1763, reports that two years before he arrived, Shalom 'Iraqi had been imprisoned and fined while twelve out of fourteen synagogues in a village near Sana'a were shut down. 'Iraqi was released two weeks before his arrival. Jewish sources attribute this to a regime change. The Imam Al-Mahdi Abbas was extremely religious and his ideological affinity with the clerics created an atmosphere of extreme repression. He however resisted their pressure on him to expel the Jews. The synagogues were reopened by Ali al-Mansur after payment of a heavy fee.[71]

In the early 18th-century, many Jews in Yemen were employed in some of the most degrading and menial tasks, on behalf of the Arab population, such as cleaning the cess pools and latrines.[72][73]

Late modern period

At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, Yemenite Jews lived principally in

Shar'ab region. Many other Jewish communities in Yemen were long since abandoned by their Jewish inhabitants. Yemenite Jews were chiefly artisans, including gold-, silver- and blacksmiths in the San'a area, and coffee merchants in the south central highland areas.[citation needed
]

19th-century Yemenite messianic movements

Yemenite Torah scrolls

During this period messianic expectations were very intense among the Jews of Yemen (and among many Arabs as well). The three pseudo-messiahs of this period, and their years of activity, are:

  • Shukr Kuhayl I (1861–65)
  • Shukr Kuhayl II
    (1868–75)
  • Joseph Abdallah (1888–93)

According to the Jewish traveler

Bayhan (c. 1495), and Suleiman Jamal (c. 1667), in what Lenowitz[77]
regards as a unified messiah history spanning 600 years.

Orphan's decree (Yemen, 1922)

In 1922, the government of Yemen, under Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din, re-introduced an ancient Islamic law entitled the "orphans decree". The law dictated that if Jewish boys or girls under the age of 12 were orphaned, they were to be forcibly converted to Islam, their connections to their families and communities were to be severed, and they had to be handed over to Muslim foster families. The rule was based on the law that the prophet Muhammad is "the father of the orphans", and on the fact that the Jews in Yemen were considered "under protection", and the ruler was obligated to care for them.[78] The Jews tried to prevent the conversion of orphans in two main ways, which were by marrying them so the authorities would consider them as adults, or by smuggling them out of the country.[79]

A prominent example is

Abdul Rahman al-Iryani, the former president of the Yemen Arab Republic, who was alleged to be of Jewish descent by Dorit Mizrahi, a writer in the Israeli ultra-Orthodox weekly Mishpaha, who claimed he was her maternal uncle. According to her recollection of events, he was born Zekharia Hadad in 1910 to a Yemenite Jewish family in Ibb. He lost his parents in a major disease epidemic at the age of 8 and together with his 5-year-old sister, he was forcibly converted to Islam and they were put under the care of separate foster families. He was raised in the powerful al-Iryani family and adopted an Islamic name. Al-Iryani would later serve as minister of religious endowments under northern Yemen's first national government and he became the only civilian to have led northern Yemen.[78][80]

Emigration to Israel

Map of Jewish communities in Yemen prior to immigration to the British Mandate of Palestine and Israel
Yemenite-Jewish village south of Silwan, housing project built by a charity in the 1880s (1891)
Places of origin and 1881–1939 new communities

The three major population centers for Jews in

Jews of Aden lived in and around the city, and flourished during the British Aden Protectorate
.

The vast majority of Yemenite immigrants counted by the authorities of

Kerem Hateimanim),[85] and later, Netanya (Shekhunat Zvi).[86]

First wave of emigration: 1881 to 1918

Emigration from Yemen to the area now known as Israel began in 1881, and continued almost without interruption until 1914. It was during this time that about 10% of the Yemenite Jews left. Due to the changes in the Ottoman Empire, citizens could move more freely, and in 1869, travel was improved with the opening of the Suez Canal, which reduced the travel time from Yemen to Palestine. Certain Yemenite Jews interpreted these changes and the new developments in the "Holy Land" as heavenly signs that the time of redemption was near. By settling in the Holy Land, they would play a part in what they believed could precipitate the anticipated messianic era.

From 1881 to 1882, some 30 Jewish families left

Sephardi kollelim (seminaries) had taken under their auspices the Yemenite Jews from the moment they set foot in Jerusalem. Later, however, the Yemenites would come to feel discriminated against by the Sephardic community, who compelled them to no longer make use of their own soft, pliable matzah, but to buy from them only the hard cracker-like matzah made weeks in advance prior to Passover. He also mentions that the Yemenite community would pay the prescribed tax to the public coffers; yet, they were not being allotted an equal share or subsidy as had been given to the Sephardic Jews. By 1910, the Yemenites had broken away from the Sephardic seminaries.[88]

Before World War I, there was another wave that began in 1906 and continued until 1914. Hundreds of Yemenite Jews made their way to the Holy Land, and chose to settle in the agricultural settlements. It was after these movements that the World Zionist Organization sent Shmuel Yavne'eli to Yemen to encourage Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Yavne'eli reached Yemen at the beginning of 1911, and returned in April 1912. Due to Yavne'eli's efforts, about 1,000 Jews left central and southern Yemen, with several hundred more arriving before 1914.[89] The purpose of this immigration was considered by the Zionist Office as allowing the importation of cheap labour. This wave of Yemenite Jewry underwent extreme suffering, physically and mentally, and those who arrived between 1912 and 1918 had a very high incidence of premature mortality, ranging from between 30% and 40% generally and, in some townships, reaching as high as 50%.[90]

Second wave of emigration: 1920 to 1950
Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
: Yemenite Jews en route from Aden to Israel on "wings of eagles".
Tu Bishvat celebration, Ma'abarat Rosh HaAyin
, 1950

During the

pogrom in Aden that killed 82 Jews and destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes. Aden's Jewish community was economically paralyzed, as most of the Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed. Early in 1948, the unfounded rumour of the ritual murder of two girls led to looting.[93]

This increasingly perilous situation led to the emigration of virtually the entire Yemenite Jewish community between June 1949 and September 1950 in

Sheikh Othman.[95] The operation took longer than was originally planned. Over the course of the operation, hundreds of migrants died in Hashed Camp, as well as on the plane rides to Israel.[94] By September 1950, almost 50,000 Jews had been successfully airlifted to the newly formed state of Israel.[96]

A smaller, continuous migration was allowed to continue into 1962, when a civil war put an abrupt halt to any further Jewish exodus.

According to an official statement by Alaska Airlines:

When Alaska Airlines sent them on "Operation Magic Carpet" 50 years ago, Warren and Marian Metzger didn't realize that they were embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. Warren Metzger, a DC-4 captain, and Marian Metzger, a flight attendant, were part of what turned out to be one of the greatest feats in Alaska Airlines’ 67-year history: airlifting thousands of Yemenite Jews to the newly created nation of Israel. The logistics of it all made the task daunting. Fuel was hard to come by. Flight and maintenance crews had to be positioned through the Middle East. And the desert sand wreaked havoc on engines.

It took a whole lot of resourcefulness throughout the better part of 1949 to do it. But in the end, despite being shot at and even bombed upon, the mission was accomplished – and without a single loss of life. "One of the things that really got to me was when we were unloading a plane at Tel Aviv," said Marian, who assisted Israeli nurses on a number of flights. "A little old lady came up to me and took the hem of my jacket and kissed it. She was giving me a blessing for getting them home. We were the wings of eagles."

For both Marian and Warren, the assignment came on the heels of flying the airline's other great adventure of the late 1940s: the

Berlin Airlift. "I had no idea what I was getting into, absolutely none," remembered Warren, who retired in 1979 as Alaska's chief pilot and vice president of flight operations. "It was pretty much seat-of-the-pants flying in those days. Navigation was by dead reckoning and eyesight. Planes were getting shot at. The airport in Tel Aviv was getting bombed all the time. We had to put extra fuel tanks in the planes so we had the range to avoid landing in Arab territory."[97]

In the wake of the

Kesalon, among other places, although the majority of these frontier places were later abandoned by the new immigrants from Yemen for more urban places in central Israel. This prompted Levi Eshkol to write in a letter to Prime-Minister Ben-Gurion (dated 10 April 1950): "The Yemenite vision doesn't allow him to see what he can do in a place of boulders and rocks. He cannot imagine such a development as Neve Ilan which sits upon dry rock. Instead, he imagines that he is being deprived..."[98] Many Yemenite Jews became irreligious through the re-education program of the Jewish Agency.[99][100]

Contemporary history

The town of Gedera has a large, possibly 50% Yemenite Jewish population.

Missing children (Israel, 1949–51)

Claims were made that, between 1949 and 1951, up to 1,033 children of Yemenite immigrant families may have disappeared from the immigrant camps. It was said that the parents were told that their children were ill and required hospitalization. Upon later visiting the hospital, it is claimed that the parents were told that their children had died though no bodies were presented and graves which have later proven to be empty in many cases were shown to the parents. Those who believed the theory contended that the Israeli government as well as other organizations in Israel kidnapped the children and gave them for adoption to other, non-Yemenite, families.[101]

In 2001 a seven-year public inquiry commission concluded that the accusations that Yemenite children were kidnapped by the government are not true. The commission unequivocally rejected claims of a plot to take children away from Yemenite immigrants. The report determined that documentation existed showing that 972 of the 1,033 missing children were deceased. Five additional missing babies were found to be alive. The commission was unable to discover what happened in another 56 cases. With regard to these unresolved 56 cases, the commission deemed it "possible" that the children were handed over for adoption following decisions made by individual local social workers, but not as part of an official policy.[101] In 2016, 400,000 documents were released in regard to the Yemenite Jewish Children affair.[102]

Final wave of emigration: 1990 to 2016

Yemenite Jewish elder, a silversmith, wearing traditional headgear (sudra)

A third wave of emigration from Yemen began in the late 20th-century, with the intercession of Human Rights activist and professor, Hayim Tawil, founder of the International Coalition for the Revival of the Jews of Yemen (ICROJOY) in 1988.

