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Yemenite Jews

Hebrew: יהודי תימן‎ اليهود اليمنيون
Yemenite family reading from the Psalms
Regions with significant populations
Israel	435,000
United States	80,000
United Kingdom	396
United Arab Emirates	42
Bahrain	5
Yemen	1-5
Languages
Hebrew, Judeo-Yemeni Arabic, Yemenite Hebrew
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Mizrahi Jews, Jewish ethnic divisions, Yemenis, and Samaritans

Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Teimanim (from Hebrew: יהודי תימן, romanized: Yehudei Teman; Arabic: اليهود اليمنيون), are Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen, and their descendants maintaining their customs. After several waves of persecution, the vast majority of Yemenite Jews emigrated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet between June 1949 and September 1950. Most Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, with smaller communities in the United States and elsewhere. As of 2024, only one Jew, Levi Marhabi, remains in Yemen, although Ynet cited local sources stating that the actual number is five.

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". 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, and did not reflect a demographic or general cultural shift among the vast majority of Yemenite Jews.

History

Ancient history

Records referring to Judaism in Yemen started to appear during the rule of the Himyarite Kingdom, which was established in Yemen in 110 BCE. Various inscriptions in the Ancient South Arabian script in the 2nd century CE refer to the construction of synagogues approved by Himyarite kings.

In the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132 CE, there was significant Jewish emigration from Roman Judea to Yemen, which was then famous in the Greco-Roman world for its prosperous trade, particularly in spices. The Christian missionary Theophilos the Indian, who came to Yemen in the mid-fourth century, complained that he had found great numbers of Jews.

By 380 CE, Himyarite religious practices had undergone fundamental changes. The inscriptions were no longer addressed to Almaqah or Attar but to a single deity called Rahmanan. Debate among scholars continues as to whether the Himyarite monotheism was influenced by Judaism or Christianity. 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.

Dynastic conversion to Judaism

In 390 CE, the Himyarite king Abu Karib led a military campaign northwards and fought the Jews of Yathrib. When Abu Karib fell ill, two local Jewish scholars named Kaab and Assad took the opportunity to travel to his camp, where they treated him and persuaded him to lift the siege. The scholars also inspired in the king an interest in Judaism, and he converted in 390, persuading his army to do likewise. With this, the Himyarite kingdom, "the dominant power on the Arabian peninsula", was converted to Judaism. In Yemen, several inscriptions dating back to the 4th and 5th centuries CE have been found in Hebrew and Sabaean praising the ruling house in Jewish terms for "helping and empowering the People of Israel".

Abu Nuwas and intercommunal unrest

By 516 AD, tribal unrest broke out, and several tribal elites fought for power. One of those elites was Joseph Dhu Nuwas or "Yûsuf 'As'ar Yaṯ'ar" as mentioned in ancient south Arabian inscriptions. The actual story of Joseph is murky. Greek and Ethiopian accounts, portray him as a Jewish zealot. Some scholars suggest that he was a converted Jew. Church of the East accounts claim that his mother was a Jew taken captive from Nisibis and bought by a king in Yemen, whose ancestors had formerly converted to Judaism. 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.

In 2009 a BBC broadcast defended a claim that Yûsuf 'As'ar offered villagers the choice between conversion to Judaism or death and then massacred 20,000 Christians. The program's producers stated that, "The production team spoke to many historians over 18 months, among them Nigel Groom, who was our consultant, and Professor Abdul Rahman Al-Ansary ." Inscriptions attributed to Yûsuf 'As'ar himself show the great pride he expressed after killing more than 22,000 Christians in Ẓafār and Najran. According to Jamme, Sabaean inscriptions reveal that the combined war booty (excluding deaths) from campaigns waged against the Abyssinians in Ẓafār, the fighters in 'Ašʻarān, Rakbān, Farasān, Muḥwān (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.

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." There were also reports of massacres and destruction of places of worship by Christians, too. 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.

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 Najran, which lasted for six months, with the city finally taken and burnt on the 15th day of the seventh month (i.e. the lunar month 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 and 10,000 head of cattle."

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).

Procopius, John of Ephesus, and other contemporary historians recount Kaleb's invasion of Yemen around 520, against the Himyarite king Yūsuf As'ar Yath'ar, known as Dhu Nuwas, a Jewish convert who was persecuting the Christian community of Najran. After much fighting, Kaleb's soldiers eventually routed Yusuf's forces. They killed the king, allowing Kaleb to appoint Sumyafa Ashwa, a native Christian (named Esimiphaios by Procopius), as his viceroy of Himyar.

Aksumite control of Arabia Felix continued until c. 525 when Sumyafa Ashwa was deposed by the Abyssinian General Abraha, who made himself king. Procopius states that Kaleb made several unsuccessful attempts to recover his overseas territory; however, his successor later negotiated a peace with Abraha, where Abraha acknowledged the Axumite king's authority and paid tribute. Stuart Munro-Hay opines that by this expedition Axum overextended itself, and this final intervention across the Red Sea, "was Aksum's swan-song as a great power in the region."

Tradition

There are numerous accounts and traditions concerning the arrival of Jews in various regions in Southern Arabia. One tradition suggests that King Solomon sent Jewish merchant marines to Yemen to prospect for gold and silver with which to adorn his Temple in Jerusalem. In 1881, the French vice consulate in Yemen wrote to the leaders of the Alliance (the Alliance Israelite Universelle) in France, that he read in a book by the Arab historian Abu-Alfada that the Jews of Yemen settled in the area in 1451 BCE.

Another legend says that Yemeni tribes converted to Judaism after the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon. The Sanaite Jews have a tradition that their ancestors settled in Yemen 42 years before the destruction of the First Temple. It is said that under the prophet Jeremiah some 75,000 Jews, including priests and Levites, traveled to Yemen.

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.

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. According to local legends, the kingdom's aristocracy converted to Judaism in the 6th century CE.

Middle Ages

Jewish–Muslim relations in Yemen

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. 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. 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. 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.

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 al-Hadi ila'l-Haqq Yahya had imposed limitations and a special tax on land held by Jews and Christians of Najran. In the mid-11th century, Jews from several communities in the Yemen highlands, including Sanaʿa, appear to have been attracted to the Sulayhids' capital of Dhu Jibla. 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.

During the 12th century, Aden was first ruled by the Fatimid Caliphate and then the Ayyubids. The city formed a great emporium on the sea route to India. Documents of the Cairo Geniza about Aden reflect a thriving Jewish community led by the prominent Bundar family. Abu Ali Hasan ibn Bundar served as the head of the Jewish communities in Yemen as well as a representative of the merchants in Aden. His son Madmun was the central figure in Yemenite Jewry during the flourishing of trade with India. The Bundar family produced some celebrated negidim who exerted authority over the Jews of Yemen as well as Jewish merchants in India and 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.

Yemenite Jews experienced violent persecution at times. In the late 1160s, the Yemenite ruler 'Abd-al-Nabī ibn Mahdi gave Jews a choice of conversion to Islam or martyrdom. 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. 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. 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.

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.

The rule of Shafi'i 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.

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.

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, heresy, and heavy taxation.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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).

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.

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. Their houses and property were seized, and many synagogues were destroyed or converted into mosques.

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.

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.

