A Common Ground Beyond Religion: Yemen, an Ancient Jewish Homeland - Heritage (Issue Three)

Arabia Felix Magazine
A Common Ground Beyond Religion: Yemen, an Ancient Jewish Homeland
By Assiah Sh.
January 1, 2006, 01:04

It is often said that in Yemen one finds the most Muslim of Muslims. Likewise, it is often said that Yemeni Jews are the most Jewish Jews of all. In a country of contrasts, here are two pre-eminent examples. Both are uncompromising in their religious faith. Both live by ancient traditions, largely unaltered over the centuries. Both love their homeland of Yemen and both derive moral and physical strength from this ancient land.

Jews and Arabs are reputed to be odds today in the world. Yet in Yemen, this has never been the case. Why not? A story: a hundred years or so ago when the villagers of Bayt Bose were engaged in one of their periodical battles with a neighboring village, leading citizens wondered out loud why the Jews never sent their sons off to be fighters. Why did they not contribute to the safeguarding of the water, the fields, the houses, and all the other resources—honor, perhaps, foremost among these—which the sons of Bayt Bose were defending? And why did the Jews not pay money in the aftermath of these battles? There were war debts; there was blood money to be doled out. Said the Jews: declare that we are equal citizens and we will fight. Thus the famous edict issued by the Sheikh of Bayt Bose which is still remembered to this day by every Yemeni: “al Yahowdi bosi, wa al bosi Yahowdi.” These words (a Jew is a Bosian and a Bosian is a Jew) have a funny ring today because it is a rare Muslim villager in Yemen who considers himself Jewish. But they tell a profound truth about the Muslims and the Jews in Yemen. These are two cultures and two religions that have been deeply enmeshed for more than a thousand years in Yemen. After all this time, they’ve figured out how to respect one another and to get along. It is a little known fact outside of Isreal and Yemen but the two races, because of their common heritage, are deeply sympathetic to one another. It is not too much to say they are brother races, separated now only by an accident of history.

Between 1948 and 1950, under Operation Magic Carpet some 56,000 Yemeni Jews flew to Israel at the invitation of the Yemeni Imam. But those Jews have kept the culture of Yemen alive in Israel. Nowadays when an Arab travels to Israel, he might well find himself in a cab driven by a Yemeni Jew. That Yemeni will not have been in Sana’a for 50 years, if ever but his Arabic will be the Arabic of Sana’a—really of Sana’a 60 years ago—filled with archaisms and charming expressions that now belong only to people’s grandparents. How is Uncle So and So? he will ask. How is the qat? His Arabic will be frozen in time, and his vision of the country will be, likewise, a vision of something now lost to history. The Yemeni Jew lives in songs and poetry. Some of the singers are incredibly popular—both in Yemen and in Israel.

From time to time, the strain of Jewishness that runs through parts of Yemen produces strange cultural offspring. For instance, the lyrics of popular songs occasionally manage to intertwine Yemeni and Jewish traditions into an odd but beautiful hybrid. One singer, a Jewish woman sings, in Arabic of going to a well to pray. But she leaves the religion in question out of the lyrics. Interpret these words however you want: : Hazali , ya Hazali. Gad Nazalt al biera a-suli. I’ve just been down to the well, she says, Joy, joy. To pray.

Meanwhile, in Yemen itself, the memory of the Jews is, in its turn, a powerful thing. The plasterers who decorated mosques and made the multihued Palladian windows (called gamarias) that illuminate many Sana’ani mafraj were Jews. They left their mark in Stars of David, built into the plaster molding of windows, and in circular, oblique Stars of David inscribed into the surface even of a mosque dome. No one, it seems, knew what they were up to. Many still don’t have a clue. But the Yemeni Jews remember these things as if they happened yesterday. To them, it all seems so close, and so dear.

Nowadays, back in Yemen, if you drive through the village of Raidah, where many Yemeni Jews still live, it’s likely that you’ll pass a Jewish house. The house will be decorated as most Yemeni houses are, with the arching fanlights that are filled with panes of colored glass. Some of these fanlights will be composed of puzzles of triangles and hexagrams. Some of these geometric puzzles will have, at its center, a Star of David. In the center of this star, in a union that symbolizes the ancient and friendly ties between the Jews and the Yemenis, will be written the Arabic letters that spell out the name of God.