Beer-Sheva
. Other families arrived in 1995 and 1996.

From August 1992 to July 17, 1993, Jews numbering some 246 persons moved to Israel from Yemen, via Germany, and some via the United States.[104][105]

A small Jewish community existed in the town of

Satmar-affiliated Hasidic organization in Monsey, New York, U.S. A small Jewish enclave also existed in the town of Raydah, which lies 30 miles (49 km) north of Sana'a. The town hosted a yeshiva
, also funded by a Satmar-affiliated organization.

In spite of hostile conditions in recent years for Jews still living in Yemen, Yemeni security forces have gone to great lengths to try to convince the Jews to stay in their towns. These attempts, however, failed, and the authorities were forced to provide financial aid for the Jews so they would be able to rent accommodations in safer areas.[106]

Despite an official ban on emigration, many Yemenite Jews emigrated to Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom in the 2000s, fleeing anti-Semitic persecution and seeking better Jewish marriage prospects. Many of them had initially gone there to study but had never returned. There was essentially no Jewish population in Sanaʽa until the

Sanaʽa. As of 2010, around 700 Jews were living in the capital under government protection.[108]

In December 2008,

MiG-29 pilot in the Yemeni Air Force. Abadi confronted Nahari in the Raydah market, and shouted out, "Jew, accept the message of Islam", and opened fire with an AK-47. Nahari was shot five times and died. During interrogation, Abadi proudly confessed his crime, and stated that "these Jews must convert to Islam". Abadi had murdered his wife two years before but had avoided prison by paying her family compensation.[109] The court found Abadi mentally unstable, and ordered him to pay only a fine, but an appeals court sentenced him to death.[110] Following al-Nahari's murder, the Jewish community expressed its feelings of insecurity, claiming to have received hate mail and threats by phone from Islamic extremists. Dozens of Jews reported receiving death threats and said that they had been subjected to violent harassment. Nahari's killing and continual anti-Semitic harassment prompted approximately 20 other Jewish residents of Raydah to emigrate to Israel.[111] In 2009, five of Nahari's children moved to Israel, and in 2012, his wife and four other children followed, having initially stayed in Yemen so she could serve as a witness in Abadi's trial.[112]

In February 2009, 10 Yemeni Jews migrated to Israel, and in July 2009, three families, or 16 people in total, followed suit.[113][114] On October 31, 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that in June 2009, an estimated 350 Jews were left in Yemen, and by October 2009, 60 had emigrated to the United States, and 100 were considering following suit.[115] The BBC estimated that the community numbered 370 and was dwindling.[116] In 2010, it was reported that 200 Yemeni Jews would be allowed to immigrate to the United Kingdom.[117]

In August 2012, Aharon Zindani, a Jewish community leader from Sana'a, was stabbed to death in a market in an anti-Semitic attack. Subsequently, his wife and five children emigrated to Israel, and took his body with them for burial in Israel, with assistance from the Jewish Agency and the Israeli Foreign Ministry.[118][119][120]

In January 2013, it was reported that a group of 60 Yemenite Jews had migrated to Israel in a secret operation, arriving in Israel via a flight from Qatar. This was reported to be part of a larger operation which was being carried out in order to bring the approximately 400 Jews left in Yemen to Israel in the coming months.[121]

Yemeni civil war to present

On October 11, 2015, Likud MK Ayoob Kara stated that members of the Yemenite Jewish community had contacted him to say that the Houthi-led Yemen government had given them an ultimatum to convert or leave the country. A spokesman for the party of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh denied the reports as incorrect.[122][123]

On March 21, 2016, a group of 19 Yemenite Jews were flown to Israel in a secret operation, leaving the population at about 50.[124][125] On 7 June 2016, Jews who had been arrested in Yemen after having helped to smuggle out a Torah scroll were released.[126]

In May 2017 the Yemeni-based charity Mona Relief (Yemen Organization for Humanitarian Relief and Development) gave aid to 86 members of the Jewish community in Sana'a.[127]

Woven palm-frond and rush baskets, made in Yemen

In a July 2018 interview with a Yemenite rabbi, he claimed that they were definitely treated very well before the recent

war in Yemen which has affected all communities in Yemen. He has also said that Yemenite Jews should have never traveled away from Yemen and that he believes thousands of Yemenite Jews will return to Yemen after the war ends.[128]

In 2019, the Mona Relief website reported (February 25): "Mona Relief's team in the capital Sana'a delivered today monthly food aid packages to Jewish minority families in Yemen. Mona Relief has been delivering food aid baskets to Jewish community in the capital Sana'a since 2016. Our project today was funded by Mona Relief's online fundraising campaign in indiegogo..."[129]

As of March 2020, the Jewish cemetery in Aden was destroyed.[130] On April 28, 2020, Yemenite Minister Moammer al-Iryani remarked the fate of the last 50 Jews in Yemen is unknown.[131]

A 2020 World Population Review with a Census of Jewish population by country has no listing of any Jews in Yemen.[132]

On July 13, 2020, it was reported that the Houthi Militia were capturing the last Jews of Yemen of the Kharif District.[133] In their last mention of the Jews in Yemen in July 2020 the Mona Relief reported on their Website that as of July 19, 2020, of the Jewish Population in Yemen there were only a "handful" of Jews in Sana'a.[134]

According to Yemeni publications published in July 2020, the last two Jewish families were waiting for deportation from the areas controlled by the Houthis, which would make Yemen, for the first time in its modern history, devoid of Jews, with the exception of the families of the brothers Suleiman Musa Salem and Sulaiman Yahya Habib in Sana'a and the family of Salem Musa Mara'bi who moved to the complex owned by the Ministry of Defense near the U.S. embassy in 2007 after the Houthis assaulted them and looted their homes. The publications said that a Jewish woman lives with her brother in the Rayda district and a man and his wife live in the Arhab district of the Sana'a governorate. A source said, "It is now clear that the Houthis want to deport the rest of the Jews, and prevent them from selling their properties at their real prices, and we are surprised that the international community and local and international human rights organizations have remained silent towards the process of forced deportation and forcing the Jews to leave their country and prevent them from disposing of their property.[135]

In August 2020 of an estimated 100 or so remaining Yemen Jews, 42 have migrated to UAE and the rest would also leave.[136][137] On November 10, 2020, the U.S. State Department called for the immediate and unconditional release of Levi Salem Musa Marhabi, one of the last remaining Yemenite Jews in Yemen. A press statement said Marhabi has been wrongfully detained by the Houthi militia for four years, despite a court ordering his release in September 2019.[138] In December 2020 an Israeli Rabbi visited the Yemenite Jews who escaped to the UAE.[139]

On 28 March 2021, 13 Jews were forced by the Houthis to leave Yemen; less than 10 Jews still resided in Yemen.[140][141] According to one report there are six Jews left in Yemen: one woman; her brother; 3 others, and Levi Salem Marhabi (who has been imprisoned for helping smuggle a Torah scroll out of Yemen).[142][143][144][145][141] The Jerusalem Post reported that the remaining Jewish population in Yemen consists of four elderly Jews, ending the continuous presence of a community that dated back to antiquity.[146][147] In December 2021 the Jews of Yemen received Hanukkah kits.[148] In March 2022 the United Nations reported there is just one Jew in Yemen (Levi Salem Marhabi).[8]

Timeline of events

628 BCE or 463 BCE According to tradition, Jews first settled in Yemen 42 years before the destruction of the
68 CE The Jewish Diaspora at the time of the Second Temple's destruction, according to Josephus, was in Parthia (Persia), Babylonia (Iraq), and Arabia, as well as some Jews beyond the Euphrates and in Adiabene. In Josephus' own words, he had informed "the remotest Arabians" about the destruction. These Jews are believed to have been the progenitors of the Jews of Yemen.[154]
c. 250 CE Jewish elder from Yemen (
Yehudah Ha-Nassi.[155][156]
390 CE The Himyarite king Abu Karib converts to Judaism.[16][17]
470–77 Jews from Yemen (
Himyar) brought to burial in Zoara.[157]
524 Jewish king, Yûsuf 'As'ar Yath'ar, known also in the Islamic tradition as Dhū Nuwās, lays siege to the city Najran and takes it.[158][159]
1165
Sa'dah of Yemen), who traced their lineage to king David[160]
1174
Iggeret Teman (Epistle to Yemen) to the Jews of Yemen[54][161]
1216 Jews of Yemen send thirteen questions to Rabbi
Abraham ben Maimonides, relating to halacha[162]
1346 Rabbi Yehoshua Hanagid carries on a correspondence with Rabbi David b. Amram al-Adeni, the leader of the Jewish community in Yemen, in which more than 100 Questions & Responsa are exchanged between them.[163]
1457 Old Synagogue in
Ṣanʻā' destroyed because of warring between Imam Al-Mutawakkil al-Mutahhar and Az-Zafir ʻAmir I bin Ṭāhir[164]
1489 Rabbi
Obadiah di Bertinora encounters Jews from Yemen while in Jerusalem.[165]
1567 Zechariah (Yaḥya) al-Ḍāhirī visited Rabbi Joseph Karo's yeshiva in Safed[166]
1666 Decree of the Headgear (Ar. al-'amā'im ) in which Jews were forbidden by an edict to wear turbans (pl. 'amā'im) on their heads from that time forward[167]
1679–80 the
Exile of Mawzaʻ[168]
1724 Great famine in Yemen, causing many of the poor and impoverished Jews to convert to Islam[169]
1761 Destruction of twelve synagogues in
Ṣanʻā' by Imam Al-Mahdi Abbas[170]
1763 Carsten Niebuhr visits Yemen, describing his visit with the Jews of Yemen in book, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern (Description of Travel to Arabia and Other Neighboring Countries)[171]
1805 Rabbi Yiḥya Saleh (Maharitz), eminent Yemenite scholar, jurist and exponent of Jewish law, dies.
1859
Yaakov Saphir
visits Yemen, describing his visit with the Jews of Yemen in book, Even Sapir.
1882 First modern mass emigration of Jews from Yemen, who sailed the Red Sea, crossed Egypt and sailed the Mediterranean to a port in Jaffa, and then by foot to Jerusalem. This immigration was popularly given the mnemonics, aʻaleh betamar (literally, 'I shall go up on the date palm tree,' a verse taken from Song of Songs). The Hebrew word "betamar" = בתמר has the numerical value of 642, which they expounded to mean, 'I shall go up (i.e. make the pilgrimage) in the year [5]642
anno mundi (here, abbreviated without the millennium), or what was then 1882 CE.[172][173]
1902 Rabbi
Ṣanʻā'[174]
1907 The Ottoman government of Palestine recognizes the Yemenites as an independent community (just as Ashkenazim and Sepharadim are independent communities);[175] Second-wave of emigration from Yemen (from the regions of Saʿadah and Ḥaydan ash-Sham)
1909 German Jewish photographer, Hermann Burchardt, killed in Yemen.
1910 Yomtob Sémach, an envoy from the Alliance Israélite Universelle, scouts out the possibility of opening a school in Yemen.[176]
1911 Zionist envoy Shmuel Warshawsky (later named Shmuel Yavne'eli) sent to Yemen, and persuades some 2,000 Yemenite Jews to make the aliya to Eretz Israel.[177]
1911 Abraham Isaac Kook, Chief Rabbi in Ottoman Palestine, addresses twenty-six questions to the heads of the Jewish community in Yemen[178]
1912 Third-wave of emigration from Yemen (an emigration that continued until the outbreak of WWI in 1914)
1927 A manuscript containing
Sana'a
, Yemen.
1949 Imam Ahmad announces that any Jew who is interested in leaving Yemen is permitted to do so.[179]
1949–50 Operation On Eagles' Wings (also called Operation Magic Carpet) brings to Israel some 48,000 Yemenite Jews