The Jewish community headed by Shalom 'Iraqi recovered from this affair and the position of 'Iraqi strengthened under Imam Al-Mansur. The community flourished under him because of the part it played in trade with India through 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.

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.

Late modern period

At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, Yemenite Jews lived principally in Sana'a (7,000-plus), with the largest Jewish population and twenty-eight synagogues, followed by Rada'a, with the second-largest Jewish population and nine synagogues, Sa'dah (1,000), Dhamar (1,000), Aden (200), the desert of Beda (2,000), Manakhah (3,000), among others. Almost all resided in the interior of the plateau. Carl Rathjens who visited Yemen in the years 1927 and 1931 puts the total number of Jewish communities in Yemen at 371 settlements. Other significant Jewish communities in Yemen were based in the south central highlands in the cities of: Taiz (the birthplace of one of the most famous Yemenite Jewish spiritual leaders, Mori Salem Al-Shabazzi Mashta), Ba'dan, and other cities and towns in the 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.

In 1912, Zionist emissary Shmuel Yavne'eli came into contact with Habbani Jews, describing them in the following way:

The Jews in these parts are held in high esteem by everyone in Yemen and Aden. They are said to be courageous, always with their weapons and wild long hair, and the names of their towns are mentioned by the Jews of Yemen with great admiration.

19th-century Yemenite messianic movements

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 Jacob Saphir, the majority of Yemenite Jews during his visit of 1862 entertained a belief in the messianic proclamations of Shukr Kuhayl I. Earlier Yemenite messiah claimants included the anonymous 12th-century messiah who was the subject of Maimonides's famous Iggeret Teman, or Epistle to Yemen, the messiah of Bayhan (c. 1495), and Suleiman Jamal (c. 1667), in what Lenowitz 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. 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.

Emigration to Israel

Places of origin and 1881–1939 new communities

The three major population centers for Jews in southern Arabia were Aden, Habban, and the Hadhramaut. The 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 Mandate Palestine in 1939 had settled in the country prior to that date. Throughout the periods of Ottoman Palestine and Mandatory Palestine, Jews from Yemen had settled primarily in agricultural settlements in the country, namely: Petach Tikvah (Machaneh Yehuda), Rishon Lezion (Shivat Zion), Rehovot (Sha'arayim and Marmorek), Wadi Chanin (later called Ness Ziona), Be'er Ya'akov, Hadera (Nachliel), Zichron Yaakov, Yavne'el, Gedera, Ben Shemen, Kinneret, Degania and Milhamia. Others chose to live in the urban areas of Jerusalem (Silwan, and Nachalat Zvi), Jaffa, Tel Aviv (Kerem Hateimanim), and later, Netanya (Shekhunat Zvi).

First wave of emigration: 1881 to 1918

Emigration from Yemen to Palestine 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.

Part of a series on
Jewish exodus from the Muslim world
Background
History of the Jews under Muslim rule Sephardi Mizrahi Yemeni Zionism Arab–Israeli conflict 1948 war Suez Crisis Six-Day War
Antisemitism in the Arab world
Farhud Aleppo Aden Oujda and Jerada Tripolitania Cairo Baghdad Tripoli
Exodus by country
Morocco Operation Mural Operation Yachin Egoz Yemen Iraq Egypt Lebanon Iran Tunisia Hurum air disaster
Remembrance
Awareness day JIMENA JJAC WOJAC The Forgotten Refugees
Related topics
Expulsions and exoduses of Jews Aliyah Historical Jewish population Islamic–Jewish relations
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From 1881 to 1882, some 30 Jewish families left Sana'a and several nearby settlements, and made the long trek by foot and by sea to Jerusalem, where most had settled in Silwan. This wave was followed by other Jews from central Yemen, who continued to move into Palestine until 1914. The majority of these groups would later move into Jerusalem proper and Jaffa. Rabbi Avraham Al-Naddaf, who migrated to Jerusalem in 1891, described in his autobiography the hardships the Yemenite Jewish community faced in their new country, where there were no hostelries to accommodate wayfarers and new immigrants. On the other hand, he writes that the 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.

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. 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%.

Second wave of emigration: 1920 to 1950

During the British Mandate of Palestine, the total number of persons registered as immigrants from Yemen, between the years April 1939 – December 1945, was put at 4,554. By 1947, there were an estimated 35,000 Yemenite Jews living in Mandate Palestine. After the UN partition vote on Palestine, Arab rioters, assisted by the local police force, engaged in a 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.

This increasingly perilous situation led to the emigration of virtually the entire Yemenite Jewish community between June 1949 and September 1950 in Operation Magic Carpet. During this period, over 50,000 Jews migrated to Israel. The operation began in June 1949 and ended in September 1950. Part of the operation happened during the 1948 Palestine War and it was planned by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The plan was for the Jews from all over Yemen to make their way to the Aden area. Specifically, the Jews were to arrive in Hashed Camp and live there until they could be airlifted to Israel. Hashed was an old British military camp in the desert, about a mile away from the city of Sheikh Othman. 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. By September 1950, almost 50,000 Jews had been successfully airlifted to the newly formed state of Israel.

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."

In the wake of the 1948 Arab Israeli War when vast territories were added to the State of Israel, the Jewish Agency under the good offices of Levi Eshkol, then head of the Settlement Department in that Agency, decided to settle many of the new immigrants arriving in Israel in newly founded agricultural communities. The idea was given further impetus when Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund proposed settling many of the country's new immigrants upon agricultural farms built in the recently acquired territories: in the mountainous regions, in Galilee and in the Jerusalem Corridor, places heretofore sparsely settled. It was decided that these new immigrants, many of whom were Yemenites, would make their livelihood by preparing the land for cultivation and planting trees. The first stage of this plan was to call such places "work villages," later to be converted into "cooperative farms" (moshavim). In this manner were established Eshtaol, Yish'i, Ajjur, Dayraban Gimel, Allar Aleph, Allar-Bet, 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..." Many Yemenite Jews became irreligious through the re-education program of the Jewish Agency.

Contemporary history

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.

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. In 2016, 400,000 documents were released in regard to the Yemenite Jewish Children affair.

Final wave of emigration: 1990 to 2016

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. Tawil was instrumental in bringing out from Yemen the first Jew to emigrate in 23 years, and who set foot in Israel in September 1990. He was followed by other families in 1992, with the greatest bulk of Jewish families arriving in Israel between 1993 and 1994. These new Yemenite Jewish immigrants settled mainly in Rehovot (Oshiyot), Ashkelon and 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.

A small Jewish community existed in the town of Bayt Harash (2 km away from Raydah). They had a rabbi, a functioning synagogue, and a mikveh. They also had a boys yeshiva and a girls seminary, funded by a 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.

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 Shia insurgency broke out in northern Yemen in 2004. In 2006 it was reported that a Jewish woman in Yemen who had spurned a Muslim suitor had not only been kidnapped and forced to marry him, but had been forced to convert to Islam as well. The Houthis directly threatened the Jewish community in 2007, prompting the government of President Saleh to offer them refuge in Sanaʽa. As of 2010, around 700 Jews were living in the capital under government protection.

