Muslim Society As An Alternative: Jews Converting To Islam

Muslim Society as an Alternative: Jews Converting to Islam Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman A BSTR ACT The article discusses the phenomenon of Jewish conversion to Islam in Yemen in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mainly in the tribal-rural areas where the majority of the Jews lived. This phenomenon is explained against the background of political, social, and economic developments: the intervention in Yemen of outside forces; the penetration of the world economy; and the weakening of Jewish institutions. Religious conversion is presented as a familiar and tempting phenomenon in Jewish life. Social considerations are put forward as the main reasons for Islamization, whereas the role of religious conviction is seen as insignificant. The article also deals with the symbolic meanings of the conversion ceremony and with its practical implications—in the convert’s community of origin and in his or her new community. This article is based on oral history, on personal interviews with Yemeni Jews now living in Israel, and on written sources such as letters, memoirs, itinerary books, and legal writings on issues resulting from conversion. Key words: Conversion, Islamization, Yemeni Jews, tribal

T

he phenomenon of religious conversion continues to exist and to intrigue even after the age of conversions that stabilized the religious map of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What causes a person or a group to abandon their faith, their traditions, and their community affiliations and to adopt new sets of beliefs and a new social structure? What is the role of religious convictions, and what is the effect of social considerations and pressures? Although processes of conversion differ as a result of political, social, and economic factors, Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, “Muslim Society as an Alternative: Jews Converting to Islam,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society n.s. 14, no. 1 (Fall 2007): 89–118

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specific time, and locality, they also resemble each other. In this article, I will discuss the phenomenon of conversion in the Jewish community of Yemen (North Yemen, before unification with South Yemen in 1990) and its uniqueness, focusing on the period from the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century (at which time most Yemeni Jews left Yemen and immigrated to Israel). In Yemen, religious conversion ran largely in one direction: from Judaism to Islam. The conversion of a Muslim was unimaginable, not only because of its social and political disadvantages but mainly because it was forbidden by the shari‘a, which remained the legal foundation of the state until the middle of the twentieth century. (The shari‘a calls for the death penalty for any murtad, or Muslim convert.)1 In contrast, Jewish law regards a Jew who converts to another religion as a Jew who has gone astray but who may return to the right path. This article’s methodology is based on data that, for the most part, have not yet been analyzed. It relies on oral history—personal interviews with Yemeni Jews now living in Israel—and on written sources such as letters, archival documents, memoirs of Jews who emigrated from Yemen during the twentieth century, itinerary books, and legal writings concerning issues (mainly in family law) resulting from conversion. In general, Yemeni Jewish writings discuss the forced conversion of Jewish orphans explicitly2 but are reluctant to mention voluntary conversions.3 Thus, rabbinic figures who wrote an “official narrative” of Jewish life in Yemen report almost exclusively on Islamization in times of crisis or on the dramatic conversion of a distinguished personality.4 Writers of memoirs usually describe the converts as being tempted by Muslims, 5 and Yemeni Jewish scholarly historiography presents Jewish Islamization as a rare phenomenon and mainly as the result of a deliberate policy by the government to put pressure on the Jews to convert.6 The following discussion offers another perspective for understanding Jewish conversion and will present it as a familiar and tempting phenomenon in Jewish life in Yemen. The Legal and Socioeconomic Status of the Jews During the first half of the twentieth century, the Yemeni population was estimated at between 3.5 and 4 million. The number of Yemeni Jews was estimated at 60 to 70 thousand, and they represented the largest religious minority. (Another minority was composed of a small number of urban Hindi merchants.) Yemeni society is tribal in character.7 The tribes are sedentary, making their living from agriculture, and