Religious traditions

1914 photograph of a Yemenite Jew in traditional vestments under the tallit gadol, reading from a scroll

Yemenite Jews and the Aramaic speaking

Bar Mitzvah
are often given the sixth aliyah. Each verse of the Torah read in Hebrew is followed by the Aramaic translation, usually chanted by a child. Both the sixth aliyah and the Targum have a simplified melody, distinct from the general Torah melody used for the other aliyot.

Like most other Jewish communities, Yemenite Jews chant different melodies for Torah, Prophets (Haftara), Megillat Aicha (Book of Lamentations), Kohelet (Ecclesiastes, read during Sukkot), and Megillat Esther (the Scroll of Esther read on Purim). Unlike Ashkenazic communities, there are melodies for Mishle (Proverbs) and Psalms.[181]

Every Yemenite Jew knew how to read from the Torah Scroll with the correct pronunciation and tune, exactly right in every detail. Each man who was called up to the Torah read his section by himself. All this was possible because children right from the start learned to read without any vowels. Their diction is much more correct than the Sephardic and Ashkenazic dialect. The results of their education are outstanding, for example if someone is speaking with his neighbor and needs to quote a verse from the Bible, he speaks it out by heart, without pause or effort, with its melody.

— Stanley Mann[182]
Yemenite Jew sounding the Shofar, 1930s Ottoman Palestine (possibly Jerusalem)

In larger Jewish communities, such as

Sad'a, boys were sent to the melamed at the age of three to begin their religious learning. They attended the melamed from early dawn to sunset on Sunday through Thursday and until noon on Friday. Jewish women were required to have a thorough knowledge of the laws pertaining to Kashrut and Taharat Mishpachah (family purity) i.e. Niddah. Some women even mastered the laws of Shechita
, thereby acting as ritual slaughterers.

People also sat on the floors of synagogues instead of sitting on chairs, similar to the way many other non-Ashkenazi Jews sat in synagogues. This is in accordance with what Rambam (Maimonides) wrote in his Mishneh Torah:

Synagogues and houses of study must be treated with respect. They are swept and sprinkled to lay the dust. In Spain, and in the Maghreb (Morocco), in Babylonia (Iraq), and in the Holy Land, it is customary to kindle lamps in the synagogues, and to spread mats on the floor on which the worshippers sit. In the lands of Edom (Christendom), they sit in synagogues on chairs [or benches].

— Hilchot Tefillah 11:4 [5]
Elders studying in a synagogue in Ottoman Palestine (1906–1918)

The lack of chairs may also have been to provide more space for prostration, another ancient Jewish observance that the Jews of Yemen continued to practise until very recent times.[183] There are still a few Yemenite Jews who prostrate themselves during the part of everyday Jewish prayer called Tachanun (Supplication), though such individuals usually do so in privacy. In the small Jewish community that exists today in Bet Harash, prostration is still done during the tachanun prayer. Jews of European origin generally prostrate only during certain portions of special prayers during Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Prostration was a common practise amongst all Jews until some point during the late Middle Ages or Renaissance period.

Like Yemenite Jewish homes, the synagogues in Yemen had to be lower in height than the lowest mosque in the area. In order to accommodate this, synagogues were built into the ground to give them more space without looking large from the outside. In some parts of Yemen,

minyanim
would often just meet in homes of Jews, instead of the community having a separate building for a synagogue. Beauty and artwork were saved for the ritual objects in the synagogue and in the home.

Yemenite Jews also wore a distinctive tallit often found to this day. The Yemenite tallit features a wide atara and large corner patches, embellished with silver or gold thread, and the fringes along the sides of the tallit are netted. According to the Baladi custom, the tzitzit are tied with seven chulyot (hitches), based on Maimonides' teaching.[184]

On Sabbath days, the traditional Yemenite bread was not the

earthen oven.[185][186]

Weddings and marriage traditions

A bride in traditional Yemenite Jewish bridal vestment, in Israel 1958.

During a Yemenite Jewish wedding, the bride was bedecked with jewelry and wore a traditional wedding costume, including an elaborate headdress decorated with flowers and rue leaves, which were believed to ward off evil. Gold threads were woven into the fabric of her clothing. Songs were sung as part of a seven-day wedding celebration, with lyrics about friendship and love in alternating verses of Hebrew and Arabic.[187]

In Yemen, the Jewish practice was not for the groom and his bride to be secluded in a canopy (chuppah) hung on four poles, as is widely practiced today in Jewish weddings, but rather in a bridal chamber that was, in effect, a highly decorated room in the house of the groom. This room was traditionally decorated with large hanging sheets of colored, patterned cloth, replete with wall cushions and short-length mattresses for reclining.[188] Their marriage is consummated when they have been left together alone in this room. This ancient practice finds expression in the writings of Isaac ben Abba Mari (c. 1122 – c. 1193), author of Sefer ha-'Ittur,[189] concerning the Benediction of the Bridegroom: "Now the chuppah is when her father delivers her unto her husband, bringing her into that house wherein is some new innovation, such as the sheets… surrounding the walls, etc. For we recite in the Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah 46a (Sotah 9:15), 'Those bridal chambers, (chuppoth hathanim), they hang within them patterned sheets and gold-embroidered ribbons,' etc."

Yemenite Ketubah from 1794, now at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design

After immigration to Israel, the regional varieties of Yemenite bridal jewelry were replaced by a uniform item that became identified with the community: the splendid bridal garb of Sana'a.[190]

Before the wedding, Yemenite and other Eastern Jewish communities perform the henna ceremony, an ancient ritual with Bronze Age origins.[191] The family of the bride mixes a paste derived from the henna plant that is placed on the palms of the bride and groom, and their guests. After the paste is washed off, a deep orange stain remains that gradually fades over the next week.[192]

Yemenites had a special affinity for Henna due to biblical and Talmudic references. Henna, in the Bible, is Camphire, and is mentioned in the

Afghan Jews
.

"My Beloved is unto me as a cluster of Camphire in the vineyards of En-Gedi" Song of Solomon, 1:14

A Yemenite Jewish wedding custom specific only to the community of Aden is the Talbis, revolving around the groom. A number of special songs are sung by the men while holding candles, and the groom is dressed in a golden garment.[193]

Religious groups

Elderly Yemenite Jew, between 1898 and 1914.

The three main groups of Yemenite Jews are the Baladi, Shami, and the Maimonideans or "Rambamists". In addition, the "Rechabites" are a tribe in Sana'a claiming to be descendants of Jehonadab that was found in 1839 by Reverend Joseph Wolff, who later went to Bukhara to attempt to save Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly.[194]

The differences between these groups largely concern the respective influence of the original Yemenite tradition, which was largely based on the works of Maimonides, and on the Kabbalistic tradition embodied in the Zohar and in the school of Isaac Luria, which was increasingly influential from the 17th century on.

School reform dispute (Dor Daim vs Iqshim)

Yemenite Jew in Jerusalem, late 19th century.

Towards the end of the 19th century, new ideas began to reach Yemenite Jews from abroad. Hebrew newspapers began to arrive, and relations developed with Sephardic Jews, who came to Yemen from various Ottoman provinces to trade with the army and government officials.

