Countries and Their Cultures: Jews of Yemen

Jews have lived in Yemen, a large and rugged country in the southwest part of the Arabian Peninsula, for at least 1,500 years. They identify themselves and are identified by others, as part of the widespread Jewish people. They maintained their specifically Jewish culture, based on the books, practices, beliefs, worship, and lore of Judaism. This is what distinguished them as a separate people from their Muslim Arab neighbors for so many centuries. In Yemen, Jews spoke Arabic, but Jewish men knew how to read and write Hebrew and used it primarily as a language for religious worship and study. Today, in Israel, they speak only Hebrew. Today the Yemenite Jews in Israel have three basic identities: as Jews, as Israelis, and as Jews from Yemen. Any one of the three may take precedence in a given situation, but all are important to them.