For Jews, Yemen no longer a place to call home
SANA, Yemen - The last remaining Jews in Yemen are vanishing, driven out by politics, war, and hatred. Once numbering 60,000, one of the oldest Jewish populations in the Arab world now has fewer than 350 members.
In recent months, persecution by Islamist extremists has intensified, accelerating Jews’ flight from Yemen. Many are heading to the United States.
With the help of the US government and US-based Jewish organizations, 57 Yemeni Jews have been resettled in New York since July. At least 38 are expected to arrive soon and many more are eligible, American officials said. Others are seeking refuge in Israel and Europe.
In the capital, Sana, 65 Jews who fled their northern villages are living in a government compound under heavy security. Recently, police arrested two men suspected of planning to assassinate the community’s rabbi, according to Yemeni news reports.
The exodus of Yemen’s Jews - who survived the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and for centuries coexisted, if tenuously, with Muslims - is a sign of this nation’s social fragmentation.
Yemen’s weak central government is struggling with a civil war in the north, a secessionist movement in the south, and a growing Al Qaeda presence. Large swaths of the nation, the Middle East’s poorest, are controlled by tribes, which resent any interference from the government.
Rabbi Yahya Yehuda, like so many in his shrinking congregation, is faced with a dilemma as he waits for a visa to the United States or Israel. His mind, filled with memories of killings, beatings, and harassment, tells him to flee his homeland. But his heart tells him otherwise.
“We have lived here for thousands of years,’’ he said. “I want to go. And yet I want to stay.’’
The first Jews who came to Yemen were merchants, sent by King Solomon, it is believed, to prospect for silver and gold. They survived persecution for nearly a millennium under the rule of Zaydi imams.
With the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Arabs rioted in the port city of Aden, killing scores of Jews and destroying their homes and shops. Over the next two years, about 50,000 Jews were airlifted to Israel in what was dubbed Operation Magic Carpet.
More trickled out of Yemen until 1962, when the Zaydi imamate was overthrown in a coup and civil war broke out. After the first Persian Gulf War, with the help of the United States, about 1,200 Jews departed, mostly for Israel.
The few hundred who stayed behind were concentrated in two areas - in al-Salem, near the northern provincial capital of Saada, and in Raydah, about 45 miles north of Sana. There, they lived quietly under the radar of zealots, practicing Orthodox Jewish traditions. They attended synagogue, studied the Torah in religious schools, and spoke Hebrew.
In 2004, a Shi’ite rebellion broke out in Saada. The rebels, known as Hawthis, were an offshoot of the Zaydis. That December, they targeted al-Salem. They threw rocks at Jewish homes and damaged cars.
For the next three years, Jews faced harassment. They never traveled alone. Many stopped going to work, leaving their homes only for food and emergencies.
In January 2007, the rebels sent the community a written threat: “You should leave the area, or we will kidnap you and slaughter you,’’ Rabbi Mousa said. So, many Jews fled to the capital. They later heard that their homes were destroyed, as were their Torahs.