Two Jewish travelers, Joseph Halévy, a French-trained Jewish Orientalist, and Eduard Glaser, an Austrian-Jewish astronomer and Arabist, in particular had a strong influence on a group of young Yemenite Jews, the most outstanding of whom was Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ. As a result of his contact with Halévy and Glaser,[citation needed] Qafiḥ introduced modern content into the educational system. Qafiḥ opened a new school and, in addition to traditional subjects, introduced arithmetic, Hebrew and Arabic, with the grammar of both languages. The curriculum also included subjects such as natural science, history, geography, astronomy, sports and Turkish.[198]

The Dor Daim and Iqshim dispute about the Zohar literature broke out in 1912, inflamed

Sana'a's Jewish community, and split it into two rival groups that maintained separate communal institutions[199] until the late 1940s. Rabbi Qafiḥ and his friends were the leaders of a group of Maimonideans called Dor Daim (the "generation of knowledge"). Their goal was to bring Yemenite Jews back to the original Maimonidean method of understanding Judaism that existed in pre-17th-century Yemen
.

Similar to certain

Sephardi Jews), the Dor Daim rejected the Zohar, a book of esoteric mysticism. They felt that the Kabbalah which was based on the Zohar was irrational, alien, and inconsistent with the true reasonable nature of Judaism. In 1913, when it seemed that Rabbi Qafiḥ, then headmaster of the new Jewish school and working closely with the Ottoman authorities, enjoyed sufficient political support, the Dor Daim made its views public, and tried to convince the entire community to accept them. Many of the non-Dor Deah elements of the community rejected the Dor Deah concepts. The opposition, the Iqshim, headed by Rabbi Yiḥya Yiṣḥaq, the Hakham Bashi, refused to deviate from the accepted customs and from the study of the Zohar. One of the Iqshim's targets in the fight against Rabbi Qafiḥ was his modern Turkish-Jewish school.[198] Due to the Dor Daim and Iqshim dispute, the school closed 5 years after it was opened, before the educational system could develop a reserve of young people who had been exposed to its ideas.[200]

Yemenite rabbis

Education

Education of children was of paramount importance to Jewish fathers in Yemen, who, as a rule, sent their children from an early age to study the portions of the Torah, usually under the tutelage of a local teacher. Often, such teachings were conducted in the home of their teacher. It was not uncommon for the teacher to be occupied in his trade (coat maker, weaver, etc.) while instructing his students.[201] All instruction consisted of the recital and memorization of sacred texts. The most astute of these students, when they came of age, pursued after a higher Jewish education and which almost always entailed studying Shechita (ritual slaughter), and receiving a license (Hebrew: הרשאה) from a qualified instructor to slaughter domestic livestock.

Baladi-rite and Shami-rite prayer books

  • Siaḥ Yerushalayim, Baladi prayer book in 4 vols, ed. Yosef Qafih
  • Tefillat Avot, Baladi prayer book (6 vols.)
  • Torat Avot, Baladi prayer book (7 vols.)
  • Tiklal Ha-Mefoar (Maharitz) Nusaḥ Baladi, Meyusad Al Pi Ha-Tiklal Im Etz Ḥayim Ha-Shalem Arukh Ke-Minhag Yahaduth Teiman: Bene Berak: Or Neriyah ben Mosheh Ozeri: 2001 or 2002
  • Siddur Tefillat HaḤodesh — Beit Yaakov (Nusaḥ Shami), Nusaḥ Sepharadim, Teiman, and the Edoth Mizraḥ
  • Rabbi Shalom Sharabi, Siddur Kavanot HaRashash: Yeshivat HaChaim Ve'Hashalom
  • Hatiklāl Hamevo'ar (Baladi-rite), ed. Pinḥas Qoraḥ, Benei Barak 2006

Yemenite Jewish culture

Yemenite Hebrew

Yemenite Hebrew has been studied by scholars, many of whom believe it to contain the most ancient phonetic and grammatical features. 

Sanaani Hebrew pronunciation (used by the majority) has been indirectly critiqued by Saadia Gaon since it contains the Hebrew letters jimmel and guf, which he rules is incorrect. There are Yemenite scholars, such as Rabbi Ratzon Arusi
, who say that such a perspective is a misunderstanding of Saadia Gaon's words.

Rabbi Mazuz postulates this hypothesis through the Djerban (

regional Judeo-Arabic
.

Yemenite Jewish literature

Manuscript page from Yemenite Midrash ha-Gadol on Genesis.

The oldest Yemenite manuscripts are those of the

Hebrew Bible, which the Yemenite Jews call "Taj" ("crown"). The oldest texts dating from the 9th century, and each of them has a short Masoretic introduction, while many contain Arabic commentaries.[204]

Yemenite Jews were acquainted with the works of

Deuteronomy. Abraham ben Solomon wrote on the Prophets
.

Among the

Guide for the Perplexed, copied in Yemen in 1380, was found in the India Office Library and added to the collection of the British Library in 1992.[206]

Babylonian supralinear punctuation
(Pirke Avot)

Among the

Yosef Karo's seat of learning in Safed. The philosophical writers include: Saadia b. Jabeẓ and Saadia b. Mas'ud, both at the beginning of the 14th century; Ibn al-Ḥawas, the author of a treatise in the form of a dialogue written in rhymed prose, and termed by its author the "Flower of Yemen"; Ḥasan al-Dhamari; and Joseph ha-Levi b. Jefes, who wrote the philosophical treatises "Ner Yisrael" (1420) and "Kitab al-Masaḥah."[207]

Yemenite Jewish clothing

Jewish children in Sana'a, Yemen (ca. 1909)

Men's clothing

Abraham b. Abraham Yitzhak Halevi and family, photo by Yihye Haybi, ca. 1940

A Tunic (Hebrew: חלוק) and habit (Hebrew: סודרא), the latter made with a central hat (Hebrew: כומתא), were the traditional items of clothing worn by a married Jewish man in Yemen.[208][209] Leading rabbinic scholar and sage, Rabbi Yosef Qafih, described the manner in which they would wrap their habits, saying that the habit was sometimes worn while wrapped around a man's head, or simply partly draped over his head. German ethnographer Erich Brauer (1895–1942) described the differences between Jewish and Gentile garb, making note of the fact that the differences existed only in their outer garments, but not in their undergarments. He also offered the following description:

Instead of trousers, the Yemenite Jews (as well as Yemen's Arabs) carry a piece of cloth worn around the hip (loincloth), called maizar. The expression fūṭa, quoted by Sapir (Jacob Saphir), is used [for the same piece of clothing] by the Jews in Aden and partly also by Arabs from Yemen. The maizar consists of one piece of dark-blue cotton that is wound a few times around the waist and which is held up by a belt made of cloth material or leather. The maizar is allowed to reach down to the knees only. Today, the Yemenites will, therefore, wear [underwear made like unto] short-length trousers, called sirwāl, [instead of the traditional loincloth beneath their tunics]. A blue shirt that has a split that extends down to the waistline and that is closed at neck level is worn over the maizar. If the shirt is multicolored and striped, it is called tahṭāni, meaning, 'the lower.' If it is monochrome, it is called antari. Finally, the outer layer of clothing, worn over the maizar and antari, is a dark-blue cotton tunic (Arabic: gufṭān or kufṭān).[210] The tunic is a coat-like garment that extends down to the knees which is fully open in the front and is closed with a single button in the neck. Over the tunic, the Jewish people were not allowed to wear a girdle.[211]

As noted, some of the men's dress-codes were forced upon them by laws of the State. For example, formerly in Yemen, Jews were not allowed to wear clothing of any color besides blue.[212] Earlier, in Jacob Saphir's time (1859), they'd wear outer garments that were "utterly black." When German-Danish explorer, Carsten Niebuhr, visited Yemen in 1763, the only person he saw wearing the blue-colored tunic was the Jewish courtier, the Minister and Prince, Sālim b. Aharon Irāqi Ha-Kohen, who served under two kings for a period of no less than twenty-eight years.[213]

The traditional Yemenite tallīt is a full-length tallīt made from fine wool or goat's hair of a single black or brown color, called šämläh, but it was not unique unto Jews alone. Muslims would also wear similar items of covering, to protect them from the heat or rain.[214] Jewish garments, however, bore the ritual fringes prescribed for such garments. The wearing of such garments was not unique to prayer time alone, but was worn the entire day.[215] Later, decorative black and white striped shawls were imported into the country from Europe, and which were highly valued by the Jews of Yemen who wore them on special occasions and on the Sabbath day. The small tallīt (ṭallīt kaṭan) was introduced into Yemen via Aden from European centers, and principally worn by rabbis and educated persons.[214]

Women's clothing

Traditional Yemenite attire for women

Jewish women in Yemen traditionally wore branched

Sana'a
would wear a broad veil-like scarf over their heads, called maswan, especially when going out in public places, and which was traditionally worn above the closer fitting scarves that covered their hair. All women were adorned with black slippers when walking in public places, and only very small girls would walk barefoot.

Jewish women and girls in Haydan a-sham (in the far northern districts of Yemen) did not make use of the gargush, but would wear a black scarf tied firmly to their foreheads, resembling a black band, along with the covering made by an additional scarf that covered the hair.

Culinary specialties

The Yemenite Jews are known for bringing to Israel certain culinary dishes, now popularly eaten by all ethnic-groups living in Israel, namely, the

sabayah, and zalabiyeh
.

Yemenite Jewish surnames

The subject of Jewish surnames in Yemen is a complex one. Most surnames are

Judeo-Arabic
: שחב‎), meaning "one whose voice is hoarse," which was changed to Shevach (Hebrew: שבח‎), meaning "praise," by a reversal of the last two letters.

Claimed family lineages

Some Jewish families have preserved traditions which are related to their tribal affiliations, based on partial genealogical records which have been passed down from generation to generation. In Yemen, for example, some Jews trace their lineage to Judah, others trace their lineage to Benjamin, and others trace their lineage to Levi and Reuben. Of particular interest is one distinguished Jewish family of Yemen which traced its lineage to Bani, one of the sons of Peretz, the son of Judah.[218]

Interaction with Israeli culture

Israeli Yemenite Jews were initially discouraged from practicing their culture by the dominant Ashkenazi majority, and the practice of using henna before weddings declined. Beginning around the late 1970s, discussions were held in honor of the ethnic heritage of Yemenite Jews and by 2018, a revival of some Yemenite customs occurred. The cathartic moment was an exhibition of a Yemeni bride which was shown at the Israel Museum in 1965.[219]

Music

Yemeni Jews are predominant among Israeli performers of Mizrahi music.

