Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Temanim (; ), are a Jewish diaspora group who live or once lived in Yemen and their descendants who maintain 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, reputedly only one Jew, Levi Marhabi, remains in Yemen. However, 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". Yemeni Jews are considered Mizrahi or "Eastern" Jews. However, they differ from other Mizrahis, who have undergone a process of total or partial assimilation to Sephardic law and customs. While the Shami Yemeni Jews did adopt a Sephardic-influenced rite, this was primarily 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 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.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
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.Gilbert, Martin: In Ishmael's House, p. 4 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.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. 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.A. Jamme, W.F., Sabaean and Ḥasaean Inscriptions from Saudi Arabia, Instituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente: Università di Roma, Rome 1966, p. 40 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.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) 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.
In 2009, a BBC broadcast defended a claim that Yūsuf Asʾar offered villagers the choice between conversion to Judaism or death and then massacred 20,000 Christians. The program's producers stated, "The production team spoke to many historians over 18 months, among them Nigel Groom, who was our consultant, and Professor Abdul Rahman Al-Ansary [former professor of archaeology at the King Saud University in Riyadh]." Inscriptions attributed to Yūsuf Asʾar himself show the great pride he expressed after killing more than 22,000 Christians in Ẓafār and Najran.Jacques Ryckmans, La persécution des chrétiens himyarites au sixième siècle, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Inst. in het Nabije Oosten, 1956 pp 1–24 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 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."Jacques Ryckmans, La persécution des chrétiens himyarites au sixième siècle, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten: Istanbul 1956, p. 14 (French)
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.Jewish Communities in Exotic Places," by Ken Blady, Jason Aronson Inc., 2000, pages 7 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.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