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As Aharon Zandani is laid to rest, his family speaks of the Al-Qaeda
attacks and intimidation faced by the 100 Jews who remain
By Elhanan Miller June 29, 2012
A small group of men gathered at the small cemetery of Rehovot on
Wednesday to pay their final respects to a pillar of Yemen’s dwindling Jewish
community. Aharon Zandani, 53, a mechanic from Sanaa, was murdered in the
marketplace on May 22, his body laid to rest in this sleepy Israeli city almost
one month later.
The solemn memorial ceremony, recited in the guttural Hebrew of an
ancient Jewish community, evoked the sad realization that these are likely the
last days of Yemen’s age-old Jewish community. This tough lot, which withstood
persecution from 12th century Fatimids to the 20th century autocrats, seems
finally about to succumb — to Al-Qaeda.
“Anyone with some sense will
emigrate to Israel,” says Yahya Zandani, Aharon’s 28-year-old son. “In about
five years time, there will be no Jews left in Yemen.”
Aharon liked Yemen, his son told The Times of Israel. He had tried to
relocate his family to Israel back in 1999, but could not secure government
housing for his wife and 11 children. The cultural gap was significant too,
relatives say.
“I would have moved to Israel
years ago, but I stayed in Yemen because of my father,” Yahya says. “He loved
it there.”
Unlike the 100 odd Jews still living in Yemen — who in recent years
began hiding their traditional earlocks under hats for fear of being singled
out — Aharon was trusting of his Arab environment. A popular mechanic, he would
exit the gated compound where Jews have been living under government protection
for the past four years, undaunted, with his traditional headgear. He went
shopping in the market every day.
But on May 22, a man jumped him as he was returning to his car, stabbing
him in the neck. Aharon’s son Yahya, who stood nearby, rushed him to the
hospital where he died four hours later. Yahya says the assailant was an
Al-Qaeda terrorist who drove four hours from the city of Hadhramaut in search
of Jews to kill.
Yahya attended the murderer’s police investigation, where the
investigator asked him whether he suffered from mental problems.
“He said: ‘I have no problem, my
head is like a computer.’ That’s why the investigator told me I won’t even need
a lawyer.” But before coming to Israel Yahya did appoint a lawyer, fearing his
father’s murderer may be released if no one is there to oversee the process.
Zandani is the third Jew to be murdered in Yemen over the past decade.
In December 2008 Moshe Yaish-Nahari was gunned down in the northern city of
Raidah — home to the country’s second Jewish community — by a man who
reportedly shouted at him “Jew, accept the message of Islam.” Yahya Buni, a
merchant from Saada, was shot dead in 2002 outside his shop.
“They still throw stones at Jews
and shout insults at them like ‘Jew’ or ‘Zionist’,” says Yahya Zandani, 36,
Aharon’s son-in-law, who emigrated to Israel in 1993. “We only have 20-30
relatives left in Yemen and we want them here with us, for better or worse.”
Yahya’s home in Rehovot, where the traditional shiva mourning week took
place, feels more like Yemen than like Israel. Women sit separately from men,
wearing black headscarves that resemble veils, dark embroidered dresses and
heavy silver necklaces. The men, mostly bearded and with long curly earlocks,
sit at another corner of the broad courtyard, chewing wads of Qat, the
ubiquitous and stereotypical Yemeni narcotic plant, grown locally in backyards.
Their language is a medley of Hebrew and Arabic dialect.
The Jews of Yemen trace their origins in the country to the destruction
of the first temple, in the year 586 BCE. Geographically isolated from
Ashkenazi communities in Europe and Sephardi communities in Asia and North
Africa, the small community maintained contact with the outside Jewish world
through occasional visits by emissaries and correspondence with rabbis, most
notably Moses Maimonides in the 12th century.
The first Yemeni Jews emigrated to Israel in the 1880s, but the largest
immigration wave came immediately after the declaration of the state, when some
50,000 Jews were brought to Israel in operation “Magic Carpet” during the years
1949 and 1950 by the Joint Distribution Committee.
Today, most Yemeni Jews live in Israel, with smaller numbers
incorporated into the Satmar Hassidic communities in New York and London.
Yahaya Zandani and his brother, who still lives in Yemen, have spent years
among the Satmar of New York.
The Zandanis are among the last Jews to stay in Yemen. They moved to
Sanaa four years ago from the city of Saada, 150 miles north of the capital,
after Al-Qaeda drove the Jews of that town out of their homes.
“They gave them one week’s written
notice to leave and then began shooting at their homes,” says Shlomo Zandani,
Aharon’s brother-in-law, who emigrated to Israel in 1961.
Former president Ali Abdullah Saleh provided the Jews with free housing
in an ex-pat compound in Sanaa, as well as a financial stipend.
“But what use is money when you
can’t leave your home?” chorus the family members.
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