Ancient history shrine, 330 BCE – 200 CE, found in Dhofar Records referring to Judaism in Yemen started to appear in
Himyar, a
polity established in what is now Yemen in 110 BCE. Various inscriptions in the
Ancient South Arabian script in the
2nd century refer to the construction of
synagogues approved by Himyarite kings. In the aftermath of the
Bar Kokhba revolt in 132, 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, 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 Judaism or Christianity influenced Himyarite monotheism. Jews became especially numerous and influential in
South 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. Yemeni tribes did not oppose the Jewish presence in their country.
Dynastic conversion to Judaism In 390, the Himyarite king
Abu Karib led a military campaign northwards and fought the Jews of
Yathrib in the
Hijaz. When Abu Karib fell ill, two local Jewish scholars, 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 the king with an interest in Judaism, and he converted in 390, persuading his army to do likewise. With this, the Himyar, "the dominant power on the
Arabian peninsula", was converted to Judaism. In Yemen, several inscriptions dating back to the 4th and 5th centuries have been found in
Hebrew and
Sabaean praising the ruling house in Jewish terms for "helping and empowering the
People of Israel".
Dhu Nuwas and intercommunal unrest By 516, tribal unrest broke out, and several tribal elites fought for power. One of those elites was
Joseph dhu Nuwas or Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar 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
convert to Judaism.
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 Yūsuf Asʾar sought to convert other Yemenis but they refused to renounce Christianity. The actual picture, however, remains unclear. Inscriptions attributed to Yūsuf Asʾar 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. 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 of
Tishri). The city had revolted against the king and they refused to deliver it up unto the king. About three hundred of the city's inhabitants surrendered to the king's forces, under the assurances of an oath that no harm would come to them, and these were later bound, while those remaining in the city were burnt alive within their church. The death toll in this account is said to have reached about two thousand. However, in the Sabaean inscriptions describing these events, it is reported that by the month Dhu-Madra'an (between July and September) there were "1000 killed, 1500 prisoners [taken] and 10,000 head of cattle." 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 Ḥimā), 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 Asʾar Yathʾar, 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 Sanaa 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. 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. 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 Sanaa 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 Sanaa 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. 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. (1937) Ottoman rule ended in 1630, when the Zaydis took over Yemen. Jews were once again persecuted. In 1679, under the rule of
Al-Mahdi Ahmad, Jews were expelled
en masse from all parts of Yemen to the distant province of
Mawza, in what was known as the
Mawza Exile, when many Jews died of starvation and disease as a consequence. As many as two-thirds of the exiled Jews did not survive. 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 Sanaa 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
Sanaa (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, 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 and Israel , housing project built by a charity in 1891
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),
Kinneret,
Degania Others chose to live in the urban areas of
Jerusalem (
Silwan, and Nachalat Zvi), 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. in Israel, 1947 From 1881 to 1882, some 30 Jewish families left
Sanaa 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 : Yemenite Jews en route from Aden to Israel on "wings of eagles". celebration, Ma'abarat
Rosh HaAyin, 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. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the messianism which had long been prevalent within the Yemenite community reemerged.
David Ben-Gurion leading the new state caused many to believe that this was the "
Kingdom of David", while many of the mostly poor Yemenite Jews viewed Israel as an escape from their poverty. Moreover, the Israeli government used significant messianic messaging and language in its attempts to convince Yemenite Jewry to move to Israel. 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. 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: 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.
Contemporary history has a large, possibly 50% Yemenite Jewish population.
Missing children (Israel, 1949–51) Claims were made that, between 1949 and 1951, up to 1,033 children of Yemenite immigrant families may have disappeared from the immigrant camps. It was said that the parents were told that their children were ill and required hospitalization. Upon later visiting the hospital, it is claimed that the parents were told that their children had died though no bodies were presented and graves which have later proven to be empty in many cases were shown to the parents. Those who believed the theory contended that the Israeli government as well as other organizations in Israel kidnapped the children and gave them for adoption to other, non-Yemenite, families. In 2016, 400,000 documents were released in regard to the Yemenite Jewish Children affair.In 2016 after having re-examined evidence given to a commission of inquiry in the late 1990s, Cabinet Minister
Tzachi Hanegbi told Israeli TV: "They took the children and gave them away. I don't know where." The minister admitted that at least "hundreds" of children were taken without their parent's consent, marking the first time such a public claim had been made by a government official.In December 2021,
Haaretz exposed a draft report on the affair whose publication was being suppressed by the Ministry of Health. Written by the outgoing deputy director general and two others, it "reveals the involvement of doctors, nurses and caregivers in taking the children and acting as middlemen in their adoptions, sometimes in exchange for money. The report chronicles racist perceptions at the time of 'backward immigrants' from Middle Eastern and North African countries, using the pretext of it being in the 'best interests of the children' to justify their being taken away from their biological parents." 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 north of Sanaa. 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 Sanaa 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
Sanaa. , 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. Yet, he escaped from prison with ten inmates in 2011. 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 Sanaa, 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 Sanaa. 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 Sanaa 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 Sanaa 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 Sanaa. 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 Sanaa 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 Sanaa 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.
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==