One of the miracles of the new State of Israel was “Operation Magic Carpet,” by which forty thousand Yemenite Jews were transported almost overnight by airplane from a primitive physical environment and a static medieval culture into a new world of bustling activity and progress. Unhappily, under the daily glare of reality, the miracle has begun to fade, and increasingly we hear of the “Yemenite problem.” The newcomers have become a center of controversy between the government and the religious bloc, and many observers are concerned also over the possibility of their becoming a permanently underprivileged caste in a society that has little knowledge of, or use for, their old traditions, and that can spare little time to appreciate their unique charm and vivacious humanity.

We present here two articles on the Yemenite Jews, aimed at giving a perspective on the “problem” and on the living human beings was not who are at the center of it. S. D. Gottein, professor in the School of Oriental Studies of the Hebrew University, describes the ancient culture which the Yemenites left behind them; CONSTANTINE POULOS discusses the difficulties involved in their reception and re-education in Israel.

Dr. Goitein, born in Bavaria in 1900 and educated at the universities of Frankfort and Berlin, emigrated to Palestine in 1923. He has published numerous essays and books on Moslem civilization and on problems of Jewish education; an article on “Cross-Currents in Arab National Feeling” appeared in COMMENTARY February 1949. Mr. Poulos has written widely for numerous magazines on subjects related to the Balkan countries, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East; the present article was written after a stay in Israel. Mr. Poulos was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1916.

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The Jewish communities of Yemen have ceased to exist. It is not without emotion that I make this statement, for there were so many of them, they were of such long history, and so much had to be left behind.

Recent research conducted by the School of Oriental Studies of the Hebrew University has shown that Jews were scattered throughout the mountains of Yemen in approximately eight hundred localities, many of them purely Jewish, a fact hitherto unknown both to Jewish demography and to the educated Yemenite himself. Urban quarters and villages, many with fields, plantations, and hotly contested water rights; with public and semi-public buildings, largely very primitive, of course, but nevertheless serving their purposes: worship, study, the education of boys, the reception of needy travelers; with age-old cemeteries and saints’ tombs—all had to be abandoned. Almost all movable property was lost as well. It was either sold for next to nothing, or buried in cemeteries or caves, whenever it was not taken away from its owners by force. New genizahs (“hiding places”) have sprung up all over Yemen, containing Torah scrolls, manuscripts, and printed books, as well as some of the precious old silver work which its owners would not sell but dared not take with them, as such possessions might have meant danger of life in the remote and unpacified regions which many of them had to cross on their way to Aden. The well-to-do distributed money in the form of charitable loans to less prosperous members of the community, so as to enable them to meet the exorbitant passage rates imposed on the emigrants. (I was told by some young men that they had made the journey to the coast disguised as Moslems in order to pay only the normal rates.) In their apocalyptic state of mind, the Yemenites saw in this sudden and complete impoverishment a sign of the Hour. One man in whose hands I saw scores of written acknowledgments of such charitable loans concluded his report with the earnest words: “Praise be to God, who makes the rich like the poor.”

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The Yemenite Jews represent a type that has largely disappeared from the modern world. Modern man is homo oeconomicus, striving for a prosperous life for himself and the greatest possible number of others; the Yemenite belongs to the older species of homo relìgiosus, whose main concern is the salvation of his soul and the souls of those for whom he feels responsible. In this respect the Yemenite Jew has close affinities not only with his Moslem environment, but with so-called primitive men all over the world, with believing Christians, and, of course, with that “Polish Jew” whose existence seems to continue only in legend and literature. Beneath certain merely superficial peculiarities, two-thirds of the Yemenite’s characteristics are those that up to the beginning of the present century were common to the traditional Jews of Southwest Germany, Hungary, and the whole of Eastern Europe. Other elements of his character are shared by most Jews living in Moslem, and particularly in Arab, countries. The Arabic spoken by the Yemenite Jew is as different from that of the Jews of Baghdad, Aleppo, or Casablanca as French is from Spanish, but the common heritage of medieval Middle Eastern civilization, with its particular brand of Judaism, compels us to think of the Yemenites as a subgroup of Oriental Jewry.

It is misleading, however, to speak of the Yemenites as Arabian Jews. Arabia means to us the dry, barren desert, with its tents and nomads and the camel as the sustainer of human life. Yemen, though it is found in the southwestern corner of the map of Arabia, is largely an alpine country, with altitudes of four to six thousand feet above sea level, watered, like India, by the rich rains of the monsoon. It is a land of intensive agriculture. One sometimes finds four hundred terraces, one above another, on the slope of some gigantic mountain. (An idea of the landscape may be obtained from the National Geographic Magazine, November 1947, p. 658.) Architecture, too, is adapted to the terrain: houses extend upward instead of spreading over precious soil, and buildings of six or seven stories are quite common. Even a Jew of limited means is likely to have occupied more rooms in Yemen than well-todo people do today in Tel Aviv.

