The mass emigration of Jews from Iraq in the years 1950 and 1951 brought to an end the existence of a community which had been in the region for millennia. From the very birth of Judaism in what was then Mesopotamia, Jews have been present in or very strongly linked to the area. Primary sources […]
Sir Albert Abdallah David Sassoon, Bart. was an Anglo-Indian merchant; head of the house of David Sassoon & Co., born in Baghdad 1817; died in Brighton, England in 1896. The Sassoons were known as “the Rothschilds of the East.”
During the course of Operation Magic Carpet (also known as Operation On Wings of Eagles), 49,000 Jews were airlifted to the new State of Israel. The vast majority of these Jews were from Yemen.
In 1922, the government of Yemen reintroduced the “orphans decree,” which stated that an orphan under 12 years of age would be taken from the Jewish community and turned over to a Muslim foster family.
About 10% of Yemen’s Jews left Yemen and immigrated to Palestine in the first wave of immigration, which lasted from 1881 to 1914.
Geniza Document, trans. S. D. Goitein, in Mosseri Collection, L-12, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton, 1973), pp. 213–15. Excerpted from Norman Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, 247-248. (August 1198) to Aden. Immediately after his arrival he was brought before the self-styled caliph, who said to him: “Become a Muslim, or you will cause the death of your brethren.” […]
Primary Sources Forced Conversion of the Jews of Aden A Twentieth-Century Yemenite Version of the Pact of Umar, 1905. Sir John Hope and the Yemenites, Excerpt from The Statistical Bases of Sir John Hope’s Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development in Palestine, Jewish Agency, 1931. Secondary Sources The Exodus from Yemen Images San’a Pentateuch, […]
Jews settled in the Middle East in antiquity and came under Muslim rule in the 7th century. In the medieval period, Jews were protected and tolerated by their governments, but also treated as inferior to the local Muslims. In the twentieth century, the Jews were expelled from almost every Islamic country and centuries-old communities were […]
Jews and Judaism stood at the cradle of Islam. This fateful conjunction had a lasting impact on the character of the new religion and greatly affected the destinies of the Jews who were to live under its shadow. The Prophet Muhammad created a religion — Islam; a unique book — the Qur’ān; and a state […]
Keren Hayesod, Jerusalem. No date, circa 1950s. A photographic essay of the immigration of Yemeni Jews into Israel. Click here for more on Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands To all those who participated in the redemption of the Jews of Yemen–to the people and the Government of the State of Israel to the organisers and […]