are organized as armed political units. Until the 1970s, 97 percent of the Yemeni population lived in the tribal-rural districts in tens of thousands of small settlements.8 About 85 percent of the Jews lived in the tribal-rural areas, alongside the mainly Zaydi Muslim inhabitants, in more than a thousand small, even tiny, settlements. The remainder lived in the capital of Sanaa and in a number of towns. After the 1630s, following about a century of Ottoman occupation, Yemen was governed by Zaydi imams. In 1872, the Ottomans reoccupied central Yemen and the Red Sea coastal plain, and they remained until 1918. The rest of Yemen continued to be governed by Zaydi imams. After the Ottoman withdrawal, a Zaydi leader—Imam Yahya ibn Muhammad al-Mutawakkil (r. 1918–48)—once again took over the government of Yemen. Subsequently, Zaydi imams ruled Yemen until the republican revolution of 1962. Like the Atlas tribes of southern Morocco, who since the sixteenth century have consistently defied the authority of the sharifian sultan,9 the Yemeni tribes, though formally accepting the imams’ leadership, resisted efforts by any central government to dominate them. Yemen’s tribal-territorial division was further enhanced by the religious differences between its SunniShafi’i tribes and Shi’i-Zaydi tribes as well as by the country’s rugged mountainous terrain. The period under consideration witnessed remarkable political development as a result of the increased intervention of Western powers in the Red Sea area and particularly the 1839 capture of Aden by the British, who remained there until 1967. Thus, despite the fact that Yemen had never been directly affected by Western colonial powers, during this period it began a slow process of modernization and was pushed into the world economy. Economic changes, especially the import of industrial goods, weakened the economic base of the Jewish community, whose members engaged mainly in crafts. Some Jewish artisans became migrant laborers in Aden and in African centers across the Red Sea, some turned to peddling and commerce, and others emigrated from Yemen. Between 1881 and 1914, about 8 percent of Yemeni Jews immigrated to Palestine. This emigration continued in 1920, soon after World War I. Dhimma Status During the entire period under consideration, Jews were legally defined as dhimmis, protected people lacking political rights. As in North Africa, where there were no other significant religious minorities, the term dhimmis, originally designated by the shari‘a to describe nonMuslims living under Islam, became identical with Jews.10 The Jews

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were granted religious freedom and assurances of personal security and property in exchange for their acknowledgment of Muslim political and social supremacy, which was conveyed by the payment of the jizya (poll tax), and obedience to a list of restrictions as detailed in the shari‘a. For example, Jews were required to wear distinguishing clothes; they could ride a donkey only side-saddle and were not allowed to ride horses at all; and their homes could not rise above those of the Muslims. The Ottomans tried to equalize the Yemeni Jews’ legal status to that of other Jews in the empire but were thwarted by the vigorous opposition of the Yemeni population and religious scholars. Thus, restrictions that had gradually been lifted in other Muslim lands since the middle of the nineteenth century were still in effect in Yemen, even after the last major Jewish emigration in 1950.11 Communal Organization An outstanding characteristic of communal life in Yemen that reflected the country’s geography, demography, and political nature was the absence of any meaningful central organization. Communal structures on the national and local district levels were weak, and each community managed its own affairs. Most communities were small, at times numbering only three or four families. The aqil (secular leader) represented the Jews vis-à-vis the authorities, and the mori (rabbi) managed religious life. The mori was often the judge who settled religious and civil cases. However, in all matters that did not concern family law, his authority competed with that of the local sheikh or the district qadi ( judge). Jews often appealed to the Muslim judicial system both because their courts lacked the power of enforcement and because of their integration into the tribal system. The Jews did not pay regular communal tax. Consequently, charity and welfare, like other communal activities, were not regularized. Most of these were conducted voluntarily on a personal basis. (Only in Sanaa did the community fund organized charity activities.) This system usually functioned well, but in times of crisis and general hardship it totally collapsed.12 After the mid-nineteenth century, Jewish communal organization was affected by the opening of Yemen to outside influences. Jewish emigration, shifts of employment, and enlightenment trends13 all weakened the Jewish community’s ability to supervise and control the conduct of its members.