.

Israelis of Yemenite descent

Israeli soldiers of Yemenite descent
Politics

Israeli Politicians of Yemenite Jewish descent include Gila Gamliel (current member of the Knesset for Likud), Meir Yitzhak Halevi (the Mayor of Eilat), Saadia Kobashi (leader of the Yemenite Jewish community in Israel, and one of the signatories of the country's declaration of independence), and Avraham Taviv.

Sports and media

Becky Griffin, whose mother is Yemenite Jewish, works as a model, TV presenter and actress. Shahar Tzuberi is an Olympic windsurfer. Linoy Ashram is an Israeli individual rhythmic gymnast. She is the 2020 Olympic All-around Champion.

Genetic studies

Studies on uniparental haplogroups have indicated shared roots between Yemenite Jewish and

L haplogroups, which are common among non-Jewish Yemenis but not in other Jewish groups. Nonetheless, compared to non-Jewish Yemenis, Yemenite Jews have a lower frequency and diversity of L haplotypes.[220] It has been proposed that the L lineages might reflect admixture from a local non-Jewish source,[222][223] whereas a 2011 study by Amy L. Non and others concluded that there is ”little evidence for large-scale conversion of local Yemeni”.[220]

By

autosomal DNA, Yemenite Jews are relatively distinct from other Jewish groups. Instead, they are closer to the non-Jewish population of the Arabian Peninsula.[224]

According to Simon Schama, the Israeli geneticist Batsheva Bonne-Tamir established that the ancestry of Yemeni Jews goes back to south-Western Arabian and Bedouin conversions.[225]

In medicine, the mutation SAMD9 (sterile alpha motif domain containing 9), which encodes a protein involved in the regulation of extraosseous calcification, has been found to underlie normophosphatemic familial tumoral calcinosis in families of Jewish Yemenite origin.[226]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Yemenite Jews in Stamford Hill: A failed experiment".
  2. ^ "Watch: After 15 Years: Yemeni Jewish Family Reunites In The United Arab Emirates". The Yeshiva World. August 10, 2020. Retrieved March 30, 2021.
  3. ^ Weiss, Yoni (August 16, 2020). "Report: Yemen's Remaining Jews to Move to UAE Following Israel Treaty". Hamodia. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  4. ^ "Point of No Return". Point of No Return.
  5. ^ "Bahrain". World Jewish Congress. Retrieved March 30, 2021.
  6. ^ "History of the Jews of Yemen". May 10, 2022.
  7. ^ Rod Nordland (February 18, 2015). "Persecution Defines Life for Yemen's Remaining Jews". The New York Times.
  8. ^ a b Deutch, Gabby (March 14, 2022). "Only one Jew remains in Yemen, U.N. says". Jewish Insider.
  9. .
  10. Baladi-rite Prayer
    .
  11. ^ Christian Robin: Himyar et Israël. In: Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres (eds): Comptes-Rendus of séances de l'année 2004th 148/2, pages 831–901. Paris 2004
  12. ^ Gilbert, Martin: In Ishmael's House, p. 4
  13. .
  14. .
  15. ^ "The Jewish Kingdom of Himyar its rise and fall last retrieved dec 11 2012". Thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
  16. ^ a b Chaikin, Moses Avigdor (1899). The Celebrities of the Jews: A glance at the historical circumstances of the Jewish people from the destruction of Jerusalem to the present day. Part I. 70-1290. Pawson & Brailsford. Retrieved July 9, 2010.
  17. ^
    Jewish Publication Society of America. pp. 62
    –64. Abu Kariba Asad.
  18. . The Jewish Kingdoms of Arabia 7th century.
  19. ^ The Oriental Herald and Journal of General Literature. Vol. 14. London. 1827. p. 544.
  20. .
  21. ^ Justin Paul Heinz (August 2008). "The Origins of Muslim Prayer: Sixth and Seventh Century Religious Influences on the Salat Ritual" (PDF). Retrieved July 9, 2010.[permanent dead link]
  22. ^ The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words by Simon Schama, Part Two, Chapter 6 "Among the Believers", page 233:

    By the late fourth century CE, just as life for Jews in Christendom was beginning to turn starkly harsher, Judaism made its spectacular conquest in Arabia, when the kingdom of Himyar (corresponding, territorially, to present-day Yemen, and the dominant power on the Arabian peninsula for 250 years) converted to Judaism. For a long time, it was assumed that the Himyar conversion was confined to a small circle close to the king – Tiban As'ad Abu Karib, the last of the Tubban line –, and perhaps included the warrior aristocracy. There is still a lively debate regarding the extent of Himyar Judaism; but the evidence of both inscriptions and, more significantly, excavations at the mountain of the capital of Zafar, which have uncovered what seems likely to be an ancient mikveh, suggests to many recent scholars (though not all) that the dramatic conversion was more profound, widespread and enduring. It may have been that the Himyarites were devotees of the 'sun and moon' as well as practicing eighth day circumcision, but at the time, the cult of the sun, as we have seen from synagogue mosaics of the period, was not controversial in Jewish practice.