Yemen is similar to India in having a sort of caste system, though by no means as rigid as that of India. The Jews constituted the artisan class. As late as 1937, an Arab leader, after visiting Yemen, said, “All arts and crafts are in the hands of the Jews.” At that time the statement was an exaggeration, but it was almost true three generations ago, when Yaakov Saphir visited Yemen and wrote that wonderful book Eben Saphir, which through an incredible oversight of the Jewish publishing houses has not yet been translated into any European language. It is probable that in the centuries immediately preceding and following the rise of Islam, when the high civilization of old pagan Yemen collapsed and the country was overrun by Bedouins who regarded manual work as degrading, the Jews became restricted more and more to arts and crafts, and to a certain extent also to small shopkeeping.

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But the Jews were never completely excluded from agriculture. In this respect also, research being conducted at present among the immigrants has completely changed the state of our knowledge. A very great percentage of Yemenite Jews possessed land; the majority lived in separate villages, often older than the adjoining Moslem villages, and could boast of centuries-old rights in wells and irrigation channels. Although emigrating Jews were required to turn in their property deeds, many succeeded in taking them along, providing us with a most interesting source of information. As in old Sabaean times, every field has its proper name; for an intensely agricultural people each piece of land has its individuality. Many Jews leased their land to others on a yearly basis; some cultivated it themselves, or with Moslem farm hands. Many divided their time between field and workshop; only a few made agriculture their main occupation. But even Jews from small urban centers are deeply versed in agricultural matters, partly because many of them used to spend much time in the country as wandering artisans or peddlers, but mainly because the artisan was completely dependent on the well-being of his agricultural clientele. Often the Jewish craftsman was paid, not in cash, but with a specific part of the yearly harvest; thus the Jew observed the progress of the crop with as much anxiety as the Moslem farmer. And the Jews had no difficulty in adapting themselves to agriculture whenever circumstances required; an official of the American Joint Distribution Committee told me that many earned the cost of the journey down to Aden by working in the fields.

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The Jews of Yemen practiced almost every handicraft conceivable in an undeveloped society. In the towns the most widespread occupation was that of silversmith. No great amount of clothing is needed in that comparatively warm country, but the wearing of daggers with beautifully decorated sheaths and hilts, or of belts woven of cords of silver or other material, is for Moslem men absolutely de rigueur. The women, needless to say, are also great purchasers of ornaments, which in a country like Yemen serves as a form of savings. The Jews were also the tailors, a craft almost entirely restricted to that of embroiderer, for clothes themselves are of a very simple cut: the main work consists of embellishing the women’s trousers with variegated and elaborate embroidery. (In Yemen, only women wear trousers; it is said of an effeminate man: “He wears trousers.”) Other Jewish crafts were the preparation of furs from the skins of goats and other animals, and weaving. Many Jews were masons; the beautiful traceried window-heads of hard plaster seen on many city dwellings in Yemen were mostly their work. Their carpentry, however, was poor.

In the villages, the most characteristically Jewish craft was that of blacksmith; the Jews made and repaired all the tools needed by the Moslem farmer. Another occupation was the manufacture and repair of leather bags used in the Yemenite method of irrigation. Many Jews were engaged in making earthenware; whole villages, located on favorable soil, specialized in this craft, the women being the producers and the men the distributors—a division of labor often found in primitive society.

Although the proverb has it that “A man with two trades is an impostor,” most Yemenite Jews, especially the villagers, practiced various crafts. A blacksmith, for instance, would be prepared to act as a carpenter or to repair broken earthenware. I once asked a Yemenite how many trades he had mastered; without hesitation the man listed twenty-seven of them, including the art of writing amulets for sick cows—an important skill in a cattle-raising country without veterinarians.

Although the Jewish monopoly in arts and crafts was greatly reduced during the past two generations, the Jewish exodus from Yemen must nevertheless have been a serious economic blow to the country. An American expert is reported to have said that such a great loss of skilled labor might seriously hamper plans for the development of the country. Many immigrants told me they had been forced to teach their crafts to Moslems before departing. In some places, craftsmen were even put in irons by the local rulers to make certain that the arrangement was carried out. But, as one of the men concerned said to me, “How can one teach a trade in a few months, when the proverb says, ‘An artisan is he who has inherited his art from his fathers, not he who has learnt it in one year?

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The key position held by the Yemenite Jews in the country’s economy was of great effect in preserving their moral and religious solidarity. “The artisan is a king,” goes the saying. No one lived on wages or on public funds. Even tax collectors and rabbis invariably had some additional trade, usually manual; in this respect, as in many others, Jewish life in Yemen bears a close resemblance to that of our forefathers in the Palestine of Talmudic times.