Tribal Protection The discriminatory restrictions were strictly observed in Sanaa and its environs and in a few towns where the imams exercised direct control; however, most Jews resided in areas dominated by tribal sheikhs who did not strictly enforce these laws. While officially recognizing the imam’s sovereignty, in practice the tribesmen maintained their independence and customary laws (‘urf ), which included protection of the Jews. Thus, for instance, though homes in the Jewish quarter of Sanaa were kept lower than Muslims’ houses, there was no difference in height between Jewish and Muslim houses in the tribal-rural districts. In the north and the northeast of Yemen, Jews even carried arms, much like the tribesmen. In the tribal areas, the Jews lived under the protection of the sheikhs and other members of the tribe in a sort of client-patron relationship. Each Jewish household had special ties with a Muslim jar (patron, or one who has a patron) and helped him in time of need. Offending his Jew was taken by the Muslim jar as an offense to his honor. Sometimes tribes went to war against each other because a Jewish jar had been attacked, and it would be shameful for them not to respond.14 Notions of honor and shame similarly regulated Muslim-Jewish relations and protection traditions in the tribal areas of southern Morocco and in rural Libya during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, specifically in regard to traveling Jewish peddlers.15 In the Yemeni arena, however, these codes related to the Jews living within the tribe. Thus, though Yemeni Jews were officially inferior, second-class subjects and were considered a weak segment attached to a particular tribe,16 they were tied to the tribe through the laws of protection, and in many respects their lives resembled the lives of their Muslim neighbors. Jews in the Economy Although most of the Jews in Yemen lived in tribal-rural areas, only a few engaged in agriculture. The majority worked as artisans and suppliers of services to the Muslim farmers, and they engaged in retail trade and peddling (an occupation that, as mentioned above, increased after the turn of the nineteenth century). The economic foundation of Jewish life in rural areas was the umla, the permanent liaison between a Jewish artisan and a number of Muslims, each called amil. Throughout the year, the artisan provided the farmer with all the services and goods he needed for his farm and household; at harvest time the farmer paid his debt in field crops. Each

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party could engage in a number of umla agreements—the Jewish artisan with several Muslim families in his village, in other villages, or even with a whole village, and the Muslim farmer with different artisans according to their expertise.17 In addition to its economic advantages, the umla relationship contributed to the social solidarity between Jewish and Muslim members of Yemeni society, creating strong bonds of fidelity between the two parties.18 The phenomenon of Jewish conversion needs to be examined, therefore, against the background of Jewish life within a tribal society and its multiple attractions and also in view of the social developments of the period. Reasons for Islamization Famine Yemen’s economy was based on agriculture, which depended, at least until the second half of the nineteenth century, on the monsoon rains of spring and summer. In times of drought, plants died, food was scarce, and economic activity came practically to a halt, resulting in famine and starvation. During such times, the authorities and/or charity establishments distributed food rations to hungry Muslims. Jews who had converted to Islam could also receive provisions.19 Being a weak sector in the society, Jews were, in times of calamity, reduced to a state of great distress. Their wish to survive led to conversion, at times even on a large scale. For example, during the famine of 1724, more than 700 Jews were reported to have converted and thereafter received food rations.20 An anonymous letter from the nineteenth century tells of Jews, the writer’s son among them, who left their homes in search of a livelihood. In the course of their wanderings, many died of hunger or were preyed on by wild animals, while others converted.21 Similarly, during the famine caused by Imam Yahya’s siege on Sanaa in 1903–04 as part of his rebellion against the Ottomans, a number of Jews converted.22 An account submitted to the Jewish agency in the early 1940s reported Jewish orphans who “converted as a result of hunger.” 23 Heavy taxation did not play a role in Jewish Islamization in Yemen.24 Yemeni Jews were obliged to pay only the jizya (although in the towns occasional fines were levied on them), which in the ruraltribal districts was not meticulously collected. In fact, the legal tax required from the Jews, at least during the twentieth century, was generally lighter than that collected from Muslims.25

Improving Social and Economic Status As dhimmis, Jews were excluded from social mobility within the Yemeni society. Even capable Jews could have no significant impact on the affairs of the state, and the wealthy were required to conceal their wealth. External expressions of affluence, like elaborate attire or ornamented homes, defied the Muslims and were perceived as challenging the covenant of the dhimma. Thus, as in other parts of the Muslim world (and much like in the Christian world before the twentieth century), those who wished to improve their social status and economic conditions within the larger society could do so only if they converted.26 Nissim, who lived in the settlement of al-Radma in the Yarim district, exemplifies the desire to belong to the majority society. He specialized in medicine and treated many Jewish and Muslim patients, especially by summoning demons for healing purposes. At the end of the 1930s, he moved to the al-Mahwit district, where he posed as a Muslim and pursued his practice. When discovered to be a Jew, he announced his wish to convert. His name was changed to Abdalla al-Mahwiti, and he then joined the imam’s army. Soon after, he was promoted to the rank of officer.27 In addition, unfortunate and lonely Jews who were not cared for by their small and feeble community often turned to the tribal organization for support. Such people, usually men, were not in dire straits but were poor and hungry. Sometimes they lived on the margins of the Jewish community. Jewish sources state that “Muslims tempted them to Islamize, they offered them good food.” 28 For example, during the 1920s, a needy young Jewish man from the village of al-Jum‘ah (in the Khawlan district) approached Ahmad ibn ‘Ali, the sheikh of the village, “on account of hunger,” and asked to convert. He Islamized, married a Muslim girl, and had children.29 During the early 1940s, a 13-year-old youth from Damt with no visible family was found wandering around and was fed occasionally by Jewish families. “The Arabs recognized that he was drifting, and the sheikhs managed to tempt him and to lead him astray.” He converted, and the Muslims “made of him a soldier in Damt and they gave him a gun.”30 Love and Marriage The living conditions within Muslim society and the close economic contacts between Muslims and Jews created acquaintances from which romantic ties and sometimes even marriages developed. All such marriages (with rare exceptions) resulted in the conversion of

