Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 23
The first Jews to return home were not Europeans but Middle Easterners
In 1985, my pre-teen daughter and I attended a concert in Beer Sheva given by the Israeli chanteuse extraordinaire Ofra Haza [1]. Her music straddled West and East, Jewish and Arab, modern and traditional and was phenomenally popular in Israel, throughout the Middle East and even in the West. Her unique talent was snuffed out prematurely – she died at the age of 42 – but her contribution to Israeli and world music lives on.
The singer’s brief life was significant for another reason: her family had immigrated to Israel from Yemen and lived in the dilapidated Hatikvah district of Tel Aviv. The singer’s astonishing rise to recognition from humble beginnings epitomises the changing fortunes of many olim (immigrants) of Mizrachi (Middle Eastern, Central Asian or North African) origin in the Jewish state. As readers of this blog will be aware, the accusation that modern Israel is a European colonialist entity is not supported by evidence, including the demographic data: over 60% of Israel’s Jewish population today are Mizrachim who arrived in the country as a result of Arab hostility to the newly re-established Jewish state in 1948. Moreover, a minority of Mizrachi Jews had either never left their homeland, surviving massacres and expulsions perpetrated by a succession of foreign invaders over two millennia, or had returned prior to the twentieth century. The significant role of the Mizrachim in general, and Yemenite Jews in particular, in the history of the Zionist movement is woefully underappreciated.
In the monotheistic religious traditions, Aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel) stretches back to the biblical era. Abraham set out for Canaan with his family around four millennia ago. Moses and Joshua led the Israelites to the Promised Land after the Exodus from Egypt. Later and more historically verifiable aliyot included the return of Jews to Jerusalem from Babylon under the Cyrus Declaration (539 BCE) and the steady trickle of Jews re-entering Judea during Herod’s rule in the Second Temple era. In the 10th century, the leaders of the Karaite Jews, mostly living under Persian rule, urged their followers to settle in Eretz Yisrael. The Karaite olim established a community in Jerusalem, on the western slope of the Kidron Valley. All of these olim were of Asian rather than European origin.
The number of Jews migrating to the land of Israel rose significantly between the 13th and 19th centuries, mainly due to a general decline in the status of Jews across Europe and an increase in religious persecution. In the modern Zionist era, the so-called First Aliyah was prompted by Russian pogroms in 1882 following the assassination of the Czar. It was largely unsuccessful as a Zionist enterprise with more than half of the immigrants leaving in the face of poverty, disease and violence, though it helped spread awareness of Zionism throughout the Jewish world. But these European olim were not the first to arrive in the 1880s – that accolade goes Yemenite Jews, the oldest known diaspora community.
In 1882, approximately seven months before most of the Eastern European Jews reached their homeland, several hundred immigrants from Yemen, perhaps inspired by false rumours of European olim being granted free land by Baron Rothschild, established a Yemenite quarter in the village of Silwan near Jerusalem (from where they were later ethnically cleansed during the Arab Revolt of 1937). Although the Ottoman authorities quickly banned Yemenite Jews from emigrating, many continued to do so clandestinely. Additional waves of Yemenite immigrants arrived Eretz Israel in the early 1890s and 1900s and succeeded in establishing homes in various locations including the Kerem Hateimanim (Yemenite Quarter) near Jaffa in the early 1900s. One-tenth of the Jewish population of Yemen – an extraordinary proportion in comparison with other diasporas – had made aliyah by 1914 and comprised about six percent of the Jewish population of Eretz Israel [ 2]. Of these, 3,000 lived in Jerusalem, another 1,100 in agricultural settlements (moshavot), and 900 in Jaffa.
Following Israel's independence, the position of Jews in the Yemen – as in all Arab countries – worsened, and riots and massacres erupted against the small community. When the new ruler authorised Jewish emigration, virtually all the country’s remaining Jews (43,000 of 45,000) took advantage of the offer and in 1949-50 were airlifted via Aden to Israel. This was the celebrated Operation Magic Carpet (known originally in Hebrew as Operation Eagles’ Wings). About 1,500 more followed in the next few years. Still more left at the time of the Six Day War in 1967 and in 2016 most of the remnants were rescued from the civil war by the Jewish Agency.
Once in Israel, this ancient and highly devout community struggled to integrate into the reborn Jewish state. The Ashkenazi (European Jewish) political establishment seemed clueless about how to absorb them. Ideologically, political Zionism collided with the values of this traditional and socially conservative group. Modern Zionism was a revolutionary movement that found expression in antidiasporic and antireligious attitudes and policies. The intention was to a create a new society and a new Jew. Over time, a growing number of Yemenite Jews accepted the Labour Zionist doctrines while a hard core resisted them, resulting in their exclusion from mainstream Israeli society. The latter may have been a minority within a minority but they joined forces with other traditionally minded Mizrachim, to oppose the ruling secularists. The ensuing clash of cultures generated bitter resentment on both sides of the divide that reverberates – with major political consequences – in Israel to this day.
A degree of reconciliation was eventually achieved. Many within the secular Israeli majority began to pose this pointed question – why do we have to abandon the rich cultural and religious traditions of our forebears? In 1977, the establishment of the Centre for Integration of Sephardic and Oriental Jewish Culture represented an official effort by the Israeli government to acknowledge ethnic heritage as a legitimate component of contemporary Israel. Thereafter, a renaissance of Yemenite and broader Mizrachi culture occurred and attracted the attention of hitherto disinterested sectors of the Israeli populace.
Have the Yemenite Jews, and Mizrachi Israelis in general, become fully assimilated into the modern state? Yes and no. The disaffection of the Mizrachim with the ruling Labour Party in the state’s first few decades is often credited with the rise of the ostensibly pro-Mizrachi Likud in 1977 (though even today that party’s leadership remains firmly in the hands of Ashkenazim). And the Mizrachi contribution to both Zionist history and contemporary Israel remains grossly undervalued.
In a sense, however, the question is misplaced. Assimilation is no longer an overriding national objective and cultural pluralism is now an accepted characteristic of modern Israel. That should not distract attention from the lingering resentment that many Mizrachim continue to harbour despite constituting a demographic majority in the country.
A popular Ofra Haza song, Am Yisrael Chai – the people of Israel lives – resonates with Jews and Israelis across cultural, political and sectarian divisions. It unites a people that is simultaneously western and eastern, religious and secular, unified and diverse. While the whole is arguably greater than the sum of the parts, all of the strands that comprise the nation are crucial to the history, culture, strength and resilience of Israel as she enters the next phase of her rapid evolution. The old Israeli “melting pot” concept has arguably outlived its usefulness and is gradually giving way to the more inclusive “tapestry” or even bouillabaisse image [3]. Many Israelis – and foreign well-wishers – believe that the country is all the more tolerant, vibrant and fascinating for it.
- Ofra Haza, Yemenite Songs. Sun-Moon Music, 1985. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_vIydVt7wc
- Druyan N. Yemenites In Israel - In Search Of A Cultural Identity. Hebrew Annual Review 1994, 14, 43-54 https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/58798/1/HAR_v14_043.pdf
- Weill A. Israeli Arts, Culture & Literature: Fifty Years of Culture in Israel - From “Melting Pot” to “Bouillabaisse.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/fifty-years-of-culture-in-israel-from-melting-pot-to-bouillabaisse
