Good News From Eretz Yisrael

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On Thursday, February 19, under the cover of secrecy, a group of ten Jews from Yemen, nine of them members of the Ben-Yisrael family, made aliyah to Israel. The Jerusalem Post

The latest immigrants from the Yemenite community of Raida - a town fraught with tension between its Jewish and Muslim residents in recent months - the Ben-Yisraels, accompanied by another young man from their community, arrived in a special aliya operation, shrouded in secrecy, organized by the Jewish Agency and Yemenite Jewish Federation of America.



As they stepped into the arrivals hall, the Ben-Yisraels looked as if they had walked through a time warp. "Thank God, I'm happy to be here," said family patriarch Said Ben-Yisrael, clad in a felt yarmulke and long black side curls as he stood in front of his wife and seven children.

This is but one family. On one of my trips to Eretz Yisrael, I stayed in the home of an elderly Yemenite woman who came to Israel as part of Operation Magic Carpet. She lived meagerly, but happily. She cleaned other people's homes, rented out a room occasionally (once to me), but I was in awe of her quiet knowing. She made me delicious Yemeni marak and fresh real Yemeni style pitas, with zhug. She lived on very little, so her children and grandchildren could have. They are such gentle Jews.

But what is happening with 

the remaining Yemenites? 

THE JEWS OF YEMEN, THE LAST GENERATION
Zion Ozeri, premiere Israeli photographer presents...
by Zion Ozeri
Illustrated by: Zion Ozeri
Zion Ozeri was born in 1951 to a Yemenite family that had come to Israel two years earlier in "Operation Magic Carpet." Here he returns to his roots -- both the Yemenite Jews of Israel and the remaining Jews of Yemen. These 138 photographs are of people in both countries, mostly in scenes of daily life. The introduction, in Hebrew and English, is a fascinating essay by the author on his own family's history. 
Keter Books Israel, 2005

To look at these photos is to be present in the moment they were taken -- in a felafel stand in Israel, or on laundry day in Yemen. And more than that, Ozeri has an uncanny knack for capturing personality in a photograph. To look at these photos is to feel that you know the people in the pictures. That's what great photography is all about.