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the Jewish party, man or woman.31 It is safe to assume that love and marriage were frequently the excuse and the means for Jews who were attracted to the Muslim community to be easily assimilated into it. Perceived as inferior and weak, Jewish men were not considered a danger to Muslim women’s honor and modesty. Whereas strange Muslim men were forbidden to enter the household and to remain in private with the women of the house, dhimmis were allowed to do so.32 Some Jewish craftsmen who worked in Muslim homes, at times staying for a few weeks, developed more than working relations with the women of the house. For example, during the 1930s, 24-year-old Yosef Ben Shlomo, a married man with two children from the Mzahin district, fell in love with Shamsa, the daughter of his Muslim employer. He converted and married her.33 In 1943, Nadra of ‘Amran, a Jew, fell in love with a young officer in the imam’s garrison. In cooperation with her lover, she tricked her family, left her home, and entered the governor’s house. There she Islamized and immediately married. Following protests from her family, her sister was allowed to see her and to check the sincerity of her conversion. Nadra announced: “I Islamized of my free will, nothing will help you!” 34 The conversion of Jewish men and women and their marriage to Muslims continued for as long as there were Jews living in Yemen. The majority of Yemen’s Jews immigrated to Israel in 1949–50; others joined their families in the course of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, until the republican revolution of 1962 stopped Jewish emigration. As of the early 1990s, however, Jews were allowed to leave Yemen. A few hundred Jews arrived in Israel, among them families in which some members (men and women) had married Muslims and remained in Yemen.35 Love—From Islam to Judaism Conversions from Islam to Judaism were rare. I found only two such cases documented, both relating to Muslim women, and both attracted enormous attention and aroused astonishment. The first case is from the 1930s, told with great empathy and sorrow for its tragic end. It tells of Yosef Halevi from the village of al-Haddad (in the ‘Amar district) and a young woman, Bint al-Basara, of a notable Muslim family in his village, who fell in love. The couple ran away to Aden (which was a British protectorate), planning to continue on to Palestine. The girl converted to Judaism, and they married. It is said that news about the couple’s escape spread quickly and aroused the anger of her family and of the village sheikh, as well as great embarrassment and shock to both Jews and Muslims. Messengers were sent to

Aden to fetch the two, and, when found, they were extradited with the help of the local Arab police to Yemeni forces. The two were brought to trial in al-Nadra, the capital of their district, and were sentenced to life imprisonment. (Halevi refused an offer to convert in lieu of prison.) In addition, Bint al-Basara was punished in a procession of disgrace and humiliation (dardahah). Badly treated in prison, she died soon after. Halevi managed to escape from prison. He reached Aden, from there traveled to Asmara in Eritrea, and eventually immigrated to Palestine.36 The extraordinary love of Bint al-Basara and Yosef Halevi was recorded in folk songs, a number of which were transcribed (in both Arabic and Hebrew characters).37 The second case, of 1948, had a “happy ending.” It relates to a young Jewish man, married and the father of a baby boy, who lived in a village near the town of al-Mahwit. He used to work during the week in the surrounding villages, sleeping in the homes of his Muslim employers, and returning home for the Sabbath. He worked for about a month in Bani Hasan, making pillows and mattresses in the house of the village sheikh. During this time he fell in love with the sheikh’s daughter. He deserted his wife and son, the girl left her father’s house, and both headed for the British protectorate of Aden. They reached the Hashid transit camp, where Yemeni Jews were awaiting their turn to travel to Israel. The camp managers immediately flew the woman to Israel, and she was sent to an immigrant camp in Atlit. About two months later, her lover joined her, she converted, and they married.38 Political developments (the establishment of the State of Israel and its agents’ activities in Aden) and the couple’s ability to leave Yemen immediately were the prime factors that enabled them to continue their life as Jews. Refuge Within the Muslim Society Jews also converted as a result of discontent and anger toward their family and community and the wish to take vengeance. By adopting Islam, estranged Jews could enjoy the protection and support of the tribe. Muslim society could serve as a comforting alternative to sorrow and frustration in a person’s life. Now and then, Jews converted as a means to avoid punishment by the Jewish community after committing unlawful acts. At times, Islamization was a way to escape actual suffering to which Jewish law did not offer a solution. Women with marital problems would threaten their families that they would convert unless the problem was solved. Below are some examples of the appeal of Muslim society for such individuals.

