- Population
- 120,600
- Location
- Rosh HaAyin, Rehovot (Sha'arayim), Tel Aviv (Kerem HaTeimanim), Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Petah Tikva, Hadera and dozens of moshavim of the central coastal plain
Yemenite Jews are among the oldest Mizrahi communities in Israel: the first families walked and sailed from Yemen in 1881-82, decades before the Zionist pioneers, and settled in Jerusalem's Silwan and in the orange-growing colonies around Rehovot and Petah Tikva. The great majority, about 49,000 people, were flown in by Operation Magic Carpet in 1949-50, and their descendants now number some 435,000. Rosh HaAyin, built on a transit camp of Magic Carpet immigrants, and the Sha'arayim quarter of Rehovot remain Yemenite strongholds. The community kept a distinctive Hebrew pronunciation and liturgy, the poetry of the 17th-century rabbi Shalom Shabazi sung at weddings and the elaborate henna ceremony, and gave Israel foods such as jachnun, malawach and zhug and singers such as Ofra Haza. The unresolved disappearance of hundreds of Yemenite babies from immigrant camps in 1948-54 remains a deep wound.