For Yemen’s Few Remaining Jews, Time Has Run Out

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Though their community has 2,500 years of history in Yemen, less than 90 Jews remain, forming a beleaguered group that must live behind high walls and razor wire

Under the Shia imams who ruled Yemen for most of the past millennium, Jews were classified as dhimmi — non-Muslim citizens who had the right to reside and practice their faith in exchange for paying a tax. But there were pogroms, and Jews were set apart by law. In 1792, senior Muslim clerics ordered synagogues destroyed. By religious decree, Jews were forbidden to wear new or good clothes, were not allowed to bear arms or ride mules, and were forbidden from wearing jewelry or a jambiya, the traditional curved daggers worn by Yemeni men.

During the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel, anti-Jewish sentiment rose in Yemen and across the Middle East. Rioters killed some 80 Jews in the port city of Aden and plundered most of the Jewish shops in the city. Consequently, 49,000 Yemeni Jews, about two-thirds of the community, were airlifted to Israel between 1948 and 1951 in a secret British and American mission dubbed Operation Magic Carpet.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/09/30/for-yemens-few-remaining-jews-time-has-run-out/#ixzz2gQeNEKUc