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, a young Jewish man from al-Juruf wished to marry young Rumya. His father did not approve and planned to marry him to another girl. In response, the man joined the tribesmen who entered the mosque for the noon prayer, dropped his headgear, “and shouted: God will cause the faith of the Muslims to prosper, and thereafter [he] converted.”39 In another instance, following an argument in the synagogue of al-Bayda, the man involved in the dispute went to the Muslim quarter and Islamized. A few hours later he returned to the Jewish neighborhood in triumph, his side-locks shaved, riding on a mule, and armed with a rifle.40 In 1944, a Jewish man from al-Saddah Islamized. His conversion is presented as the result of continuous disagreements with his wife. It is said that the man used to leave his family for weeks or even months and work as a craftsman in Muslim villages. His wife protested his long absences and complained that he did not adequately support his family. Their tense relationship (and probably the coziness he felt within the Muslim environment) pushed him to Islam. It is said that his vengeance toward his wife was complete when he insisted that his minor son join him.41 At the end of the 1940s in northern Yemen, an only son to parents who had “pampered him since childhood and gave him all the best,” went astray and committed unspecified “bad deeds.” It is related that the young man did not want to better his ways; he was so bad that his family gave up on him. Members of the Jewish community disassociated themselves from him. Consequently, the man entered the governor’s home, said that he wished to become a Muslim, and converted.42 In the same period, also in northern Yemen, when her husband was away on business, a married Jewish woman and mother of two had an affair with her Muslim neighbor. When the matter was discovered, fearing the reaction of her family, the woman escaped to the authorities, asked to convert, and Islamized.43 Another case is that of the young Dabya, who in 1931 married the peddler Yahya Hilba of Bayhan. When Hilba was away from home for weeks, his pregnant wife befriended her Muslim neighbors. She decided to Islamize and converted a few weeks before the birth of her son. In spite of Hilba’s protests, the child remained with his mother and was raised as a Muslim.44 There were also women who adopted Islam in order to escape from bad marriages.45 Soon thereafter most married into the Muslim community. It should be noted that, according to the shari‘a, once a woman (or man) is Islamized, her previous marriage is automatically annulled. Jewish law, however, regards a married person who converts as still married. Habiba Sanani, for example, was married

to Salih al-Dahri; they lived in Rada and had a daughter and a son. “[H]er husband was bullying her, she wanted to divorce him but he refused to give her a get [divorce], so that her remedy was to Islamize [in the mid 1940s].”46 Similarly, in the mid-1940s, a young woman from the border town Qa‘taba was the second wife of Yosef Yahya, an older man who “in his later years desired a young beautiful girl.” The woman wanted a divorce, but he refused; “one day she slipped out to Dar alJumruk (customs house) and converted there.”47 Even at the end of the twentieth century, Jewish women escaped bad marriages by means of conversion. A traveler who visited Yemen in 1989 tells of a young woman whose father married her to an older man, but “the marriage did not work out because of the age difference and the husband’s behavior. When she could not bear living with her husband, she fled to her father’s house.” The father pressured his daughter to return to her husband’s house, but she responded by escaping to the house of the sheikh. She Islamized and married a Muslim.48 Women also used the threat of Islamization as a weapon. For example, after her marriage in 1940 to Salim ‘Uzayri, Wala Mahadun of Saqin refused to have relations with him. Knowing that her parents would not approve of her stubbornness, she fled to the sheikh’s house and asked for refuge. She announced that she would rather Islamize than return to her husband. Wala remained in the sheikh’s house, under the patronage of his wife, for about a month, until a divorce was arranged. Thereafter, she returned to her parents’ house.49 Also in the 1940s, a 12-year-old girl from northern Yemen was married by her father to a 40-year-old divorced man. A few days after their marriage, the frightened bride fled from her husband to her parents’ house. Her father rebuked her and demanded that she return to her husband. She refused and said that, if she were forced to go back, she would convert. Two months later, the couple was divorced. 50 Alternative to Punishment In Yemen, as in other Muslim countries, dhimmis who were sentenced in Muslim courts to heavy fines, long terms of imprisonment, or death could escape punishment if Islamized.51 Yosef al-Shaykh Levi, for example, was in charge of the state’s mint. In 1846, he changed the ratio of the silver and copper that constituted the Yemeni coin by enlarging the amount of copper, and he embezzled the difference. When the fraud was discovered, the Jewish silversmiths who worked at the mint were heavily fined. Al-Shaykh Levi was ordered to pay an extremely high fine that there was no conceivable way he could pay.

