A siddur is a Jewish prayer book containing a set order of daily prayers. The word siddur comes from the Hebrew root ס־ד־ר, meaning 'order.'
Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Teimanim, are Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen, and their descendants maintaining their customs. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the overwhelming majority of the country's Jewish population immigrated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. After several waves of persecution, the vast majority of Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, while smaller communities live in the United States and elsewhere. As of 2022, Levi Marhabi is the last Jew in Yemen.
Yemenite Hebrew, also referred to as Temani Hebrew, is the pronunciation system for Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews. Yemenite Hebrew has been studied by language scholars, many of whom believe it to retain older phonetic and grammatical features lost elsewhere. Yemenite speakers of Hebrew have garnered considerable praise from language purists because of their use of grammatical features from classical Hebrew. Tunisian rabbi and scholar, Rabbi Meir Mazuz, once said of Yemenites that they are good grammarians.
Nethanel ben Isaiah was a Yemenite Jewish rabbi, Biblical commentator and poet of the fourteenth century. He is best known as the author of a homiletic commentary on the Torah entitled Nur al-Zulm wa-Mashbah al-Hikm, translated into Hebrew as Sefer Me'or ha-Afelah.
In Judaism, Nusach is the exact text of a prayer service; sometimes the English word "rite" is used to refer to the same thing. Nusakh means "formulate" or "wording".
Syrian Jews are Jews who live in the region of the modern state of Syria, and their descendants born outside Syria. Syrian Jews derive their origin from two groups: from the Jews who inhabited the region of today's Syria from ancient times, and sometimes classified as Mizrahi Jews ; and from the Sephardi Jews who fled to Syria after the Alhambra Decree forced the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
Jacob Saphir was a 19th-century writer, ethnographer, researcher of Hebrew manuscripts, a traveler and emissary of the rabbis of Eastern European Jewish descent who settled in Jerusalem during his early life.
Rabbi Yiḥya Ṣāleḥ, known by the acronym of Maharitz, , was one of the greatest exponents of Jewish law known to Yemen. He is the author of a liturgical commentary entitled Etz Ḥayyim, in which he follows closely the legal dicta of Maimonides. Rabbi Yiḥya Ṣāleḥ is widely remembered for his ardent work in preserving Yemenite Jewish customs and traditions, which he articulated so well in his many writings, but also for his adopting certain Spanish rites and liturgies that had already become popular in Yemen. In this regard, he was strongly influenced by the Rabbis of his previous generation, Rabbi Yehudah Sa'adi and Rabbi Yihya al-Bashiri. Initially, Rabbi Yiḥya Ṣāleḥ worked as a blacksmith until the age of thirty, after which he worked as a scrivener of sacred texts, before becoming chief jurist of the rabbinical court in Sana'a.
Midrash HaGadol or The Great Midrash is a work of aggaddic midrash, expanding on the narratives of the Torah, which was written by David ben Amram Adani of Yemen.
Kosher locusts are varieties of locust deemed permissible for consumption under the laws of kashrut. While the consumption of most insects is forbidden under the laws of kashrut, the rabbis of the Talmud identified eight kosher species of locust. However, the identity of those species is in dispute. The Jewish communities of Yemen and parts of northern Africa, until their emigration in the mid-20th century, ate locusts which according to their tradition are kosher. Some such species can be bought in Israel for consumption.
The Jerusalem Crown is a printed edition of the Tanakh printed in Jerusalem in 2001, and based on a manuscript commonly known as the Aleppo Crown). The printed text consists of 874 pages of the Hebrew Bible, two pages setting forth both appearances of the Ten Commandments each showing the two different cantillations—for private and for public recitation, 23 pages briefly describing the research background and listing alternative readings, a page of the blessings—the Ashkenazic, Sephardic and Yemenite versions—used before and after reading the Haftarah, a 9-page list of the annual schedule of the Haftarot readings according to the three traditions.
The Mawza Exile is considered the single most traumatic event experienced collectively by the Jews of Yemen, in which Jews living in nearly all cities and towns throughout Yemen were banished by decree of the king, Imām al-Mahdi Ahmad, and sent to a dry and barren region of the country named Mawzaʻ to withstand their fate or to die. Only a few communities, viz., those Jewish inhabitants who lived in the far eastern quarters of Yemen were spared this fate by virtue of their Arab patrons who refused to obey the king's orders. Many would die along the route and while confined to the hot and arid conditions of this forbidding terrain. After one year in exile, the exiles were called back to perform their usual tasks and labors for the indigenous Arab populations, who had been deprived of goods and services on account of their exile.
