In the Kingdom of Sheba

Abstract A vibrant Jewish community lived in Yemen until the mid-twentieth century, when almost its entirety emigrated from Yemen and settled in Israel. This chapter emphasizes that throughout their hundred years in Yemen, the Jews developed a culture that synthesized ancient Jewish values with new concepts arriving from the Jewish world abroad, together with elements of Muslim culture. In this chapter, the discussion points to issues such as the pre-Islamic period and Jewish influence on the South Arabian Ḥimyarī kingdom (115–525), demography, economic life, legal status and life as a minority, intellectual life, messianism and messianic movements, enlightenment ideas and the dispute over Kabbalah, modern developments since the Ottoman occupation of 1872, background for the beginning of a large-scale Jewish emigration from Yemen to localities in the Red Sea basin and to Palestine, and the culmination of this trend between 1949 and 1950 with the great immigration to Israel.