In December 2008, Moshe Ya'ish al-Nahari, a 30-year-old Hebrew teacher and kosher butcher from Raydah, was shot and killed by Abed el-Aziz el-Abadi, a former 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. The court found Abadi mentally unstable, and ordered him to pay only a fine, but an appeals court sentenced him to death. 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. 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.

In February 2009, 10 Yemeni Jews migrated to Israel, and in July 2009, three families, or 16 people in total, followed suit. 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. The BBC estimated that the community numbered 370 and was dwindling. In 2010, it was reported that 200 Yemeni Jews would be allowed to immigrate to the United Kingdom.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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..."

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

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

On July 13, 2020, it was reported that the Houthi Militia were capturing the last Jews of Yemen of the Kharif District. 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.

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.

In August 2020 of an estimated 100 or so remaining Yemen Jews, 42 have migrated to UAE and the rest would also leave. 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. In December 2020 an Israeli Rabbi visited the Yemenite Jews who escaped to the UAE.

On 28 March 2021, 13 Jews were forced by the Houthis to leave Yemen; less than 10 Jews still resided in Yemen. 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). 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. In December 2021 the Jews of Yemen received Hanukkah kits. In March 2022 the United Nations reported there is just one Jew in Yemen (Levi Salem Marhabi), however Ynet cited local sources stating that as of 19 June 2024 the actual number is five.

Timeline of events

Religious traditions

Yemenite Jews and the Aramaic speaking Kurdish Jews are the only communities who maintain the tradition of reading the Torah in the synagogue in both Hebrew and the Aramaic Targum ("translation"). Most non-Yemenite synagogues have a specified person called a Baal Koreh, who reads from the Torah scroll when congregants are called to the Torah scroll for an aliyah. In the Yemenite tradition, each person called to the Torah scroll for an aliyah reads for himself. Children under the age of 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.

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

In larger Jewish communities, such as Sana'a and 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 .

— Hilchot Tefillah 11:4

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. 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.

On Sabbath days, the traditional Yemenite bread was not the Challah, as found in Western Jewish communities, but the Kubaneh, which was eaten on Sabbath mornings after first making the blessing over two flatbreads baked in an earthen oven.

Weddings and marriage traditions

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.

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. 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, 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."

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.

Before the wedding, Yemenite and other Eastern Jewish communities perform the henna ceremony, an ancient ritual with Bronze Age origins. 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.

Yemenites had a special affinity for Henna due to biblical and Talmudic references. Henna, in the Bible, is Camphire, and is mentioned in the Song of Solomon, as well as in the Talmud. This tradition is also practiced by Pashtuns and 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.

Religious groups

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.

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.

• The Baladi Jews (from Arabic balad, country) generally follow the legal rulings of the Rambam (Maimonides) as codified in his work the Mishneh Torah. Their liturgy was developed by a rabbi known as the Maharitz (Moreinu Ha-Rav Yiḥya Tzalaḥ), in an attempt to break the deadlock between the pre-existing followers of Maimonides and the new followers of the mystic, Isaac Luria. It substantially follows the older Yemenite tradition, with only a few concessions to the usages of the Ari. A Baladi Jew may or may not accept the Kabbalah theologically: if he does, he regards himself as following Luria's own advice that every Jew should follow his ancestral tradition.
• The Shami Jews (from Arabic ash-Sham, the north, referring to the region of Syria including Israel) represent those who accepted the Sephardic/Mizrahi rite and lines of rabbinic authority, after being exposed to new inexpensive, typeset siddurs (prayer books) brought from Israel and the Sephardic diaspora by envoys and merchants in the late 17th century and 18th century. The "local rabbinic leadership resisted the new versions ... Nevertheless, the new prayer books were widely accepted." As part of that process, the Shami accepted the Zohar and modified their rites to accommodate the usages of the Ari to the maximum extent. The text of the Shami siddur now largely follows the Sephardic tradition, though the pronunciation, chant and customs are still Yemenite in flavour. They generally base their legal rulings both on the Rambam (Maimonides) and on the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law). In their interpretation of Jewish law, Shami Yemenite Jews were strongly influenced by Syrian Sephardi Jews, though on some issues, they rejected the later European codes of Jewish law, and instead followed the earlier decisions of Maimonides. Most Yemenite Jews living today follow the Shami customs. The Shami rite was always more prevalent, even 50 years ago.
• The "Rambamists" are followers of, or to some extent influenced by, the Dor Daim movement, and are strict followers of Talmudic law as compiled by Maimonides, aka "Rambam". They are regarded as a subdivision of the Baladi Jews, and claim to preserve the Baladi tradition in its pure form. They generally reject the Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah altogether. Many of them object to terms like "Rambamist". In their eyes, they are simply following the most ancient preservation of Torah, which (according to their research) was recorded in the Mishneh Torah.

School reform dispute (Dor Daim vs Iqshim)

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, 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.

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 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 Spanish and Portuguese Jews (Western 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. 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.

Yemenite rabbis

• Solomon Adeni (1567–1625)
• Yihye Bashiri (died 1661)
• Zechariah Dhahiri (c. 1531–1608)
• Hayyim Habshush (c. 1833–1899)
• Yihya Yitzhak Halevi (1867–1932)
• Avraham Al-Naddaf (1866–1940)
• Yosef Qafih (1917–2000)
• Yiḥyah Qafiḥ (1850–1931)
• Amram Qorah (1871–1952)
• Mordechai Sharabi (1908–1994)
• Maharitz (Yihya Salah) (1713–1805)
• Shalom Shabazi (1619–c. 1720)
• Uzi Meshulam (1952–2013)
• David ben Amram Adani (14th century)
• Nethanel ben Isaiah (14th century)
• Zechariah ha-Rofé (15th century)
• Natan'el al-Fayyumi (c. 1090–1165)
• Jacob ben Nathanael (12th century)
• Shalom Sharabi (1720–1777)

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. 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.  There are two main pronunciations of Yemenite Hebrew, considered by many scholars to be the most accurate modern-day form of Biblical Hebrew, although there are technically a total of five that relate to the regions of Yemen. In the Yemenite dialect, all Hebrew letters have a distinct sound, except for sāmeḵ (Hebrew: ס) and śîn (Hebrew: שׂ), which are both pronounced /s/. The 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 (Tunisia) Jewish dialect's use of gimmel and quf, switching to jimmel and guf when talking with Gentiles in the Arabic dialect of Jerba. While Jewish boys learned Hebrew from the age of 3, it was used primarily as a liturgical and scholarly language. In daily life, Yemenite Jews spoke in regional Judeo-Arabic.

Yemenite Jewish literature

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.

Yemenite Jews were acquainted with the works of Saadia Gaon, Rashi, Kimhi, Nahmanides, Yehudah ha Levy and Isaac Arama, besides producing a number of exegetes from among themselves. In the 14th century, Nathanael ben Isaiah wrote an Arabic commentary on the Bible; in the second half of the 15th century, Saadia ben David al-Adeni was the author of a commentary on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Abraham ben Solomon wrote on the Prophets.

Among the midrash collections from Yemen mention should be made of the Midrash ha-Gadol of David bar Amram al-Adeni. Between 1413 and 1430 the physician Yaḥya Zechariah b. Solomon wrote a compilation entitled "Midrash ha-Ḥefeẓ," which included the Pentateuch, Lamentations, Book of Esther, and other sections of the Hebrew Bible. Between 1484 and 1493 David al-Lawani composed his "Midrash al-Wajiz al-Mughni." The earliest complete Judeo-Arabic copy of Maimonides' 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.