The preservation of traditional Jewish life was fostered also by the high barriers erected between the Jews and the rest of the population by the Yemenite caste system, and to an even greater degree by the Moslem religious law. Almost everywhere Jews lived in separate quarters and villages; only as Jews emigrated or died out did non-Jews take their places, giving some localities the appearance of mixed villages. The Jew was distinguished by his clothing: he wore no turban, no belt, no dagger—except in some remote districts—and his shirt was of a different cut and color. He was also marked by his side-curls, which, according to one Yemenite authority, were not genuinely Jewish, but were imposed on the Jews by a fanatical ruler in the year 1666. Moslem law guaranteed the life and property of non-Moslem subjects, but required of them self-abasement before the ruling religion. The non-Moslem had to pay a degrading poll tax; his house had to be lower than any nearby Moslem building; he was not permitted to ride, lest he have opportunity to look down upon a Moslem; his testimony against a Moslem in court was almost never exacted; and he was exposed to all sorts of other disabilities and insults. The Jew in particular, according to the accepted interpretation of a well-known passage of the Koran, was destined by Allah to remain destitute “until the Day of Resurrection.” Therefore even wealthy Jews used to appear in public as poor people, a habit not wholly given up even in Palestine. Finally, non-Moslems occupied in the Moslem state the place of serfs who could always be forced to do hard and even degrading work for the government or for the local potentate, with little or no payment. The Jewish communities of Yemen continually fought against these impositions, sometimes with success.

It is true that the social segregation of the Jews in Yemen was not so complete as might appear from the above. I have often heard from the immigrants sincere praise for the Moslems’ devotion to pure monotheism; and I was astonished to learn that sites for synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, even buildings, were sometimes donated by pious Moslems, particularly in the smaller villages. In such places the majority of the population was illiterate, while virtually every adult Jew was able to read the word of God; on Saturdays the Jews spent almost the entire day in the synagogue in prayer and study, so that the Jewish community was surrounded by an aura of holiness which did not fail to impress its neighbors. I recently heard of a Moslem clairvoyante who reported that she had seen the Jews in Paradise, sitting and studying the sacred books; she was terribly beaten, since the proper place for unbelievers is of course Hell, not Paradise; but she insisted that she had seen rightly, and no doubt her vision expressed the feelings of many. During weddings and other festive occasions, the Moslems might come in and listen to the sweet Hebrew melodies. Jews might also visit and congratulate their neighbors on their high festivals. But, notwithstanding these occasional manifestations of friendship, it is still true that the social life of the Jews was largely confined to their own people.

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This Jewish community of Yemen was especially interesting in the fact that it exhibited an intense communal life without any clear form of social organization. There was no “congregation” in the Western sense: life centered about the synagogue, but it was not the congregation which built the synagogue; rather, the synagogue created the congregation. Religion did not serve the community, but communal life existed only insofar as religion required it. You need a minyan of ten for joint prayer, and a number of persons versed in the Law for joint study; as you are under obligation to pray three times a day and to study every day, you need a synagogue. Further, the ritual bath is of no less religious urgency than the synagogue, and details concerning it will invariably appear in any description of a Yemenite locality. A father may teach his son all that the Law requires of him, including swimming; in some cases this was done, but since it was not generally practicable, most places had a midrosh (school) for boys. In many villages, this midrosh served as a hospice for needy travelers, fulfilling another great mitzvah. (In larger towns, however, the midrosh for “guests” was in a separate room or building.) A Yemenite wedding is a very great affair, and some villages found it practicable to have a special building for such festive events (one is reminded of the old Judentanzhaus—the Jews’ dance hall—in Rothenburg, Bavaria). High in the north of Yemen, where there were some particularly strict communities, there were communal Passover kitchens, closed down for the rest of the year. In addition, cemeteries had of course to be provided everywhere.

All these needs were met on a purely voluntary basis. A man or family would erect a synagogue, with or without the other buildings needed for religious purposes. They would either retain it as their private property, in which case they would remain “leaders,” or declare it godash—the Yemenite pronunciation of kodesh: “holy,” meaning “public”—in which case leadership would rotate according to circumstances. The most popular form of synagogue was an oblong building in which the whole of one of the longer walls, facing north toward Jerusalem, was occupied by the Holy Ark, so that the long rows of praying men would all face the Presence, a very impressive sight. It was furnished with mats, rugs, and cushions; often also with long, low desks for the boob. The Yemenites never had a reader’s platform of either the Sephardic or the Ashkenazic (almenov) type, but the reader stood at the teba of Talmudic times, a small movable desk of simple construction. Where circumstances required it, a palm or willow tree would be planted near the synagogue to provide some of the materials necessary for the building of booths for Succoth. Sometimes a piece of land with fruit trees or a garden was donated together with the synagogue, for the maintenance of the place—no very expensive matter.