  23. ^ Y. M. Abdallah (1987). The Inscription CIH 543: A New Reading Based on the Newly-Found Original in C. Robin & M. Bafaqih (Eds.) Sayhadica: Recherches Sur Les Inscriptions De l'Arabie Préislamiques Offertes Par Ses Collègues Au Professeur A.F.L. Beeston. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner S.A. pp. 4–5.
  24. ^ a b A. Jamme, W.F., Sabaean and Ḥasaean Inscriptions from Saudi Arabia, Instituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente: Università di Roma, Rome 1966, p. 40
  25. ^ .
  26. .
  27. ^ The Nestorian Chronicle from Saard (Séert), edited by Addai Scher (in Patrologia Orientalis vol. IV, V and VII). The original Nestorian account was compiled shortly after 1036 CE from extracts of old Syriac historical works no longer extant. The original account read as follows: "…In later times there reigned over this country a Jewish king, whose name was Masrūq. His mother was a Jewess, of the inhabitants of Nisibis, who had been made a captive. Then one of the kings of Yaman had bought her and she had given birth to Masrūq and instructed him in Judaism. He reigned after his father and killed a number of the Christians. Bar Sāhde has told his history in his Chronicle." See also Moshe Gill, In the Kingdom of Ishmael during the Geonic Period (במלכות ישמעאל בתקופת הגאונים), vols. 1–4, Tel-Aviv 1997, p. 19 (Hebrew)
  28. ^ "Historians back BBC over Jewish massacre claim | The Jewish Chronicle". thejc.com. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  29. ^ Jacques Ryckmans, La persécution des chrétiens himyarites au sixième siècle, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Inst. in het Nabije Oosten, 1956 pp 1–24
  30. .
  31. .
  32. .
  33. ^ Jacques Ryckmans, La persécution des chrétiens himyarites au sixième siècle, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten: Istanbul 1956, p. 14 (French)
  34. ^ J. A. S. Evans. The Age of Justinian: The Circumstances of Imperial Power p.113
  35. ^ The Jews of Yemen: Studies in Their History and Culture By Joseph Tobi p.34
  36. ^ Jewish Communities in Exotic Places," by Ken Blady, Jason Aronson Inc., 2000, pages 7
  37. ^ Economic and Modern Education in Yemen (Education in Yemen in the Background of Political, Economic and Social Processes and Events, by Dr. Yosef Zuriely, Imud and Hadafasah, Jerusalem, 2005, page 2
  38. ^ Ken Blady (2000), Jewish Communities in Exotic Places, Jason Aronson Inc., p. 32
  39. ^ Jacob Saphir, Iben Safir (vol. 1 – ch. 43), Lyck 1866, p. 99a (Hebrew). Bear in mind here that the Jewish year for the destruction of the First Temple is traditionally given in Jewish computation as 3338 AM or 421/2 BCE. This differs from the modern scientific year, which is usually expressed using the Proleptic Julian calendar as 587 BCE.
  40. ^ Shalom Seri and Naftali Ben-David, A Journey to Yemen and Its Jews, Eeleh BeTamar publishing, 1991, page 43
  41. ^ "The Jews of Yemen", in Yemen: 3000 Years of Art and Civilization in Arabia Felix, edited by Werner Daum, page 272: 1987
  42. Ben-Zvi Institute
    (Hebrew). This view is based on a commentary composed by Rabbi Yihya Qorah of Sana'a (d. 1881), where he explains the import of the words "There came ...the Babylonian doe," in the poem Levavī yeḥeshqah 'oferah. "He means to say that there came all those who are my companions, being those who dwell in Yemen, and I, too, have been merited to come along with them [...] Now, both, he and we are called Babylonians, based on the fact that we were there from the beginning, and it was from there that our forefathers came to dwell in this country, just as it is known by those who investigate the matter."
  43. ^ .
  44. .
  45. ^ Jewish Communities in Exotic Places, by Ken Blady, Jason Aronson Inc., 2000, page 9
  46. ^ .
  47. .
  48. .
  49. .
  50. .
  51. ^ The Epistles of Maimonides: Crisis and Leadership, ed.:Abraham S. Halkin, David Hartman, Jewish Publication Society, 1985. p.91
  52. ^ .
  53. ^ a b c Wikisource:Epistle to Yemen
  54. .
  55. .
  56. .
  57. .
  58. , ʻAbd al-Nabī ibn Mahdī decreed compulsory apostasy for the Jews [of Yemen] by forcing the Jewish inhabitants of all the places he had subdued to desert the Jewish religion.
  59. ^ .
  60. .
  61. ^ The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, by Reeva Spector Simon, Michael Menachem Laskier, Sara Reguer editors, Columbia University Press, 2003, page 392
  62. ^ Jewish Communities in Exotic Places," by Ken Blady, Jason Aronson Inc., 2000, page 10
  63. ^ Yosef Tobi. "Mawzaʿ, Expulsion of." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2014.
  64. ^ B. Z. Eraqi Klorman, The Jews of Yemen in the Nineteenth Century: A Portrait of a Messianic Community, BRILL, 1993, p.46.
  65. .
  66. ^ Yosef Qafiḥ (ed.), "Qorot Yisra’el be-Teman by Rabbi Ḥayim Ḥibshush," Ketavim (Collected Papers), Vol. 2, Jerusalem 1989, pp. 714–715 (Hebrew)
  67. .
  68. .
  69. . [Translation] Offal collectors (Arabic: mighatif). The name given for those who clean the privy. The Arab rulers put this degrading work upon the Jews, for a reproach and for humiliation. There were several families who took upon themselves willingly to do this work, in exchange for a fixed salary out of the community's coffer box. In addition to this, they would dry out 'their merchandise' and sell it to public bath houses as fuel for stoking the fire.
  70. ).
  71. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia, London 1906, s.v. Yemen
  72. ^ Carl Rathjens and Hermann von Wissmann, Landeskundliche Ergebnisse (pub. in: Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiet der Auslandskunde, vol. 40), Hamburg 1934, pp. 133 – 136. There, Rathjens writes on p. 133: "The following list of Jewish communities in Yemen was left to us in Sana'a from Chochom Bashi, the head of the entire Yemenite Jews. He read to us the names of the places from its tax rolls, which were in excellent order, because he is accountable to the Imam for the proper delivery of the taxes of the Jews of Sana'a, as throughout the [entire] country." (Original German: "Das nachfolgende Verzeichnis der Judengemeinden in Jemen wurde uns vom Chacham Bâschi, dem Oberhaupt der gesamten jemenitischen Juden, in Sana aufgegeben. Er las uns die Namen der Orte aus seinen Steuerlisten vor, die in vorzüglicher Ordnung waren, da er gegenüber dem Imâm für die richtige Ablieferung der Steuern der Juden Sana wie im ganzen Lande verantwortlich ist").
  73. ^ The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights, by Harris Lenowitz, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, page 229
  74. ^ a b "Our man in Sanaa: Ex-Yemen president was once trainee rabbi". Haaretz. Haaretz.com. October 20, 2008. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  75. .
  76. ^ "Abdul-Rahman al-Iryani, Ex-Yemen President, 89 - NYTimes.com". New York Times. YEMEN. March 17, 1998. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  77. ^ a b c d e f g h i Yitzhak Halevi, Aviran (ed.), Ish Yemini, vol. 2, Bnei Barak 2011, p. 565 (Hebrew)
  78. ^ A Yemenite Portrait – Jewish Orientalism in Local Photography, 1881–1948, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel-Aviv 2012, p. 75e
  79. ^ a b A Yemenite Portrait (2012), pp. 75e–76e
  80. ^ a b c A Yemenite Portrait (2012), p. 20e
  81. ^ A Yemenite Portrait (2012), p. 82e
  82. ^ A Yemenite Portrait (2012), pp. 83e–84e
  83. ^ Yehudei Teiman Be-Tel Aviv (The Jews of Yemen in Tel-Aviv), Yaakov Ramon, Jerusalem 1935, p. 5 (Hebrew); The Jews of Yemen in Tel-Aviv, p. 5 in PDF
  84. ^ Shelomo al-Naddaf (ed. Uzziel Alnadaf), Zekhor Le'Avraham, Jerusalem 1992, pp. 33; 49–50; 56–57 (Hebrew)
  85. ^ The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, by Reeva Spector Simon, Michael Menachem Laskier, Sara Reguer editors, Columbia University Press, 2003, page 406
  86. S2CID 144162606
    .
  87. ^ Supplement to Survey of Palestine – Notes compiled for the information of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine – June 1947, Gov. Printer Jerusalem, p. 21
  88. ^ Based on the Yemenite Jews Association, whom they claimed to represent. See: p. 151 in Supplement to Survey of Palestine (Notes compiled for the information of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine – June 1947), Government Printer, Jerusalem
  89. ^ Howard Sachar, A History of Israel, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), (pp. 397–98.)
  90. ^ a b Tudor Parfitt, The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen, 1900–1950, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), pages 229–245
  91. ^ Tudor Parfitt The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen, 1900–1950, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), pages 203–227
  92. ^ "Immigration since the 1930s – Israel Record". adl.org. Archived from the original on April 12, 2011. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  93. ^ "Operation Magic Carpet – Alaska Airlines". Alaskaair.com. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  94. ^ a b c d Levi Eshkol, the Third Prime-Minister: A Selection of Documents Covering his Life [Heb. (לוי אשכול – ראש הממשלה השלישי : מבחר תעודות מפרקי חייו (1895–1969], ed. Y. Rosental, A. Lampron & H. Tzoref, Israel State Archives (publisher): Jerusalem 2002, chapter 6 – In the Jewish Agency, During the Years of Mass Immigration (Hebrew)
  95. . Many Yemenite Jews have also sacrificed their cultural heritage on this Zionist-Israeli altar. The Yemenites' religious traditions and their very distinct customs were initially perceived as an obstacle to their integration into the evolving Israeli society. They were led to believe that by adopting the ideologies and identity of the Zionist enterprise (which bore the imprint of the secular, Labor-dominated leadership), they would facilitate their entry into the mainstream. […] Many Yemenite Jews assimilated themselves gradually into the newly formed secular Zionist culture, while others resisted the pressures for such "Israeli" acculturation.
  96. . The Jewish Agency welcomed the great Aliya of the Yemenite Jews with open arms. They set up transit camps for them to care for all their needs with warmth and concern. But there in the transit camps, the joy of the immigrant settling foot on the Promised Land was mixed with pain and confusion. The Jewish Agency considered it a duty to absorb the immigrants into Israel and to integrate them into the economic and social life of their new land. It, therefore, included education in its programme. As a strongly secular Zionist organisation, it believed that religion was a hindrance to proper integration. The educational program they set up for the adults and children of the Yemenite families was, for the most part, not religious. Very often the supervisors and madrichim carried out their mission of education with a zealousness that caused great pain to the immigrants. Word of the treatment of the Yemenite Jews filtered out of the camps: non-religious madrichim, denial of religious education, discrimination in providing facilities for religious practice, religious visitors and teachers being denied entry to the camps, assignment of families to non-religious settlements, and cutting off of the traditional peos, or earlocks, of the Yemenite Jews. Cries of shock and protest poured in from every corner of the Jewish world.