Among the Yemenite poets who wrote Hebrew and Arabic hymns modeled after the Spanish school, mention may be made of Zechariah (Yaḥya) al-Dhahiri and the members of the Shabazi family. Al-Dhahiri's work, which makes use of the poetic genre known as maqāmah, a style inspired by Ḥariri, was written in 1573 under the title Sefer ha-Musar. Herein, the author describes in 45 chapters his travels throughout India, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, the Land of Israel and Egypt, including a description of Rabbi 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."

Yemenite Jewish clothing

Men's clothing

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. 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 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 short-length trousers, called sirwāl, . 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). 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.

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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

Women's clothing

Jewish women in Yemen traditionally wore branched pantaloons beneath their long black tunics. The pantaloons were usually made of a jet-black color, tapering close to their ankles, and decorated at the lower seams with a fine embroidered stitch of silver. The tunic served as, both, a dress and long-sleeved blouse, all in one piece. In addition, all young girls wore a black, conical shaped hat upon their heads, which took the place of a scarf. These hats were called in the local vernacular, gargush, and were also decorated with an embroidered sash about its borders, besides being equipped with tapering flaps that extended down to the ears and to the nape of the neck. Older women in 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 malawach (itself an adaptation of the Yemeni mulawah), and jachnun. Lesser-known breadstuffs include the kubaneh (a traditional Sabbath bread), luḥūḥ, sabayah, and zalabiyeh.

Yemenite Jewish surnames

The subject of Jewish surnames in Yemen is a complex one. Most surnames are gentilic or toponymic surnames, meaning, they are derived from the name of an ancestor's place of residence (the name of a town or village, such as Gadasi from al-Gades; Qa'taby from Qa'tabah; Manqadi from Manqadah; Damari from Dhamar, Damti from Damt, etc.), while fewer are eponymous or patronymic surnames, being derived from the name of an ancient ancestor. Some surnames reflect an ancestor's profession. In some cases, surnames are derived from a certain physical characteristic of one's distant ancestor. Some families bear original Spanish surnames, such as Medina and Giyyat. Some names went through additional changes upon emigration to Israel. For example, some who formerly bore the surname of Radha (Judeo-Arabic: רצ'א‎) have changed their surname to Ratzon (Hebrew: רצון‎), the Hebrew being the direct translation of the word's meaning in Arabic, while yet others have simply changed their names to a more Hebraicized sound, such as the surnames of Al-Nadaf (lit. a stuffer of cushions; carder of cotton), which was later changed to Nadav ("generous"), and 'Urqabi (so-named from a locality in Yemen) which was later changed to Argov; or Sheḥib (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.

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.

Music

Yemeni Jews are predominant among Israeli performers of Mizrahi music. Yemenite singer Shoshana Damari is considered "The queen of Israeli music", and 2 of the most successful Israeli singers abroad, Ofra Haza and Achinoam Nini (Noa), are of Yemenite origin. At the Eurovision Song Contest, 1998, 1979, and 1978 winners Dana International, Gali Atari, and Izhar Cohen, 1983 runner-up Ofra Haza, and 2008 top 10 finalist Boaz Mauda, are Yemenite Jews. Harel Skaat, who competed at Oslo in 2010, is the son of a Yemenite Jewish father. Other Israeli singers and musicians of Yemenite Jewish descent include Zohar Argov, the three sisters of the music group A-WA (Yemenite Jewish father), Inbar Bakal, Mosh Ben-Ari, Yosefa Dahari, Daklon, Eyal Golan, Zion Golan, Yishai Levi, Sara Levi-Tanai (choreographer and songwriter), Bo'az Ma'uda, Avihu Medina, Boaz Sharabi, Pe'er Tasi, Rucka Rucka Ali, Shimi Tavori, Margalit Tzan'ani, and Tomer Yosef of Balkan Beat Box.

Israelis of Yemenite descent

Israeli soldiers of Yemenite descent

• Avigdor Kahalani
• David Maimon

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 members of the world's other various Jewish communities, as well as some type of contribution from the local non-Jewish population. Y chromosome haplogroups have shown a strong link to other Jewish groups, such as the European Ashkenazi and Middle Eastern Iraqi Jews, and to non-Jewish Levantine populations, such as Palestinians and Samaritans. Yemenite Jews commonly carry West Eurasian mitochondrial DNA haplogroups that are found in other Jewish and Levantine groups but not in non-Jewish Yemenis, suggesting ancient Israelite descent. What makes them stand out among Jewish populations is the presence of sub-Saharan African 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. It has been proposed that the L lineages might reflect admixture from a local non-Jewish source, whereas a 2011 study by Amy L. Non and others concluded that there is ”little evidence for large-scale conversion of local Yemeni”.

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.

However, 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.

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.

See also

• Jewish culture
• Jewish diaspora
• Jewish ethnic divisions
• List of Jews from the Arab World
• Hadhrami Jews
• Habbani Jews
• Adeni Jews
• Arab Jews
• Maghrebi Jews
• Shara'bi Jews
• Mizrahi Jews
• Genetic history of the Middle East
• Genetic studies on Jews
• History of ancient Israel and Judah
• History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel
• Israelites
• Groups claiming affiliation with Israelites
• Twelve Tribes of Israel
• Ten Lost Tribes
• Jewish history
• History of the Jews in the Arabian Peninsula
• The Jewish community of Saada
• History of Yemen
• Israel–Yemen relations
• Human rights in Yemen
• Religion in Yemen
• Freedom of religion in Yemen
• History of the Jews under Muslim rule
• Antisemitism in Islam
• Antisemitism in the Arab world
• Racism in the Arab world
• Racism in Muslim communities
• Xenophobia and racism in the Middle East
• Islamic–Jewish relations
• Jewish exodus from the Muslim world
• Kfar Tapuach (Apple-village), an Orthodox Jewish Israeli settlement which is located in the west Bank and was founded by Yemenite Jews in 1978
• Torah scroll (Yemenite)
• Yemenite citron
• Yemenite Hebrew
• Yemenite Jewish poetry
• Yemenite Jewish silversmiths
• Mawza Exile
• Midrash HaGadol
• Nathan ben Abraham I
• Yemenite Children Affair
• Orphans' Decree
• Baladi-rite prayer
• Epistle to Yemen
• Al-Ousta Codex

References

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8. ^ Lior Ben Ari (June 19, 2024). "'A great loss': Yemen bids farewell to one of its last remaining Jews". Ynetnews. Retrieved July 19, 2024.
9. "Watch: One of Yemen's last Jews has passed away". Israel National News. June 16, 2024. Retrieved August 9, 2024.
10. Montville, Joseph V. (2011). History as Prelude: Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780739168141.
11. Rabbi Shalom ben Aharon Ha-Kohen Iraqi would go to a different Yemenite synagogue each Shabbat with printed Sephardic siddurim, requesting that the congregation pray in the Sefardic nusach and forcing it upon them if necessary (Yosef Kapach, Passover Aggadta, p. 11). See also Baladi-rite Prayer.
12. 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
13. Gilbert, Martin: In Ishmael's House, p. 4
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15. Angelika Neuwirth; Nicolai Sinai; Michael Marx (2009). The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu. BRILL. p. 36. ISBN 9789047430322.
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19. S.B. Segall (2003). Understanding the Exodus and Other Mysteries of Jewish History. Etz Haim Press. p. 212. ISBN 978-0-9740461-0-5. The Jewish Kingdoms of Arabia 7th century.
20. The Oriental Herald and Journal of General Literature. Vol. 14. London. 1827. p. 544.
21. Simon Dubnov (1968) . History of the Jews: From the Roman Empire to the Early Medieval Period. Cornwall Books. p. 309. ISBN 978-0-8453-6659-2.
22. 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.
23. 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.

