Yemenite Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the Yemenite Jewish communities, who now reside within the state of Israel. They number around 400,000 in the wider definition. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the overwhelming majority of Yemen and Aden's Jewish population was transported to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet.
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 Ottoman Syria. 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 Ottoman Syria, they would play a part in what they believed could precipitate the anticipated messianic era. Emigration from Yemen to the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem (Ottoman Syria) began in early 1881 and continued almost without interruption until 1914. It was during this time that about 10% of the Yemenite Jews left. From 1881 to 1882, a few hundred Jews left Sanaa and several nearby settlements. This wave was followed by other Jews from central Yemen who continued to move into Ottoman Syrian provinces until 1914. The majority of these groups moved into Jerusalem and Jaffa. In 1884, some families settled into a new-built neighborhood called Yemenite Village Kfar Hashiloach (Hebrew: כפר השילוח) in the Jerusalem district of Silwan, and built the Old Yemenite Synagogue.[1][2]
Before World War I, there was another wave that began in 1906 and continued until 1914. Hundreds of Yemenite Jews made their way to Ottoman Syria 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 the Land of Israel. Yavne'eli reached Yemen at the beginning of 1911 and returned to Ottoman Syria 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.[3]
1920 to 1940s
Yemenite Jews en route from Aden to Israel.
In 1922, the government of Yemen, under Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din (Imam Yahya), re-introduced an ancient Islamic law entitled the "Orphans' Decree". The law dictated that, if Jewish boys or girls under the age of twelve 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 Mohammed 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.[4]
A prominent example is Abdul Rahman al-Iryani, the former president of the Yemen Arab Republic, who was alleged to be of Jewish descent by Dorit Mizrahi, a writer in the Israeli ultra-Orthodox weekly Mishpaha. She claimed to be his niece due to his being her mother's brother. According to her recollection of events, he was born Zekharia Hadad in 1910 to a Yemenite Jewish family in Ibb. He lost his parents in a major disease epidemic at the age of eight, and, together with his 5-year-old sister, he was forcibly converted to Islam, and they were put under the care of separate foster families. He was raised in the powerful al-Iryani family, and adopted an Islamic name. al-Iryani would later serve as minister of religious endowments under northern Yemen's first national government, and he became the only civilian to have led northern Yemen.[4][5]
However, YemenOnline, an online newspaper, claimed to have conducted several interviews with several members of the al-Iryani family and residents of Iryan, and alleges that this claim of Jewish descent is merely a "fantasy" started in 1967 by Haolam Hazeh, an Israeli tabloid. It states that Zekharia Haddad is, in fact, Abdul Raheem al-Haddad, Al-Iryani's foster brother and bodyguard who died in 1980. Abdul Raheem is survived by tens of sons and grandsons.[6]
1947-1950
Yemenite Haganah member on guard duty at moshav Elyashiv
In 1947, after the partition vote of the British Mandate of Palestine, Arab Muslim 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.[7]
This increasingly perilous situation led to the emigration of virtually the entire Yemenite and Adenese Jewish communities. During this period, over 50,000 Jews emigrated to Israel. Operation Magic Carpet (Yemen) began in June 1949, and ended in September 1950.[8] Part of the operation took place during the hostilities of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (May 15, 1948 – March 10, 1949).
The operation was planned by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.[citation needed] 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.[9] 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.[8] By September 1950, almost 50,000 Jews had been successfully airlifted to the newly formed state of Israel.[10]
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."[11]
Many Yemenite Jews became irreligious through the re-education program of the Jewish Agency.[12][13]
Later emigration
A smaller, continuous migration was allowed to continue into 1962, when a civil war put an abrupt halt to any further Jewish exodus.
Jews of Amlah, Yemen (ca. 1990)
In August of 1992, family units from Yemen began to arrive in Israel. The main bulk of new immigrants began to arrive in the Summer of 1993, continuing throughout the Autumn and Winter of that same year, and into 1994. Fewer arrivals arrived in 1995 and 1996. Some Jews had been brought to London, England, where they made their new place of residence.