  97. ^ a b [1] Archived September 4, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  98. ^ staff, T. O. I. "Israel opens database with 400,000 declassified documents on Yemenite Children Affair". www.timesofisrael.com.
  99. ^ Hayim Tawil. Professor of Ancient Semitic Languages and Human Rights Activist, publisher of book, Operation Esther: Opening the Door for the Last Jews of Yemen (1988)
  100. ^ The Middle East and North Africa 2003 (49th Edition), Europa Publications: London, p. 1206
  101. ^ Gideon Markowiz, The National Library of Israel, via Jewish Agency
  102. ^ Nahmias, Roee (June 20, 1995). "Yemenite Jews under threat – Israel News, Ynetnews". Ynet News. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  103. ^ "Jewish Exodus From Yemen Israel National News August 14, 2009".
  104. ^ "Persecuted Yemeni Jews to be given sanctuary in Britain". The Independent. October 23, 2011. Archived from the original on May 7, 2022.
  105. ^ "Jew shot to death in Yemen by 'disturbed extremist' – Israel News, Ynetnews". Ynet News. June 20, 1995. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  106. ^ "Muslim who killed Jew is sentenced to death". The National News. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
  107. ^ "More Yemeni Jews leaving for Israel". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. August 24, 2009. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
  108. ^ Efraim, Omri (August 12, 2012). "Wife, children of gunned down Yemenite teacher make aliyah". Ynet News. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  109. ^ "16 Yemenite immigrants arrive in Israel – Israel News, Ynetnews". Ynet News. June 21, 2009. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  110. ^ "Yemeni Jews airlifted to Israel". BBC News. February 20, 2009.
  111. ^ Jordan, Miriam (October 31, 2009). "Secret Mission Rescues Yemen's Jews". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  112. ^ Owen Bennett-Jones (December 18, 2009). "Yemen's last remaining Jews: A community in decline". BBC. Retrieved December 18, 2009.
  113. ^ Ababa, Danny Adino (April 26, 2010). "200 Yemeni Jews to immigrate to UK – Israel Jewish Scene, Ynetnews". Ynet News. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  114. ^ "Body of Jew Murdered in Yemen brought to Israel – Middle East – News – Arutz Sheva". Israel National News. June 20, 2012. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  115. ^ "Body of Jewish leader murdered in Yemen brought to Israel – Israel News, Ynetnews". Ynet news. June 20, 2012. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  116. ^ "Murdered Yemeni Jew to be laid to rest in Israel | JPost | Israel News". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  117. ^ "Qatar Helping Yemenite Jews Reach Israel?". Israel National News. January 21, 2013. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  118. ^ "Israeli politician says Yemen's last Jews need help to get out". The Washington Post. October 12, 2015. Archived from the original on February 5, 2016.
  119. ^ "Yemenite government to Jews:Convert or leave Yemen". Jerusalem Post. October 11, 2015.
  120. ^ "Some of the last Jews of Yemen brought to Israel in secret mission". The Jerusalem Post. March 21, 2016. Retrieved January 30, 2022.
  121. ^ Sengupta, Kim (22 March 2016). "Mission to airlift Jews out of Yemen heralds the end of one of oldest Jewish communities". The Independent. Archived from the original on 22 March 2016. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  122. ^ "Jews arrested in Yemen released". Israel National News. June 7, 2016.
  123. ^ "Monareliefye.org delivering for the 3rd time food aid baskets to Jewish community's members in Sana'a". monarelief. Retrieved October 14, 2018.
  124. ^ "Exclusive interview with Rabbi of Yemen's Sana'a Jews". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 31, 2018.
  125. ^ "Jewish community in Sana'a receives food aid from Mona Relief". monarelief. February 25, 2019.
  126. ^ "Killing Jewish Dead...By Dr Cohan". Begin-Sadat Peace Center. March 5, 2020. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
  127. ^ "Yemen minister says fate of country's last 50 Jews unknown". The Times of Israel. April 16, 2017. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  128. ^ "Jewish Population by country". World Population Review. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
  129. ^ "Report: Houthis Arrest Yemen's Last Remaining Jews In A Bid To Ethnically Cleanse The Country". Baltimore Jewish Life. July 13, 2020.
  130. ^ "Monareliefye.org delivering food aid baskets to Jewish community's members in Sana'a". monarelief. Retrieved July 25, 2020.
  131. ^ "Will Yemen become, for the first time in history, free of Jews ... Al-Houthi pushes the last of the Jewish families to leave," Yemen News, (July 27, 2020); "Deportation of the last Jewish families from militia-controlled areas," Aden Times, (July 27, 2020).
  132. ^ "Report: Yemen's Remaining Jews to Move to UAE Following Israel Treaty". August 16, 2020. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  133. ^ Stein, Mitchell (September 5, 2020). "The Last Jews of Yemen". aish.com. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
  134. ^ "Wrongful Detention by the Houthis of Levi Salem Musa Marhabi". United States Department of State. November 10, 2020. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  135. ^ "Vosizneias Chief Rav Yitzchak Josef meets Yemenite Jews who escaped to UAE". December 23, 2020.
  136. ^ Joffre, Tzvi (March 29, 2021). "Almost all remaining Jews in Yemen deported – Saudi media". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
  137. ^ a b "Some of Yemen's last remaining Jews said expelled by Iran-backed Houthis". The Times of Israel. March 30, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
  138. ^ Boxerman, Aaron (March 30, 2021). "As 13 Yemeni Jews leave pro-Iran region for Cairo, community of 50,000 down to 6". The Times of Israel. Retrieved July 1, 2021.
  139. ^ "Senior Rabbi in United Arab Emirates Denounces Continuing Imprisonment of Yemeni Jew as 'Crime Against Humanity'". The Algemeiner. July 8, 2021. Retrieved January 30, 2022.
  140. ^ "UN acknowledges that Yemen Jews have been driven out • Point of No Return". Point of No Return. February 9, 2022.
  141. ^ Nasser, Mohammed (March 28, 2021). "Houthis Expel the Last of Yemeni Jews". Asharq Al-Awsat. Retrieved March 30, 2021.
  142. ^ "Houthis Expel the Last of Yemeni Jews". Asharq AL-awsat.
  143. ^ Bassist, Rina (March 29, 2021). "Houthis deport some of Yemen's last remaining Jews". Al-Monitor. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
  144. ^ "Hundreds of Hanukkah kits sent to Jews living in Arab countries". Israel365 News | Latest News. Biblical Perspective. December 2, 2021.
  145. ^ Jacob Saphir, Iben Safir (vol. 1 – ch. 43), Lyck 1866, p. 99 – folio A (Hebrew). Bear in mind here that the Jewish year for the destruction of the First Temple is traditionally given in Jewish computation as 3338 AM or 421/2 BCE. This differs from the modern scientific year, which is usually expressed using the Proleptic Julian calendar as 587 BCE.
  146. ^ Shlomo Dov Goitein, From the Land of Sheba: Tales of the Jews of Yemen, New York 1973
  147. ^ Rabbi Solomon Adeni (1567–1630), author of the Mishnah Commentary Melekhet Shelomo, has alluded to this tradition, who wrote in his commentary's Introduction: "Says he who is but a servant of low station among all who be in the city, Shelomo (Solomon), the son of my lord my father, Rabbi Yeshu’ah, the son of Rabbi David, the son of Rabbi Ḥalfon of Aden. May the spirit of God lead them, and may He guide me in the paths of righteousness; and may I be satisfied with length of days by His Divine Law, and may He console me with complete solace. From the house of my father's father, who has here been mentioned, being from the Yemeni cities, I have received a tradition that we were exiled from the time of the first exile (galut), for the Scripture which is written at the end of the [Second] Book of Kings (18:11), ' and he placed them in Ḥelaḥ and in Ḥavor and the river Gozan and the cities of Madai,' was spoken also about us. We have also received by way of tradition that we are from the group whom Ezra had sent word to come up [out of the exile] during the building of the Second Temple, but they stubbornly turned their backs [on him] and he then cursed them that they would remain all their lives in poverty. Now, because of [our] iniquities, there was fulfilled in us in that exile (galut), both, poverty in the [words of the] Law, as well as poverty in money, in an extraordinary manner – especially my small family! Wherefore, all of them, as far as I have been able to ascertain and verify by those who veritably speak the truth, were God–fearing people and men of Torah (the Divine Law), even the disciples of my lord my father, of blessed memory, insofar that he was the Rabbi of the city ’Uzal which is called Sana‘a. Also my grandfather, the father of my father, before him, used to be a teacher of babes there. However, poverty clung to them, and famine, in such a way that the two curses of Ezra were fulfilled in us: the one, the curse just mentioned, along with the general curse hastily sent out against all teachers, that they might never become rich, lest they should leave-off their labour!, etc." See: Mishnayot Zekher Chanokh (ed. Menahem Vagshal, Zalman Shternlicht & Yosef Glick), vol. 1 – Zera’im), Jerusalem 2000, s.v. Introduction to "Melekhet Shelomo."
  148. Yihya Saleh
    , in his Etz Ḥayim commentary (see: Siddur – Tiklāl, with Etz Ḥayim commentary, ed. Shimon Saleh, vol. 3, Jerusalem 1971, p. 67b), wrote: "By this he has alluded to the exile of the land of Yemen, whose exile has been since the days of the destruction, as it is traditionally held by us, and who did not return again during the building of the Second Temple, for in their intuition they saw that the Second Temple would, in the future, be destroyed, and they expounded concerning it: 'I have already taken off my tunic, how then can I wear it again?' (cf. Targum on Song of Songs 5:3). Now such things are old and are presently well-known."
  149. Caliph Ali
    and made their way into Yemen. See: Tehuda, volume 30 (ed. Yosef Tobi), Netanya 2014, pp. 41–42 (Hebrew).
  150. ^ Yosef Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in light of the excavation of the Jewish synagogue in Qanī’, article written in: Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 43 (2013): British Museum, London, p. 351.
  151. ^ Encyclopedia of Yemenite Sages (Heb. אנציקלופדיה לחכמי תימן), ed. Moshe Gavra, vol. 1, Benei Barak 2001–2003, p. 332, s.v. מנחם (Hebrew); Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Yemen (Heb. אנציקלופדיה לקהילות היהודיות בתימן), ed. Moshe Gavra, vol. 1, Benei Barak 2005, p. 248, s.v. טפאר (Hebrew)
  152. JSTOR 23600873