24. 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.
25. ^ A. Jamme, W.F., Sabaean and Ḥasaean Inscriptions from Saudi Arabia, Instituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente: Università di Roma, Rome 1966, p. 40
26. ^ Eric Maroney (2010). The Other Zions: The Lost Histories of Jewish Nations. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 94. ISBN 9781442200456.
27. Karen Louise Jolly (1997). Tradition & Diversity: Christianity in a World Context to 1500. M.E. Sharpe. p. 171. ISBN 978-1-56324-468-1.
28. 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)
29. "Historians back BBC over Jewish massacre claim | The Jewish Chronicle". thejc.com. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
30. Jacques Ryckmans, La persécution des chrétiens himyarites au sixième siècle, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Inst. in het Nabije Oosten, 1956 pp 1–24
31. Bowesock, Glen (2013). The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam. Oxford University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0199739325.
32. Robert L. Montgomery (2002). The Lopsided Spread of Christianity: Toward an Understanding of the Diffusion of Religions. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-275-97361-2.
33. Francis Edward Peters (1994). Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. State University of New York Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-691-02054-9.
34. Jacques Ryckmans, La persécution des chrétiens himyarites au sixième siècle, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten: Istanbul 1956, p. 14 (French)
35. Munro-Hay. Aksum. p. 88.
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. Yehudah Ratzaby, "Documents on the Jews of Yemen", Sefunot, p. 289, 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. ^ Wagner, Mark S. (2009). Like Joseph in beauty : Yemeni vernacular poetry and Arab-Jewish symbiosis. Brill. pp. 3–282. ISBN 9789004168404.
44. Page 15 in: Goitein, S.D. (1955). "Portrait of a Yemenite Weavers' Village". Jewish Social Studies. 17 (1). Indiana University Press: 3–26. JSTOR 4465298.
45. Meissner, Renate (1999), "The Maria Theresa Taler: Traces of an Austrian Empress in Yemen", in Ephraim Isaac; Yosef Tobi (eds.), Judaeo-Yemenite Studies – Proceedings of the Second International Congress, Princeton: Princeton University (Institute of Semitic Studies), p. 110, ISSN 0894-9824
46. Jewish Communities in Exotic Places, by Ken Blady, Jason Aronson Inc., 2000, page 9
47. ^ Meddeb, Abdelwahab; Stora, Benjamin (November 27, 2013). A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day. Princeton University Press. pp. 248–250. ISBN 9781400849130.
48. Roxani Eleni Margariti (September 1, 2012). Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port. UNC Press Books. p. 16. ISBN 9781469606712.
49. Shelomo Dov Goitein, Mordechai Friedman (2008). India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza. Brill Publishers. p. 390. ISBN 978-9004154728.
50. Shelomo Dov Goitein, Mordechai Friedman (2008). India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza. Brill Publishers. pp. 37–38, 40. ISBN 978-9004154728.
51. Reuben Ahroni (1994). The Jews of the British Crown Colony of Aden: History, Culture, and Ethnic Relations. Brill Publishers. pp. 19–20. ISBN 978-9004101104.
52. The Epistles of Maimonides: Crisis and Leadership, ed.:Abraham S. Halkin, David Hartman, Jewish Publication Society, 1985. p.91
53. ^ Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times: A Festschrift in Honor of Mark R. Cohen. Brill Publishers. 2014. p. 181. ISBN 9789004267848.
54. ^ Wikisource:Epistle to Yemen
55. Herbert Davidson (December 9, 2004). Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works. Oxford University Press. p. 489. ISBN 9780195343618.
56. Reuben Ahroni (1994). The Jews of the British Crown Colony of Aden: History, Culture, and Ethnic Relations. Brill Publishers. p. 21. ISBN 978-9004101104.
57. Eraqi Klorman, Bat-Zion (1993). The Jews of Yemen in the Nineteenth Century: A Portrait of a Messianic Community. Brill Publishers. p. 27. ISBN 978-9004096844.
58. Lenowitz, Harris (September 27, 2001). The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights. Oxford University Press. p. 27. ISBN 9780195348941.
59. Tobi, Yosef Yuval (2018), "Attitude of the Muslim Authority in Yemen to the Jewish Messianic Movement", in Rachel Yedid; Danny Bar-Maoz (eds.), Ascending the Palm Tree: An Anthology of the Yemenite Jewish Heritage, Rehovot: E'ele BeTamar, p. 71, OCLC 1041776317, ʻAbd al-Nabī ibn Mahdī decreed compulsory apostasy for the Jews by forcing the Jewish inhabitants of all the places he had subdued to desert the Jewish religion.
60. Tobi, Yosef Yuval (2018), "Attitude of the Muslim Authority in Yemen to the Jewish Messianic Movement", in Rachel Yedid; Danny Bar-Maoz (eds.), Ascending the Palm Tree: An Anthology of the Yemenite Jewish Heritage, Rehovot: E'ele BeTamar, pp. 70–73, OCLC 1041776317
61. Qafih, Yosef (2018), "Yemenite Jewry's Connections with Major Jewish Centers", in Rachel Yedid; Danny Bar-Maoz (eds.), Ascending the Palm Tree: An Anthology of the Yemenite Jewish Heritage, Rehovot: E'ele BeTamar, pp. 31–32, OCLC 1041776317
62. Gedaliah Silverstein, ed. (1857). Ozar Nechmad (in Hebrew). Vol. 2. Vienna: J. Knöpflmacher's Buchhandlung. p. 4. OCLC 1037594097., s.v. in his letter to the Congregation of Lunel; cited by Qafih, Yosef (2018), "Yemenite Jewry's Connections with Major Jewish Centers", in Rachel Yedid; Danny Bar-Maoz (eds.), Ascending the Palm Tree: An Anthology of the Yemenite Jewish Heritage, Rehovot: E'ele BeTamar, pp. 29–30, OCLC 1041776317
63. ^ Qafiḥ, Yosef (1989). Ketavim (Collected Papers) (in Hebrew). Vol. 2. Jerusalem: Eʻeleh betamar, et al. p. 677. OCLC 61623627.
64. Qafih, Yosef (2018), "Yemenite Jewry's Connections with Major Jewish Centers", in Rachel Yedid; Danny Bar-Maoz (eds.), Ascending the Palm Tree: An Anthology of the Yemenite Jewish Heritage, Rehovot: E'ele BeTamar, p. 38, OCLC 1041776317, citing Introduction to Alfasi, Y. (1960). Yosef Qafih (ed.). R. Yitzhak al-Fasi's Commentary on Tractate Hullin (Chapter Kol ha-Basar) (in Hebrew). ha-Agudah le-Hatzalat Ginzei Teiman. OCLC 745065428.
65. 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
66. Jewish Communities in Exotic Places," by Ken Blady, Jason Aronson Inc., 2000, page 10
67. Yosef Tobi. "Mawzaʿ, Expulsion of." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2014.
68. B. Z. Eraqi Klorman, The Jews of Yemen in the Nineteenth Century: A Portrait of a Messianic Community, BRILL, 1993, p.46.
69. Meddeb, Abdelwahab; Stora, Benjamin (November 27, 2013). A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day. Princeton University Press. p. 254. ISBN 9781400849130.
70. Yosef Qafiḥ (ed.), "Qorot Yisra’el be-Teman by Rabbi Ḥayim Ḥibshush," Ketavim (Collected Papers), Vol. 2, Jerusalem 1989, pp. 714–715 (Hebrew)
71. Meddeb, Abdelwahab; Stora, Benjamin (November 27, 2013). A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day. Princeton University Press. pp. 254–255. ISBN 9781400849130.
72. Fergusson, William (2021). Derek L. Elliott (ed.). The voyages and manifesto of William Fergusson, a surgeon of the East India Company 1731–1739. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge for the Hakluyt Society. p. 83. ISBN 9780367713911. OCLC 1224044668.
73. Cf. Qafih, Y. (1982). Halichot Teman (Jewish Life in Sanà) (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute. p. 238. ISBN 965-17-0137-4. OCLC 863513860. 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.
74. Yosef Tobi, The Jewish Community of Radāʻ Yemen, Eighteenth Century, Oriens Judaicus: Series iii, vol. 1, Jerusalem 1992, p. 17 (ISSN 0792-6464).
75. Jewish Encyclopedia, London 1906, s.v. Yemen
76. 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 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").
77. Whyte, Chris (1988). "A Narrative Textbook of Psychoanalysis. By Peter L. Giovacchini, Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc. 1987. 382 pp". British Journal of Psychiatry. 152 (5): 729. doi:10.1192/s0007125000220771. ISSN 0007-1250.
78. The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights, by Harris Lenowitz, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, page 229
79. "Our man in Sanaa: Ex-Yemen president was once trainee rabbi". Haaretz. Haaretz.com. October 20, 2008. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
80. Ari Ariel (December 5, 2013). Jewish-Muslim Relations and Migration from Yemen to Palestine in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Brill Publishers. p. 119. ISBN 9789004265370.
