Contradictory Reports As to Status of Yemenite Jews Being Probed by Alliance Israelite

Contradictory reports as to the conditions of the Jews of Yemen are being investigated by the Alliance Israelite Universelle. A committee of Yemenite Jews who had made their way to Palestine came to Paris recently to seek aid for their friends in Yemen. They stated that the ruler of Yemen, Iman Yahia, was a despot, that the Jews were practically slaves, that Jews are forbidden to emigrate, and that Jewish orphans are forced to adopt the religion of Islam. Reports of recent Jewish and non-Jewish travellers who passed through Yemen do not support this picture, as they declare the Jews of Yemen to be unpersecuted, and not badly off.

The Alliance sent an investigator to Yemen in 1910 to study the Jewish tribes, who are said to be descendants of tribes of Biblical times. M. Y. Semach, the investigator, recommended the establishment of a school in Sanaa, the capital. “But,” says the Alliance, “the unfavorable attitude of the Iman Yahia, despotic ruler of that country, prevented us from executing that project.”

MANY EMIGRATE

During recent years several thousand of Jews have found their way from that far, difficult country to Palestine. A number of them were recently stranded in Aden, in the most abject misery. The Alliance sent a hundred pounds to their relief.

Joseph Kessel, a noted Parisian journalist, is quoted for having, on a recent trip through that country, investigated that charge that the Jews were virtually slaves.

“The Jews are restricted in the possession of property, and are not permitted to hold government office or to be in the army. But they suffered more stringent restrictions under the czars of Russia,” says Joseph Kessel. “Though the native mountain warriors, the Arabs, consider the Jews as an inferior people, they nevertheless do not hold them as slaves.”

A non-Jew who travelled in Yemen this year reported to the society that “Under the Turkish regime no Jew had a right to ride a horse, but might only ride a donkey, and the Jew had to descend from his mount when he passed an Arab. But these humiliating laws have disappeared. The Jews live freely and are on excellent terms with the Arabs. The Arabs look down on them, but that is the case in all Arabia.

“It is said their children were taken from their arms and converted. A rabbi assured me that he had never heard of such a case.

“The Jewish quarter of Sanaa is remarkably clean. The Jewish women take better care of their children than do the Arab women. The Jews take more care with their food, and eat better than do the Arabs.”