In the Yemenite community there were no religious officials to be paid. There was no Reader, or chazan, for everyone was expected to be able to carry out that function. In some synagogues the various parts of the service were auctioned off, as well as the portions of the Torah reading. An educated Yemenite knows more or less the whole Pentateuch by heart, together with the musical notes for each word. A rabbi, called mori—“my lord,” the same meaning as the word “rabbi” itself—is one who has the reputation of being learned, not a paid official. If he has judicial powers, particularly in matters of civil law, he is called beth din, “court of justice”; thus when one hears of some locality that had four “courts of justice,” it is to be understood that there were four persons entitled to give religiously valid decisions. The mori,was not chosen or nominated; he obtained his certificate from another mori,and all were free to make use of his services or not. Conversely, a mori,might declare some day that for personal reasons or religious scruples, he was no longer prepared to act in an official capacity. In general, to “refuse honor” was in Yemen almost as much a matter of principle and etiquette as in China. In accordance with a Talmudic prescription, no man would rise to act as Reader unless repeatedly asked to do so. I was recently astonished at a Yemenite service to hear a “leader” shouting almost angrily at a man sitting in the corner of the synagogue, and urging him to get up and read a portion of the service; the man consented to do so only very slowly, but I learned afterwards that he had bought that mitzvah previously for good money. Only in the capital, and one or two of the larger towns, would the rabbi get some sort of remuneration, but this too was done irregularly and with no fixed procedure.

Ritual slaughtering, which in so many parts of the Jewish world has been the backbone of the community’s economy, did not serve this purpose in Yemen, with the partial exception of the capital and some larger towns. This was because a considerable part of the community knew the prescriptions of ritual slaughtering as a matter of course, and no specialized group of slaughterers was needed. It is quite common to find a boy of twelve who knows by heart one of the Yemenite manuals of slaughtering or a relevant section of Maimonides’ Code of Jewish Law; at the time when an Ashkenazi boy becomes Bar Mitzvah (an institution unknown in Yemen), a Yemenite boy may already be a certified shochet. Even a woman could act as shochet; I know of one who was so learned in this art that she issued certificates to other, male shochets. This may seem odd to us, but it is in harmony with Jewish law.

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The structure of Jewish life in Yemen was thus rather amorphous, even anarchic. Even small localities often had two or three synagogues, because of some religious, social, or personal dissensions. A Yemenite boy not long ago described his village to me in these terms: “Twenty adults, two synagogues. Why two synagogues? For quarreling: when they quarrel, each minyan prays separately; when they are at peace, they pray one week in one synagogue and one week in the other.” A great source of dissension was the rationalistic movement known as dor de’o, “Age of Reason,” which slowly ripened during the last third of the 19th century and came into full force in the second decade of the present one. As this anti-Cabalist movement demanded changes in the prayer book—although they were slight changes, comparable to the variations between the Hasidim and Mitnagdim of Eastern Europelocal schisms would occur as soon as a sufficient number of persons in a synagogue had been converted to the new persuasion.

The community was not, however, so powerless against its members as might appear at first sight. Strict religious discipline, not difficult to enforce in a country governed by rigorous religious law, gave to public opinion very great power over the individual. A person had only to be temporarily excluded from the religious service to give in very soon and make amends. In addition, the small Jewish communities often enjoyed the benefit of genuine leadership. The leader was either the “leader” of the synagogue—that is, the man responsible for its maintenance, who distributed the various “honors” and had the right of the “beginning” (i.e., of starting with a high voice the portion of the service said aloud by the whole congregation)—or the mori, or the government appointed tax collector, or, as was very often the case, all three combined. As is often true in anarchic societies, the Yemenites were prepared to obey when they found a man who was able to command. When I wanted to interrogate the headman of a village in one of the immigration camps, I always tried to speak to him in front of the men of the same village. I often had to marvel at the degree of respect and confidence the man commanded among his people—and that in spite of the changed circumstances. I was reminded, at times, of the description of Job in his happy days: “Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at my counsel; after my word they spoke not again, and they waited for me as for the rain. . . . I chose out their way, and sat chief, and dwelt as king in the army” (29:21-25).

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Life as it was led in the Jewish communities of Yemen is irretrievably ended. One cannot start again in the ultra-modern society of Israel where one left off in the wholly medieval state of Yemen. The Yemenite Jews know this very well, and are fully aware of the difficulties awaiting them here, in the economic, social, and spiritual spheres. Still, it is to be hoped that some of the special qualities they brought with them from Yemen—industriousness, dexterity, versatility, frugality, religiosity—will help them to find their way in that country of Israel for which they and their fathers had so intensely longed.

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