81. Gilbert, Martin, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands, McClelland & Stewart, 2011
82. ^ Yitzhak Halevi, Aviran (ed.), Ish Yemini, vol. 2, Bnei Barak 2011, p. 565 (Hebrew)
83. A Yemenite Portrait – Jewish Orientalism in Local Photography, 1881–1948, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel-Aviv 2012, p. 75e
84. ^ A Yemenite Portrait (2012), pp. 75e–76e
85. ^ A Yemenite Portrait (2012), p. 20e
86. A Yemenite Portrait (2012), p. 82e
87. A Yemenite Portrait (2012), pp. 83e–84e
88. 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
89. Shelomo al-Naddaf (ed. Uzziel Alnadaf), Zekhor Le'Avraham, Jerusalem 1992, pp. 33; 49–50; 56–57 (Hebrew)
90. 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
91. Bloom, Etan (2007). "What 'The Father' had in mind? Arthur Ruppin (1876–1943), cultural identity, weltanschauung and action". History of European Ideas. 33 (3): 330–349. doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2007.02.002. S2CID 144162606.
92. 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
93. 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
94. Howard Sachar, A History of Israel, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), (pp. 397–98.)
95. ^ Tudor Parfitt, The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen, 1900–1950, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), pages 229–245
96. Tudor Parfitt The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen, 1900–1950, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), pages 203–227
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100. Laura Zittrain Eisenberg; Neil Caplan (February 1, 2012). Review Essays in Israel Studies: Books on Israel, Volume V. SUNY Press. p. 168. ISBN 978-0-7914-9331-1. 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.
101. Bernard Maza (January 1, 1989). With Fury Poured Out: The Power of the Powerless During the Holocaust. SP Books. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-944007-13-6. 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.
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116. Jordan, Miriam (October 31, 2009). "Secret Mission Rescues Yemen's Jews". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
117. Owen Bennett-Jones (December 18, 2009). "Yemen's last remaining Jews: A community in decline". BBC. Retrieved December 18, 2009.
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126. 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.
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128. "Monareliefye.org delivering for the 3rd time food aid baskets to Jewish community's members in Sana'a". monarelief. Retrieved October 14, 2018.
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131. "Killing Jewish Dead...By Dr Cohan". Begin-Sadat Peace Center. March 5, 2020. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
132. "Yemen minister says fate of country's last 50 Jews unknown". The Times of Israel. April 16, 2017. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
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134. "Report: Houthis Arrest Yemen's Last Remaining Jews In A Bid To Ethnically Cleanse The Country". Baltimore Jewish Life. July 13, 2020.
135. "Monareliefye.org delivering food aid baskets to Jewish community's members in Sana'a". monarelief. Retrieved July 25, 2020.
136. "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).
137. "Report: Yemen's Remaining Jews to Move to UAE Following Israel Treaty". August 16, 2020. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
138. Stein, Mitchell (September 5, 2020). "The Last Jews of Yemen". Aishcom. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
139. "Wrongful Detention by the Houthis of Levi Salem Musa Marhabi". United States Department of State. November 10, 2020. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
140. "Vosizneias Chief Rav Yitzchak Josef meets Yemenite Jews who escaped to UAE". December 23, 2020.
141. Joffre, Tzvi (March 29, 2021). "Almost all remaining Jews in Yemen deported – Saudi media". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
142. ^ "Some of Yemen's last remaining Jews said expelled by Iran-backed Houthis". The Times of Israel. March 30, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
143. 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.
144. "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.
145. "UN acknowledges that Yemen Jews have been driven out • Point of No Return". Point of No Return. February 9, 2022.
146. Nasser, Mohammed (March 28, 2021). "Houthis Expel the Last of Yemeni Jews". Asharq Al-Awsat. Retrieved March 30, 2021.
147. "Houthis Expel the Last of Yemeni Jews". Asharq AL-awsat.
148. Bassist, Rina (March 29, 2021). "Houthis deport some of Yemen's last remaining Jews". Al-Monitor. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
149. "Hundreds of Hanukkah kits sent to Jews living in Arab countries". Israel365 News | Latest News. Biblical Perspective. December 2, 2021.
150. Deutch, Gabby (March 14, 2022). "Only one Jew remains in Yemen, U.N. says". Jewish Insider.
151. "Watch: One of Yemen's last Jews has passed away". Israel National News. June 16, 2024. Retrieved August 9, 2024.
152. Rachel Yedid & Danny Bar-Maoz (ed.), Ascending the Palm Tree – An Anthology of the Yemenite Jewish Heritage, E'ele BeTamar: Rehovot 2018, pp. 21–22 OCLC 1041776317
153. 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.
154. Shlomo Dov Goitein, From the Land of Sheba: Tales of the Jews of Yemen, New York 1973
155. 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 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 during the building of the Second Temple, but they stubbornly turned their backs and he then cursed them that they would remain all their lives in poverty. Now, because of iniquities, there was fulfilled in us in that exile (galut), both, poverty in 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."
156. In the Baladi-rite Prayer book, in the section which brings down the order on the Ninth of Av fast day, we read: "…, etc., and the destruction of the First Temple and the dispersion of the people of our exile, etc." Here, Rabbi 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."
157. Josephus. The Jewish War. Translated by Whiston, William. 1.0.5 – via PACE: Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement. (Preface) Greek: Ἀράβων τε τοὺς πορρωτάτω = = lit. "the Arabian that are further on"; See: Preface to Josephus' "De Bello Judaico", paragraph 2, "the remotest Arabians" (lit. "the Arabian that are further on"). According to Rabbi Yihya Qafih, quoting from a 14th-century Yemenite Rabbi, some of the Jews in Arabia were driven out by Caliph Ali and made their way into Yemen. See: Tehuda, volume 30 (ed. Yosef Tobi), Netanya 2014, pp. 41–42 (Hebrew).
158. 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.
159. 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)
160. Naveh, Joseph (1995). "Aramaic Tombstones from Zoar". Tarbiẕ (Hebrew). סד (64): 477–497. JSTOR 23599945.; Naveh, Joseph (2000). "Seven New Epitaphs from Zoar". Tarbiẕ (Hebrew). סט (69): 619–636. 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.
161. Jacques Ryckmans, La Persécution des Chrétiens Himyarites, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Inst. in het Nabije Oosten, 1956
162. Shahîd, Irfan; Simeon, Arethas (1971). The Martyrs of Najrân: New Documents. Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes. p. 54. OCLC 516915.
163. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (ed. Marcus Nathan Adler), Oxford University Press, London 1907, pp. 47–49. Note: In 1870, Yemeni researcher and scholar, Hayim Hibshush, accompanied Joseph Halévy on an exploratory mission to the city of 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.
164. 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.
165. 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.
166. Raẓhabi, Yehuda (1985). "She'elot Hanagid — A Work by R. Yehoshua Hanagid". Tarbiẕ (in Hebrew). 54 (4): 553–566. JSTOR 23596708.
167. 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.
168. Avraham Yari, Igros Eretz Yisroel (Letters of the Land of Israel), in the "Letter of Rabbi Obadiah di Bertinora from Jerusalem to his Brother," written in 1489, Tel-Aviv 1943, p. 140 (in PDF); See also Gedaliah ibn Jechia the Spaniard, Shalshelet Ha-Kabbalah, Venice 1585 (Hebrew), who testified in the name of Rabbi Obadiah di Bertinoro who had said that there came Jews in his days to Jerusalem, who had come from the southeastern hemisphere, along the sea of the ocean, and who declared that they had no other book beside 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.