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Thus, he was sentenced to death but promised a pardon if Islamized. He soon converted.52 In 1877, a young Jewish man was imprisoned in Sanaa (the result of “a false charge”). He declared that he wished to convert and be pardoned.53 In the village of al-Gadas, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century, a Jewish youth stole from his father’s house. The father reported his son to the local sheikh so that he would punish him. Wishing to escape punishment, and probably out of anger at his father, the youth Islamized.54 And in the mid1940s, a Jew from Shagadra committed a crime and awaited imprisonment. Instead, he Islamized, taking his two young daughters with him.55 Nevertheless, the Muslim authorities did not always approve Islamization as an alternative to punishment.56 Islamization Instead of Emigration from Yemen During the Jewish emigration from Yemen to Palestine that began in 1881 and culminated in the mass migration to Israel in 1949–50, some of the Jews, reluctant to leave their homeland, chose to remain. Among those who remained were whole families and married individuals—mainly men but also women—whose spouses left. These people found it difficult to live apart, with no religious-communal structure to provide support. Some of them converted and merged into Yemeni Muslim society.57 In 1942, for example, Yehiel and Yosef Mabari immigrated to Palestine. Their mother, brother, and stepfather remained in the Hajjah district and Islamized.58 In 1949, Yaaqov Madhala left northern Yemen for Palestine and settled in Rehovot. His wife, Salha, and their son and daughter remained and Islamized.59 In 1950, most of the Jews of the Bayhan district immigrated to Israel, but some remained in Yemen and Islamized.60 One of those who were reluctant to leave was Yosef Itrib, a widowed father of nine-year-old Hayyim. He said that he would stay until he repaid his debt to Muhammad ‘Awad of Bayhan, and he refused to leave even when his creditor forgave his debt and said that he did not want to hinder Itrib’s journey to Israel. A few months later, Itrib passed away. Before his death, he asked al-Sharif Hausayn, one of the local notables, to care for his son. The boy was raised as a Muslim and renamed ‘Abdalla Muhammad al-Muslimani Itrib.61 In 1950, Rabbi Zadoc ‘Umaysi left Shar’ab for Aden together with other Jews who immigrated to Israel. He stayed in Aden and served as a ritual slaughterer (shohet) for the Adeni Jewish community until 1967, when the British left Aden and he immigrated to Israel. In Aden, ‘Umaysi also operated as liaison between Yemeni Jews in Israel

and Jews who remained in Yemen, and he took steps to solve the problems of deserted women (agunot) who had immigrated to Israel while their husbands remained. According to ‘Umaysi, in 1955 or 1956, in one village in the Rada district, about 70 Jews Islamized. ‘Umaysi claims that the decision to convert was because of “one Jewish woman” who convinced the Jews of that village that they had lost any chance to leave Yemen and immigrate to Israel. She “induced” them to convert, “and on Friday 70 people went to the mosque and Islamized.” Sometime after their conversion, 36 of them immigrated to Israel; the rest remained in Yemen as Muslims.62 The Conversion Ceremony The religious and social changes in a convert’s life were signified by a series of ceremonies: First, pronouncing the shahada (“There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”). This is the only act of religious significance required by law to turn a person into a Muslim. Second, eating soup made from meat slaughtered according to Islamic law,63 a ceremony unique to Yemen. This act is reminiscent of the active participation of the convert during conversion ceremonies in Christianity: eating the holy bread, drinking the wine, and baptism. Eating the meat soup, more than uttering the shahada, was perceived as a magical act that erased, so to speak, the Jewish being of the convert and prepared him to adopt his Muslim identity. Apart from marriage, religious laws regarding slaughtering were the most noted barrier between Jews and Muslims in Yemen and hindered wider social interaction.64 Jewish guests in Muslim homes ate bread and milk products produced by Muslims.65 In meat dishes, however, separation was complete and prohibition absolute. The meaning of eating the meat soup was far intensified because of both the prohibition and the affinity between the two communities. The soup became the symbol of separation and distance between Jews and Muslims. Deviation in public from Jewish dietary laws signaled to Jews and Muslims that a most remarkable difference in their daily conduct had been removed—a Jew had deserted Judaism and his Jewish community in favor of Islam.66 The following passage relates to northern Yemen at the end of the nineteenth century. Even if not precise in all its details, it illustrates the strict interpretation given by Jews to the eating of Muslim meat, even to the point that unintentional or unknowing eating was taken as an act of conversion:

