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Yemenite Jews

By David J. Glenn

The impact of the waves of immigration to the United States by Eastern European Jews, particularly in New York, is obvious in everything from kosher dills to conversational Yiddishisms.

What may not be quite as obvious is the effect of similar immigration waves of Jews from Yemen, who had inhabited the southern Arabian country since the time of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and who were experts in silver-working, pottery, basketry, and other crafts.

Tens of thousands of Yemenite Jews emigrated to Israel and America starting in the 1880s; from 1949 to 1950, nearly 47,0000 Jews, almost the entire remaining Jewish population in Yemen, were airlifted to Israel in a mass immigration that came to be known as