169. 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.
170. 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
171. Yosef Qafiḥ (ed.), "Qorot Yisra’el be-Teman by Rabbi Ḥayim Ḥibshush," Ketavim (Collected Papers), Vol. 2, Jerusalem 1989, pp. 713–719 (Hebrew)
172. Gaimani, Aharon (2016). "Rabbi Yosef ben Salih's Moral Rebuke Concerning the Events of 1724 in Yemen". Hebrew Studies. 57: 167–170. doi:10.1353/hbr.2016.0008. JSTOR 44072299. S2CID 151985498.
173. 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."
174. Carsten Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern (Description of Travel to Arabia and Other Neighboring Countries), Zürich 1992, pp. 416–418 (German)
175. 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.
176. Journal Har'el, Tel-Aviv 1962, pp. 243–251 (Hebrew)
177. Amram Qorah, Sa’arat Teman, Jerusalem 1988, p. 62 (Hebrew)
178. Rimon, Yaakov (1935). The Jews of Yemen in Tel-Aviv (יהדי תימן בתל-אביב) (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Zuckerman Press. OCLC 233187474.
179. 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
180. Krämer, Gudrun (2011). A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel. Princeton University Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-691-11897-0.
181. Shmuel Yavne'eli, Masa le-Teiman, Tel-Aviv 1952, pp. 187-188; 196-199 (Hebrew)
182. 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)
183. "The passion of Aramaic-Kurdish Jews brought Aramaic to Israel". Ekurd.net. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
184. Yemenite Jewry: Origins, Culture, and Literature, page 6, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)
185. "Doing Zionism – Resources". www.doingzionism.org.il. Archived from the original on February 5, 2007.
186. "Naphillath Panim". chayas.com. Archived from the original on July 16, 2012. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
187. Their Rabbis have interpreted the Talmud (Menahoth 39a) with a view that the "joints" and the "knots" are one and the same thing.
188. Mizrachi, Avshalom (2018), "The Yemenite Cuisine", in Rachel Yedid; Danny Bar-Maoz (eds.), Ascending the Palm Tree: An Anthology of the Yemenite Jewish Heritage, Rehovot: E'ele BeTamar, p. 134, OCLC 1041776317
189. Qafih, Y. (1982). Halichot Teman (Jewish Life in Sanà) (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute. p. 210. ISBN 965-17-0137-4. OCLC 863513860.
190. Archived August 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
191. 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)
192. Isaac ben Abba Mari, Sefer ha'Ittur, Lwów, Ukraine 1860
193. "Not all Yemenite brides need to look the same". Haaretz.com. March 25, 2008. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
194. 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
195. "Henna party adds colorful touch to the happy couple". Jewish Journal. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
196. "כשהגאב"ד האשכנזי התפלל בנוסח תימני • גלריה – בחצרות קודש – בחצרות חסידים – בחדרי חרדים". Bhol.co.il. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
197. Rechabites – Easton's Bible Dictionary
198. Tobi, Yosef (2004). "Caro's Shulhan Arukh Versus Maimonides' Mishne Torah in Yemen" (electronic version). In Lifshitz, Berachyahu (ed.). The Jewish Law Annual. Vol. 15. Routledge. p. PT253. ISBN 9781134298372. 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
199. ^ Simon, Reeva S.; Laskier, Mikha'el M.; Reguer, Sara (2003). The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in modern times. Columbia University Press. p. 398. ISBN 9780231107969.
200. Rabbi Yitzhaq Ratzabi, Ohr Hahalakha: Nusakh Teiman Publishing, Bnei Braq.
201. ^ 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
202. Shalom 'Uzayri, Galei-Or, Tel-Aviv 1974, pp. 15; 19 (Hebrew)
203. Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity, by Norman A. Stillman, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995, page 19
204. Pages 18, 19 (note 44) in: Goitein, S.D. (1955). "Portrait of a Yemenite Weavers' Village". Jewish Social Studies. 17 (1). Indiana University Press: 3–26. JSTOR 4465298.
205. Judaeo-Yemenite Studies – Proceedings of the Second International Congress, Ephraim Isaac & Yosef Tobi (ed.), Introduction, Princeton University 1999, p. 15
206. Shelomo Morag, Pronunciations of Hebrew, Encyclopaedia Judaica XIII, 1120–1145
207. Torah Qedumah, Shaul Ben Shalom Hodiyafi, Beit Dagan, 1902, page Aleph
208. Yemenite Midrash-Philosophical Commentaries on the Torah, translated by Yitzhak Tzvi Langermann, HarperCollins Publishing
209. Tahan, Ilana (2008). "The Hebrew Collection of the British Library: Past and Present". European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe. 41 (2): 43–55. doi:10.3167/ej.2008.410211. JSTOR 41443966.
210. Chakhamei Teiman (Sages of Yemen), by Yeshivat Hod Yoseph, volume 1
211. Rabbi Yosef Qafih, Halikhot Teman, (Ben-Zvi Institute: Jerusalem 1982, p. 186. Cf. 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.
212. Ester Muchawsky-Schnapper, "The Clothing of the Jews of Yemen", in: Ascending the Palm Tree – An Anthology of the Yemenite Jewish Heritage, Rachel Yedid & Danny Bar-Maoz (ed.), E'ele BeTamar: Rehovot 2018, pp. 161–162 OCLC 1041776317
213. This is true also with the Arabs of Yemen.
214. 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.
215. Brauer, Erich (1934). Ethnologie der Jemenitischen Juden. Vol. 7. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Kulturgeschichte Bibliothek, I. Reihe: Ethnologische bibliothek., p. 79.
216. Carsten Niebuhr, Description of Travel to Arabia and Other Neighboring Countries , Akademische Druch- und Verlagsanstalt: Graz 1968, pp. 416–417.
217. ^ Erich Brauer, Ethnologie der Jemenitischen Juden, Heidelberg 1934, p. 85
218. Yehuda Ratzaby, Ancient Customs of the Yemenite Jewish Community (ed. Shalom Seri and Israel Kessar), Tel-Aviv 2005, p. 30 (Hebrew)
219. ^ Moshe Gavra, Surnames of Jews in Yemen (shemot ha-mishpahah shel ha-yehudim be-teman), Benei Barak 2014, Preface p. 6 (Hebrew)
220. 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
221. 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.
222. Fezehai, Malin (November 17, 2018). "For Jewish Israelis of Yemenite Heritage, Reviving a Past". New York Times. Retrieved December 18, 2018.
223. ^ A. L. Non, A. Al-Meeri, R. L. Raaum, L. F. Sanchez, C. J. Mulligan, 'Mitochondrial DNA reveals distinct evolutionary histories for Jewish populations in Yemen and Ethiopia,' American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2011 Jan;144(1):1–10
224. Shen, Peidong; Lavi, Tal; Kivisild, Toomas; Chou, Vivian; Sengun, Deniz; Gefel, Dov; Shpirer, Issac; Woolf, Eilon; Hillel, Jossi; Feldman, Marcus W.; Oefner, Peter J. (2004). "Reconstruction of patrilineages and matrilineages of Samaritans and other Israeli populations from Y-Chromosome and mitochondrial DNA sequence Variation". Human Mutation. 24 (3): 248–260. doi:10.1002/humu.20077. ISSN 1059-7794. PMID 15300852.
225. Behar, Doron M.; Metspalu, Ene; Kivisild, Toomas; Rosset, Saharon; Tzur, Shay; Hadid, Yarin; Yudkovsky, Guennady; Rosengarten, Dror; Pereira, Luisa; Amorim, Antonio; Kutuev, Ildus; Gurwitz, David; Bonne-Tamir, Batsheva; Villems, Richard; Skorecki, Karl (April 30, 2008). "Counting the Founders: The Matrilineal Genetic Ancestry of the Jewish Diaspora". PLOS ONE. 3 (4): e2062. Bibcode:2008PLoSO...3.2062B. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002062. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 2323359. PMID 18446216.
226. Richards, Martin; Rengo, Chiara; Cruciani, Fulvio; Gratrix, Fiona; Wilson, James F.; Scozzari, Rosaria; Macaulay, Vincent; Torroni, Antonio (2003). "Extensive Female-Mediated Gene Flow from Sub-Saharan Africa into Near Eastern Arab Populations". The American Journal of Human Genetics. 72 (4): 1058–1064. doi:10.1086/374384. ISSN 0002-9297. PMC 1180338. PMID 12629598.
227. Kopelman, Naama M.; Stone, Lewi; Hernandez, Dena G.; Gefel, Dov; Singleton, Andrew B.; Heyer, Evelyne; Feldman, Marcus W.; Hillel, Jossi; Rosenberg, Noah A. (2020). "High-resolution inference of genetic relationships among Jewish populations". European Journal of Human Genetics. 28 (6): 804–814. doi:10.1038/s41431-019-0542-y. ISSN 1476-5438. PMC 7253422. PMID 31919450.
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Bibliography