    .; Joseph Naveh, A Bi-Lingual Tomb Inscription from Sheba, Journal: Leshonenu (issue 65), 2003, pp. 117–120 (Hebrew); G.W. Nebe and A. Sima, Die aramäisch/hebräisch-sabäische Grabinschrift der Lea, Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 15, 2004, pp. 76–83.
  153. ^ Jacques Ryckmans, La Persécution des Chrétiens Himyarites, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Inst. in het Nabije Oosten, 1956
  154. OCLC 516915
    .
  155. Saadah
    and in places thereabout. In the book Masa'ot Habshush (Travels in Yemen, Jerusalem 1983), he mentions the city of Tilmaṣ being the old city of Saadah. He brings down an old Yemeni proverb: אדא אנת מן מלץ פאנא מן תלמץ = "If you are evasive (Ar. "malaṣ"), then I am from Tilmaṣ (i.e. Saadah)." In Hibshush's own time, Saadah was still known by the name of Wadi Tilmaṣ.
  156. ^ Maimonides was later prompted to write his famous Ma'amar Teḥayyath Hamethim (Treatise on the Resurrection of the Dead), published in Book of Letters and Responsa (ספר אגרות ותשובות), Jerusalem 1978, p. 9 (Hebrew). According to Maimonides, certain Jews in Yemen had sent to him a letter in the year 1189, evidently irritated as to why he had not mentioned the physical resurrection of the dead in his Hil. Teshuvah, chapter 8, and how that some persons in Yemen had begun to instruct, based on Maimonides' teaching, that when the body dies it will disintegrate and the soul will never return to such bodies after death. Maimonides denied that he ever insinuated such things, and reiterated that the body would indeed resurrect, but that the "world to come" was something different in nature.
  157. ^ Abraham Maimuni Responsa (ed. Avraham H. Freimann and Shelomo Dov Goitein), Mekize Nirdamim: Jerusalem 1937, responsa # 82–94 (pp. 107–136) (Hebrew). The people of the city of Aden (Yemen) posed an additional seven questions unto Rabbi Abraham ben Maimonides, preserved in a 15th–16th century document still in manuscript form (pp. 188b–193a), containing mostly the commentary of Zechariah HaRofe on Maimonides' legal code of Jewish law. The rare document can be seen at the Hebrew University National Library in Jerusalem, Department of Manuscripts, in microfilm # F- 44265.
  158. JSTOR 23596708
    .
  159. ^ Yosef Tobi, Studies in ‘Megillat Teman’ (ʻIyunim bi-megilat Teman), The Magnes Press – Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1986, pp. 70–71 (Hebrew). Tobi holds that it was destroyed under the first Tahiride Imam, Az-Zafir ʻAmir I bin Ṭāhir, who had temporarily captured Sana'a.
  160. the Yad
    , belonging to Maimonides. Rabbi Yihya Saleh, speaking more distinctly about this episode, writes in his Questions & Responsa (Pe’ulath Sadiq, vol. ii, responsum 180) that he was referring there to the Jews of Yemen who had made a pilgrimage to the Land of Israel at that time.
  161. ^ Zechariah al-Dhahiri, Sefer Ha-Mūsar (ed. Mordechai Yitzhari), Benei Baraq 2008 (Hebrew), pp. 58, 62. For his description of Rabbi Joseph Karo's yeshiva, click here: Zechariah Dhahiri#Highlights from journey.
  162. ^ Amram Qorah, Sa’arat Teman, p. 8 (Hebrew); Yosef Qafih, Halikhot Teman, p. 186 (Hebrew); also described in book, Yemenite Authorities and Jewish Messianism, by P.S. van Koningsveld, J. Sadan and Q. Al-Samarrai, Leiden University, Faculty of Theology 1990
  163. ^ Yosef Qafiḥ (ed.), "Qorot Yisra’el be-Teman by Rabbi Ḥayim Ḥibshush," Ketavim (Collected Papers), Vol. 2, Jerusalem 1989, pp. 713–719 (Hebrew)
  164. S2CID 151985498
    .
  165. ^ Carsten Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern, Zürich 1992, p. 417. Here, the English translation of M. Niehbuhr's Travels (Travel through Arabia and Other Countries in the East, vol. 1, London 1792, p. 409) has incorrectly translated the original German as saying fourteen synagogues were destroyed, whereas the original German says that only twelve synagogues were destroyed out of a total of fourteen: "Zu ebendieser Zeit wurden den hiesigen Juden von 14 Synagogen zwölf niedergerissen."
  166. ^ Carsten Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern (Description of Travel to Arabia and Other Neighboring Countries), Zürich 1992, pp. 416–418 (German)
  167. ^ Yaakov Ramon, The Jews of Yemen in Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem 1935 (Hebrew). The journey to Israel by land and sea took them seven months to accomplish.
  168. ^ Journal Har'el, Tel-Aviv 1962, pp. 243–251 (Hebrew)
  169. ^ Amram Qorah, Sa’arat Teman, Jerusalem 1988, p. 62 (Hebrew)
  170. OCLC 233187474
    .
  171. ^ Ester Muchawsky Schnapper, Ceremonial Objects in Yemenite Synagogues, pub. in: Judaeo-Yemenite Studies – Proceedings of the Second International Congress (ed. Ephraim Isaac and Yosef Tobi), Princeton University: Princeton 1999, p. 121
  172. .
  173. ^ Shmuel Yavne'eli, Masa le-Teiman, Tel-Aviv 1952, pp. 187-188; 196-199 (Hebrew)
  174. ^ Tuvia Sulami, Political vs. religious motivations behind Imam Ahmad's decision to permit Jewish emigration in 1949 (Lecture at the United Nations building in New-York, 2018)
  175. ^ "The passion of Aramaic-Kurdish Jews brought Aramaic to Israel". Ekurd.net. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
  176. ^ Yemenite Jewry: Origins, Culture, and Literature, page 6, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)
  177. ^ "Doing Zionism – Resources". www.doingzionism.org.il. Archived from the original on February 5, 2007.
  178. ^ "Naphillath Panim". chayas.com. Archived from the original on July 16, 2012. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  179. ^ Their Rabbis have interpreted the Talmud (Menahoth 39a) with a view that the "joints" and the "knots" are one and the same thing.
  180. .
  181. ^ [2] Archived August 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  182. ^ Yosef Qafih, Halikhot Teiman (Jewish Life in Sana), Ben-Zvi Institute – Jerusalem 1982, pp. 143 and 148 (Hebrew); Yehuda Levi Nahum, Miṣefunot Yehudei Teman, Tel-Aviv 1962, p. 149 (Hebrew)
  183. ^ Isaac ben Abba Mari, Sefer ha'Ittur, Lwów, Ukraine 1860
  184. ^ "Not all Yemenite brides need to look the same". Haaretz.com. March 25, 2008. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
  185. ^ De Moor, Johannes C. (1971). The Seasonal Pattern in the Ugaritic Myth of Ba’lu According to the Version of Ilimilku. Neukirchen – Vluyn, Germany: Verlag Butzon & Berker Kevelaer
  186. ^ "Henna party adds colorful touch to the happy couple". Jewish Journal. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
  187. ^ "כשהגאב"ד האשכנזי התפלל בנוסח תימני • גלריה – בחצרות קודש – בחצרות חסידים – בחדרי חרדים". Bhol.co.il. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  188. ^ RechabitesEaston's Bible Dictionary
  189. . Two additional factors played a crucial role in the eventual adoption by the majority of Yemenite Jewry of the new traditions, traditions that originate, for the most part, in the land of Israel and the Sefardic communities of the Diaspora. One was the total absence of printers in Yemen: no works reflecting the local (baladi) liturgical and ritual customs could be printed, and they remained in manuscript. By contrast, printed books, many of which reflected the Sefardic (shami) traditions, were available, and not surprisingly, more and more Yemenite Jews preferred to acquire the less costly and easier to read printed books, notwithstanding the fact that they expressed a different tradition, rather than their own expensive and difficult to read manuscripts. The second factor was the relatively rich flow of visitors to Yemen, generally emissaries of the Jewish communities and academies in the land of Israel, but also merchants from the Sefardic communities ... By this slow, but continuous, process, the Shami liturgical and ritual tradition gained every more sympathy and legitimacy, at the expense of the baladi
  190. ^ .
  191. ^ Rabbi Yitzhaq Ratzabi, Ohr Hahalakha: Nusakh Teiman Publishing, Bnei Braq.
  192. ^ a b The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, by Reeva Spector Simon, Michael Menachem Laskier, Sara Reguer editors, Columbia University Press, 2003, pages 403–404
  193. ^ Shalom 'Uzayri, Galei-Or, Tel-Aviv 1974, pp. 15; 19 (Hebrew)
  194. ^ Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity, by Norman A. Stillman, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995, page 19
  195. JSTOR 4465298
    .
  196. ^ Judaeo-Yemenite Studies – Proceedings of the Second International Congress, Ephraim Isaac & Yosef Tobi (ed.), Introduction, Princeton University 1999, p. 15
  197. ^ Shelomo Morag, Pronunciations of Hebrew, Encyclopaedia Judaica XIII, 1120–1145
  198. ^ Torah Qedumah, Shaul Ben Shalom Hodiyafi, Beit Dagan, 1902, page Aleph
  199. ^ Yemenite Midrash-Philosophical Commentaries on the Torah, translated by Yitzhak Tzvi Langermann, HarperCollins Publishing
  200. JSTOR 41443966
    .
  201. ^ Chakhamei Teiman (Sages of Yemen), by Yeshivat Hod Yoseph, volume 1
  202. Kiddushin
    29b where it mentions a scholar who refused to wear a "sudarium" (habit) on his head until he was married, meaning, his head was only covered by a cap.
  203. ^ This is true also with the Arabs of Yemen.
  204. ^ Brauer, Erich (1934). Ethnologie der Jemenitischen Juden. Vol. 7. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Kulturgeschichte Bibliothek, I. Reihe: Ethnologische bibliothek. p. 81. This translation by Esther van Praag.
  205. ^ Brauer, Erich (1934). Ethnologie der Jemenitischen Juden. Vol. 7. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Kulturgeschichte Bibliothek, I. Reihe: Ethnologische bibliothek., p. 79.
  206. ^ Carsten Niebuhr, Description of Travel to Arabia and Other Neighboring Countries [Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern], Akademische Druch- und Verlagsanstalt: Graz 1968, pp. 416–417.
  207. ^ a b Erich Brauer, Ethnologie der Jemenitischen Juden, Heidelberg 1934, p. 85
  208. Israel Kessar
    ), Tel-Aviv 2005, p. 30 (Hebrew)
  209. ^ a b Moshe Gavra, Surnames of Jews in Yemen (shemot ha-mishpahah shel ha-yehudim be-teman), Benei Barak 2014, Preface p. 6 (Hebrew)
  210. ^ Aharon Gaimani, Family Names and Appellations Among Yemenite Jews, pub. in: These are the Names – Studies in Jewish Onomastics (vol. 3), ed. Aaron Demsky, Bar-Ilan University: Ramat Gan 2002, p. 24; Moshe Gavra, Surnames of Jews in Yemen, Benei Barak 2014, Preface p. 6
  211. ^ Unfortunately, this genealogical record was broken off sometime in the late or early 1500s. Nevertheless, it listed ninety-one successive generations, starting with Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham. A copy of this family's genealogy and a description of it has been published in the book "Mi-Yetzirot Sifrutiyyot Mi-Teman" (Fragments of Literary Works from Yemen = מיצירות ספרותיות מתימן), Holon 1981, by Yehuda Levi Nahum, pp. 191–193 (Hebrew). Today, the original manuscript is at the Westminster College Library in Cambridge, England.
  212. New York Times
    . Retrieved December 18, 2018.
  213. ^
    American Journal of Physical Anthropology
    , 2011 Jan;144(1):1–10
  214. PMID 15300852
    .
  215. .
  216. .
  217. .
  218. ^ Simon Schama, The Story of the Jews:Finding the Words 1000 BCE-1492 CE, Vintage Books 2014 p.234.
  219. PMID 19865099
    .

Bibliography

Further reading

External links