In February 2009, 10 Yemeni Jews immigrated to Israel, and in July 2009, three families, or 16 people in total, followed suit.[14][15]
In January 2013, it was reported that a group of 60 Yemenite Jews had immigrated 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.[16]
In March 2016, it was reported that the Jewish Agency brought 19 of the last remaining Yemenite Jews to Israel in a covert operation. 14 came from the town of Raydah, while one family of five hailed from the capital, Sanaa. The group from Raydah included the community's rabbi, who brought a Torah scroll believed to be between 500 and 600 years old.[17][18]
In April 2014 it was reported that the remaining Jewish Population in Yemen numbered 90.[19]
On October 11, 2015, LikudMKAyoob Kara stated that members of the Yemenite Jewish community had contacted him to say that the Houthi-ledYemen 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.[20][21]
On March 21, 2016, a group of 19 Yemenite Jews were flown to Israel in a secret operation, leaving the population at about 50.[22][23] In April 2016 the Houthis arrested three Yemenite Jews-including Rabbi Yousef.[24] On June 7, 2016 Jews who had been arrested in Yemen after having helped smuggled out a Torah scroll were released.[25]
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.[26] It was reported that in 2018 there were around 50 Jews remaining in Yemen.[27] 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.[28]
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 indiegog ..."[29]
As of March 2020, the Jewish Cemetery in Aden was destroyed.[30] On April 28, 2020, Yemenite Minister Moammer al-Iryani remarked the fate of the last 50 Jews in Yemen is unknown.[31]
A 2020 World Population Review with a Census of Jewish population by country has no listing of any Jews in Yemen.[32]
On July 13, 2020, it was reported that the Houthi Militia were capturing the last Jews of Yemen of the Kharif District.[33] 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.[34]
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.[35]
In August 2020 of an estimated 100 or so remaining Yemen Jews, 42 have migrated to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the rest would also leave.[36][37][38]
On November 10, 2020, the U.S. State Department called for the immediate and unconditional release of Levi Salem Musa Marhabi. 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.[39] On November 25, 2020, it is reported that a total of 38 Jews still remain in Yemen.[40]
In December 2020 an Israeli Rabbi visited the Yemenite Jews who escaped to the UAE.[41] As of January 12, 2021, 7 Jews have left Yemen for UAE leaving 31 Jews in Yemen.[42]
On 28 March 2021, 13 Jews were forced by the Houthis to leave Yemen, leaving the last four elderly Jews in Yemen.[43][44][45] According to one report there are six Jews left in Yemen: one woman; her brother; 3 others, and Levi Salem Marahbi (who has been imprisoned for helping smuggle a Torah scroll out of Yemen).[46][47] In March 2022 the United Nations reports there is just 1 Jew in Yemen.[48]
The history of Yemen describes the cultures, events, and peoples of what is one of the oldest centers of civilization in the Near East. Its relatively fertile land and adequate rainfall in a moister climate helped sustain a stable population, a feature recognized by the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, who described Yemen as Eudaimon Arabia meaning "fortunate Arabia" or "Happy Arabia". Yemenis had developed the South Arabian alphabet by the 12th to 8th centuries BC, which explains why most historians date all of the ancient Yemeni kingdoms to that era.
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 emigrated 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 2024, only five Jews remained in Yemen, with one of them being Levi Marhabi.
Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to the north, Oman to the northeast, the Red Sea to the west, and the Indian Ocean to the south, sharing maritime borders with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia across the Horn of Africa. Covering roughly 528,000 square kilometres, with a coastline of approximately 2,000 kilometres, Yemen is the second largest country on the Arabian Peninsula. Sanaa is its constitutional capital and largest city. Yemen's estimated population is 34.7 million, mostly Arab Muslims. It is a member of the Arab League, the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din was the first king of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen from 1918 until his assassination in 1948. He became Imam of the Zaydis, a branch of Shia Islam, in 1904 after the death of his father, Muhammad Al-Mansur, and Imam of Yemen in 1918. His name and title in full was "His majesty Amir al-Mumenin al-Mutawakkil 'Ala Allah Rab ul-Alamin Imam Yahya bin al-Mansur Bi'llah Muhammad Hamidaddin, Imam and Commander of the Faithful".
Operation Magic Carpet is a widely known nickname for Operation On Wings of Eagles, an operation between June 1949 and September 1950 that brought 49,000 Yemenite Jews to the new state of Israel. During its course, the overwhelming majority of Yemenite Jews – some 47,000 from Yemen, 1,500 from Aden, as well as 500 from Djibouti and Eritrea and some 2,000 Jews from Saudi Arabia – were airlifted to Israel. British and American transport planes made some 380 flights from Aden.
Adeni Jews, or Adenite Jews are the historical Jewish community which resided in the port city of Aden. Adenite culture became distinct from other Yemenite Jewish culture due to British control of the city and Indo-Iraqi Jewish influence as well as recent arrivals from Persia and Egypt. Although they were separated, Adeni Jews depended on the greater Yemenite community for spiritual guidance, receiving their authorizations from Yemeni rabbis. Virtually the entire population emigrated from Aden between June 1947 and September 1967. As of 2004, there were 6,000 Adenites in Israel, and 1,500 in London.
The Habbani Jews are a culturally distinct Jewish population group from the Habban region in eastern Yemen, a subset of the larger ethnic group of Yemenite Jews. The city of Habban had a Jewish community of 450 in 1947, which was considered to possibly be the remains of a larger community which lived independently in the region before its decline in the 6th century. The Jewish community of Habban disappeared from the map of the Hadramaut, in southeast Yemen, with the emigration of all of its members to Israel in the 1950s.