• Gavra, Moshe (2014). Surnames of Jews in Yemen (Shemot ha-mishpachah shel ha-yehudim ba-teiman) (in Hebrew). B'nei Brak: Ha-mekhon le-ḥeker ḥakhamei teiman. OCLC 892488824.

Further reading

• Idelsohn, Abraham Z. (1914). Thesaurus of Hebrew–Oriental Melodies, vol. 1 (Songs of the Yemenite Jews), by Abraham Z. Idelsohn, Leipzig
• Qafih, Yosef (1982). Halikhot Teiman — The Life of Jews of Sana'a, Ben-Zvi Institute: Jerusalem (in Hebrew)
• Qorah, Amram (1988). Sa‘arat Teiman, Jerusalem (in Hebrew)
• Lenowitz, Harris (1998). The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Megillah (tractate) (The Yemenite MS. of Megillah in the Library of Columbia University)
• Parfitt, Tudor (1996) The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen 1900–1950. Brill's Series in Jewish Studies vol. XVII. Leiden: Brill.
• Rohrbacher, Peter (2006). „Wüstenwanderer" gegen „Wolkenpolitiker" – Die Pressefehde zwischen Eduard Glaser und Theodor Herzl in: Anzeiger der philosophisch-historischen Klasse; 141. Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, pp. 103–116.
• Simon, Reeva; Laskier, Michael; Reguer, Sara (eds.) (2002). The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa In Modern Times, Columbia University Press, s.v. Chapters 8 and 21
• Tobi, Yosef (1995). "Information about Yemenite Jews in Arab essays from Yemen (ידיעות על יהודי תימן בחיבורים ערביים מתימן)". Pe'amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry (in Hebrew). 64. Ben-Zvi Institute: 68–102. JSTOR 23425355.
• Verskin, Alan (2018). A Vision of Yemen: The Travels of a European Orientalist and His Native Guide. A Translation of Hayyim Habshush's Travelogue. Stanford, CA. Stanford University Press

External links

• Jews of Yemen Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906
• History of the Jews of Yemen Rabbi Menachem Levine, Aish.com
• Yihye Haybi's Collection, now at the Israel Museum
• Geniza Project, the Nahum Collection
• Television Documentary of Yemen's Jewish Community in 1929 (in Arabic), filmed in Sana’a by Russian film director, Vladimir Shnejderov
• Yemenite Jews and Antiquity
• Yemen's Last Jews March 2015
• Yemen loses the Last of its Jews to Israel (Arab Weekly March 2016)
• Yet News
• Yefet Shlomo Collection (in Hebrew) on the Digital collections of Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library, University of Haifa

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