The Baladi-rite Prayer is the oldest known prayer-rite used by Yemenite Jews, transcribed in a prayer book known as a tiklāl in Yemenite Jewish parlance. "Baladi", as a term applied to the prayer-rite, was not used until prayer books arrived in Yemen in the Sephardic-rite.
Yiḥya Yitzḥak Halevi, son of Moshe (Musa) Yitzḥak Halevi, was a Yemeni born rabbinical scholar who served as one of the last great scholars and chief jurists of the rabbinic court at Ṣan‘ā’, which post he held for nearly thirty years, a time interrupted only during the siege laid to the city by loyal Yemeni forces under Imām Yaḥyā Ḥamīd ad-Dīn (1904—1948) in their bid to oust the Ottoman Turks who then controlled the city. The Rabbi, meanwhile, had fled with his family to Dhamar.
Avraham Al-Naddaf (1866–1940), the son of Ḥayim b. Salem Al-Naddaf, was a Yemenite rabbi and scholar who immigrated to Ottoman Palestine in 1891, eventually becoming one of the members of the Yemenite rabbinical court (Beit-Din) established in Jerusalem in 1908, and active in public affairs. His maternal grandfather was Rabbi Yiḥya Badiḥi (1803–1887), the renowned sage and author of the Questions & Responsa, Ḥen Ṭov, and a commentary on the laws of ritual slaughter of livestock, Leḥem Todah, who served as the head of Sanaa's largest seat of learning (yeshiva), held in the synagogue, Bayt Saleḥ, before he was forced to flee from Sana'a in 1846 on account of the tyrant, Abū-Zayid b. Ḥasan al-Miṣrī, who persecuted the Jews under the Imam Al-Mutawakkil Muhammad.
Yemenite Jewish poetry, often referred to as "paraliturgical poetry" because of its religious nature, has been an integral part of Yemenite Jewish culture since time immemorial. The Jews of Yemen have preserved a well-defined singing arrangement which not only includes the very poetic creation itself, but also involves a vocal and dance performance, accompanied in certain villages outside Sana'a by drumming on an empty tin-can (tanakeh) or a copper tray. The Jews of Yemen, maintaining strict adherence to Talmudic and Maimonidean halakha, observed the gezeirah which prohibited playing musical instruments, and "instead of developing the playing of musical instruments, they perfected singing and rhythm." This arrangement was integrated into the walks of life familiar to the Jews of Yemen. The texts used in the arrangement were put down in writing and later included in separate song collections (dīwāns). The social strictures and norms in Yemenite Jewish culture provide for separate settings for men and for women, where the sexes are never mixed. Men’s song usually expressed the national aspirations of the Jewish people, and it was far removed from the singing associated with the Muslim environment, whereas folk songs of Jewish women were sung by rote memory and expressed the happiness and sorrows inherent in their daily life and was, as a rule, closer to that of Muslim women.
The Damascus Pentateuch or Codex Sassoon 507 is a 10th-century Hebrew Bible codex, consisting of the almost complete Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. The codex was copied by an unknown scribe, replete with Masoretic annotations. The beginning of the manuscript is damaged: it starts with Genesis 9:26, and Exodus 18:1–23 is also missing. In 1975 it was acquired by the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem. The codex was published in a large, two-volume facsimile edition in 1978.
Yemenite scrolls of the Law containing the Five Books of Moses represent one of three authoritative scribal traditions for the transmission of the Torah, the other two being the Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions that slightly differ. While all three traditions purport to follow the Masoretic traditions of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, slight differences between the three major traditions have developed over the years. Biblical texts proofread by ben Asher survive in two extant codices, the latter said to have only been patterned after texts proofread by Ben Asher. The former work, although more precise, was partially lost following its removal from Aleppo in 1947.
In orthography, a plene scriptum is a word containing an additional letter, usually one which is superfluous – not normally written in that word – nor needed for the proper comprehension of the word. Today, the term applies mostly to sacred scripture.
Maṣliaḥ ben Solomon ha-Cohen, alternatively Matzliach, was a Gaon and the leader of the Palestinian Gaonate in Fustat, the principal Talmudic academy and central legalistic body of the Jewish community in Palestine. He also held the title of Ra'is al-Yahud, from at least 1127 until his possible murder in 1139. After his death, the Gaonate split between Damascus in Syria and Fustat in Egypt.