The history of the Jews in the United Arab Emirates describes the historical and modern presence of Jews over the millennia in the Middle East and the recorded meetings with Jewish communities in areas that are today in the geographic territories of the United Arab Emirates.
The history of the Jews in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to Biblical times. The Arabian Peninsula is defined as including the present-day countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen politically and parts of Iraq and Jordan geographically.
</ref> Amongst the native population, there were approximately 1,000 Christians, and 6 remaining Jews in 2016. However, Pew-Templeton estimates the number of Christians to be as high as 40,000, though most do not publicly identify as such, due to fears of religious persecution. According to WIN/Gallup International polls, Yemen has the most religious population among Arab countries and it is one of the most religious populations world-wide.
Sanaa, officially the Sanaa Municipality, is the capital and largest city of Yemen. The city is the capital of the Sanaa Governorate but is not part of the governorate as it forms a separate administrative unit. According to the Yemeni constitution, Sanaa is the capital of the country, although the seat of the Yemeni government moved to Aden, the former capital of Democratic Yemen, in the aftermath of the Houthi occupation. Aden was declared the temporary capital by then-president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in March 2015.
Rabbi Hayyim Habshush was a coppersmith by trade, and a noted nineteenth-century historiographer of Yemenite Jewry. He also served as a guide for the Jewish-French Orientalist and traveler Joseph Halévy. After his journey with Halévy in 1870, he was employed by Eduard Glaser and other later travellers to copy inscriptions and to collect old books.
There are no diplomatic relations that exist between Israel and Yemen and relations between the two countries are very tense. Yemen refuses the admission of people with an Israeli passport or any passport with an Israeli stamp, and the country is defined as an "enemy state" by Israeli law. During the Israel–Hamas war, the Houthi movement in Yemen launched a missile and drone striking campaign against Israel and ships in the Red Sea.
The Yemenite Children Affair refers to the disappearance of mainly Yemenite Jewish babies and toddlers of immigrants in the newly founded state of Israel from 1948 to 1954. The number of children affected ranges from 1,000 to 5,000.
The Yemeni civil war is an ongoing multilateral civil war that began in late 2014 mainly between the Rashad al-Alimi-led Presidential Leadership Council and the Mahdi al-Mashat-led Supreme Political Council, along with their supporters and allies. Both claim to constitute the official government of Yemen.
In the early years before the immigration to Israel, the Jewish community of Saada numbered around 1000 people.
Amram Qorah was the last Chief Rabbi in Yemen, assuming this role in 1934, after the death of Rabbi Yihya al-Abyadh, Resh Methivta, and which role he held for approximately two years. He is the author of the book, Sa'arat Teman, published post-mortem by the author's son, a book that documents the history of the Jews of Yemen and their culture for a little over 250 years, from the Mawza exile to the mass-immigration of Yemenite Jews to Israel in the mid-20th century.
In the history of the Jews in Djibouti, the Jews of Djibouti are classified as part of the wider Yemenite Jewish community similar to those in Eritrea and Aden. Originally settling in Obock, and finally Djibouti City, in the wake of the British succession of the Gulf of Tadjoura to the French in 1884. The vast majority of the community made aliyah to Israel in 1949.
Batn al-Hawa is a residential neighborhood inside the village of Silwan, which is located south of the al-Aqsa Mosque, outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. The neighborhood or Mount Batn al-Hawa, which is an extension of the Mount of Olives, and is located in the eastern corner of Jerusalem; It is separated from it by the Silwan Valley, which connects to the Kidron Valley at the same point, and is known by the Jews as "Har Hashishit" or "The Flood Mountain.
Levi Salem Musa Marhabi is a Yemenite Orthodox Jew and one of the last Jews living in Yemen. He was imprisoned by Houthi militants in 2016 for allegedly assisting in smuggling a Torah scroll out of the country. Held in a prison in Sanaa, Marhabi has received harsh treatment from his detainers, with an emergence of reports of torture and deteriorating health conditions. In 2019, a Yemeni court ordered his release; however, the Houthis continued to detain him.
↑ 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
↑ Operation Magic Carpet, Golden Anniversary: Alaska Airlines helped roll out a Magic Carpet to Israel, Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air web-site,
↑ Laura Zittrain Eisenberg; Neil Caplan (February 1, 2012). Review Essays in Israel Studies: Books on Israel, Volume V. SUNY Press. p.168. ISBN978-0-7914-9331-1. 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.
↑ Bernard Maza (January 1, 1989). With Fury Poured Out: The Power of the Powerless During the Holocaust. SP Books. p.193. ISBN978-0-944007-13-6. 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.
↑ “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).
1 Druze have a status aparte from Muslim Arabs in Israel, since 1957.
2 Arameans have a status aparte from Christian Arabs in Israel, since 2014.
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