Last Yemeni Jews arrive in Israel with 600-year old Torah Scroll
The end of Operation Magic Carpet.
Among the last remaining Yemeni Jews secretly were rescued and brought to Israel to escape persecution and increased danger in Yemen.
The once thriving Yemeni Jewish community of over 50,000 mostly were rescued just after Israel’s founding, in what became known as Operation Magic Carpet. Watch the film The Forgotten Refugees for the story of the over 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
This last group brought an ancient Torah Scroll, believed to be several hundred years old.
The Times of Israel reports:
The Jewish Agency on Monday brought a group of some of the last remaining Yemenite Jews to Israel in a covert operation, hailing the end of a decades-long “historic mission” to “rescue” the Jews of the country.
The 17 members of the dwindling community were flown in following a year-long secret operation involving the Jewish Agency for Israel and the US State Department.
The group comprised the final batch of approximately 200 Yemenite Jews brought to Israel by the Jewish Agency in recent years, the organization said.
Two other members of the tiny community arrived in recent days as well.
Fourteen came from the town of Raydah, while one family of five hailed from the capital, Sanaa, the Jewish Agency said in its announcement. “The group from Raydah included the community’s rabbi, who brought a Torah scroll believed to be between 500 and 600 years old,” it said….
American officials helped coordinate the complicated handover after the group was abused en route to Israel, Channel 2 reported.
Approximately 50 Jews now remain in Yemen, with 40 living in Sanaa in a compound adjacent to the American Embassy. Despite the ongoing civil war, they refuse to leave the country.
The new arrivals met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
The Yemenite Jews who came to Israel last night come from an ancient community that came to Yemen during the 1st Temple period, 2500 yrs ago
— Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) March 21, 2016
PM Netanyahu met the Yemenite Jews who immigrated last night to Israel: "Welcome to Jerusalem,to the Land of Israel" pic.twitter.com/8PEdBO4hxY
— Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) March 21, 2016
PM Netanyahu reads the 800 year old Torah that the Yemenite Jews brought to Israel along with one of their children. pic.twitter.com/KADEfb7q4F
— Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) March 21, 2016
Israel has a thriving Yemeni Jewish community. You may remember this musical group from a prior post:
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Comments
Happy they are safe.
May the Lord continue to protect those who remained in Yemen.
What is the status of the Aleppo Codex missing parts?
thanks for the question, I have no answer, but the question got
me to search on line. wiki was helpful but no answers.
Still missing. Probably in hundreds of pieces all over the world, as many people took a page for safety.
Gratifying to see a secret operation out of the state department that’s decent for once. It must have been kept secret from our own government. Also, heartwarming to see Benjamin Netanyahu, if only fleetingly and speaking a language I don’t understand, in these days of constant, suffocating, utterly depressing news clips. If something doesn’t change soon, the only civilized places remaining on the planet will be in small, isolated enclaves.
Lord bless them all for their courage and faithfulness after so long. May they be rewarded justly.
May the Lord bless them in their new lives in Israel. How sad to know that this is the end of the Jewish presence in Yemen, save those few whose safety is at great risk.
The reporter in the first clip made an utter idiot of himself. Had no idea what he was looking at. The kid in the second clip could have told him at a glance that it had not opened at the leaving of Egypt or even anywhere near that. And then the question about what it’s made of, and the rabbi’s baffled reply. Welcome to Israel, mori, where people don’t automatically know this.
Torah! Torah! Torah!