HELP
I CAN'T
STOP
One on the left is a much younger Yahya getting married to his wife, Miriam(who represents the Yemenite Jews). They are wearing traditional Yemenite Jewish wedding clothing - I am not sure how far back this traditional costume dates - but it is very old and still worn in traditional Yemenite Jewish weddings to date. I am putting the period of their marriage around the reign of the Himyarite leader, Dhu Nuwas - even though Jews existed in Yemen before that. He was the first openly Jewish Himyarite ruler, and tried to actively convert the population of Yemen to Judaism by massacring Christians. He eventually committed suicide by riding his horse into the ocean. The Abyssinians took over afterwards - but the population of Yemen is reported to have been majority Jewish until the advent of Islam. However, he gradually became a lot more chill about it. Also, not sure how long Yahya kept those earlocks for....
At the top is Miriam being craay. Dhu Nuwas went on a spree of massacreing Christians because "That's how the Christians were treating the Jews." The Jewish wife would also grow out of her crazy phase - but Yemenite Jews are still pretty conservative.
On the bottom is a doodle of Somalia and Ethiopia. Yahya had
sexual relations with both of them - his relationship with Ethiopia definitely had its ups and downs, but he did respect her. Somalia, he sustains relations with today - I touched on it earlier how there is a lot of Yemeni-Somali intermixing to date.
The left is Miriam arriving at Israel. In 1949 Operation Magic Carpet was undertaken - to airlift Yemen's entire Jewish population to Israel following a string of violence taken out against the Jewish community. Up until then, Yemenite Jews played a very important role in the economy and the functioning of society in Yemen. However, upon arriving Yemenite Jews were place into the role of second class citizens. Before Operation Magic Carpet, a smaller Yemenite Jewish migration was important to Zionism in the conquest of labor. They were viewed as "Jewish workers who were to be paid Arab wages." Yemeni women were viewed as "natural laborers" and were on instances referred to as beasts. The Yemenite worker was - often both physically and sexually - exploited by their employers. Following Operation Magic Carpet some 1500- 5000 Yemeni children went missing - and were told to have died. The Israeli government could not account for this influx of Jews from Yemen - many Yemeni families recall their children being ripped from their hands and it is currently still a mystery what had happened to many of these children.
Yemenite Jews were roughly the Ethiopian Jews of the earlier stages of Zionism. :/
But this picture is roughly based off of that scene from the Prince of Egypt w/ Ofra Haza's (who was a Yemeni Jew) voice.
Top is a little doodle Yahya and Miriam yelling at each other. Under 300 Jews still live in Yemen but many Yemeni Jewish women do tend to wear niqab and tend to blend in very well with the rest of the Yemeni population. There is limited mobility between Yemen and Israel - b/c of the political situation in Palestine - and Yemeni Jews are no longer allowed to go to Israel and they don't return to Yemen. But people have gotten around the law. And idk Yahya's wife still probably needs to visit her kids. Here is an interesting interview by a Rabbi in Yemen if anyone is interested:
http://www.vosizneias.com/59381/2010/07/04/sanaa-yemen-dwindling-in-number-but-defiant-yemeni-jews-cling-to-their-roots/And bottom is Miriam telling Setareh what's up. She speaks from experience, after 1500-something years married to Yahya and then being used and abused by a man (Israel) that she thought would be different from her first husband. Miriam lives with Israel now, and whereas she came expecting a marriage, has just really just been a kind of interest. After that period of heavy labor she would probably be a singer now. Yemenite Jewish music was highly influential in the creation of an "Israeli" music. The Yemenite Jews drew off of a long history of poetry and of musical traditions. Many Yemenite Jews fed this music to an Orientalist Israeli audience who understood Yemenite Jewish culture as an "anicent, traditional and preserved" Jewish culture. Or - Yemenite Jewish culture was viewed in a historical vacuum - which was a very Orientalist line of thought and highly problematic when it came to the integration of Yemenite Jews into the Israeli social system.
This is a song by Ofra Haza that I really like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkr1V9RZpi8 It is a traditional Yemeni poem by the 17th century Jewish poet: Rabbi Shalom Shabazi/ Salam Elshebzi who I have read is an important cultural literary figure to Yemeni culture. (Meaning both Jewish and Muslim)