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A man from the al-Qamas family used go around the villages as a peddler and tailor. One day he fell ill with the plague that inflicted the area. Because of his illness, he was detained in one of the villages, where an Arab family took him in and nursed him. He suffered from high temperature and was not conscious of his surroundings. The woman of the house fed him and gave him soup to drink. When he regained consciousness, she came to him with a bowl of soup. When he saw her he said: “Please do not give me soup, [because] I am a Jew.” She said to him: “If not for this soup that I gave you to drink, you would not have survived and you would not be alive.” When Qamas returned to his family in Haydan, he asked them to give him a punishment of flogging to atone for his sin.67 But they said to him: “It is impossible, you are already a gentile!” He had no choice and he went among the gentiles; he Islamized and had a family. His descendants used to come to the village of al-Hajar in the Haydan district and say to the Jews: “We are from you” [nahnu minkum].68

Third, removing external Jewish characteristics, such as cutting the Jewish convert’s side locks and sometimes shaving his head like the tribesmen of the area. Much like the appearance of the free Yemeni warrior of the tribe, the convert’s Jewish dress was replaced by Muslim clothing, and he was given a jambbiyah (dagger) and a rifle. Fourth, changing the convert’s name to a Muslim name—usually ‘Abdallah or Muhammad, to which was affixed the name Muhtadi (the one who goes in the right path), instead of the father’s or the family name.69 (I did not find changed names of women converts.) Fifth and finally, in some places conversion ceremonies were concluded by a happy procession—the playing of drums and wind instruments, with the convert riding on a horse to the mosque.70 The participants used to cry out: “God will cause the faith of the Muslims to prosper!” The Attitude of the Muslims to Jewish Conversions Yemeni Muslims were pleased to have Jewish converts, and they encouraged them. This is well demonstrated in supplying food conditional on conversion, in the joyful expressions at the conversion ceremonies, and in the efforts to help converts adjust to the new society.71 The convert was treated in a protective manner designed to substitute for the cohesion of the Jewish community. The Muslims “honored him and gave him a house and house articles and all his necessities, as was customary regarding apostates.” 72 Now and then, converts who had no source of income received, in addition to initial

economic aid, a position in the army as exemplified by the case described above of ‘Abdallah al-Mahwiti. He was taken into the imam’s army, where he later reached officer’s rank.73 Nevertheless, it is hard to point to a specific master policy directed at Islamizing the Jews of Yemen. On the contrary, the Yemeni authorities did not accept new converts in every case. They often checked the sincerity of the request to convert and whether it was made with sufficient deliberation. Thus, in 1887, Ma’uda Ibn Hasan al-Shajari of Sanaa was seemingly on his way to Islam but had not yet decided. He moved from the Jewish quarter of Sanaa to the Muslim neighborhood, and he ceased to participate in Jewish rituals. The Jewish court ruled that he should return to the Jewish quarter and forced him to do so with the help of Sheikh Qasim Ahmad Salih, to whom al-Shajari agreed to pay a fine if he did not comply with the court ruling.74 AlShajari’s return was thus coordinated by the Jewish leadership together with a Muslim authority. In addition, the two conversion cases in the late 1940s in northern Yemen, mentioned earlier, were completed only after the authorities had verified that the parties understood their motion and were adopting Islam wholeheartedly. When the Jewish woman who had romantic relations with her Muslim neighbor fled to the governor’s house asking to convert, the governor and his assistants “tried to persuade her not to take this step, and they warned her a few times lest she would regret it, but they were not successful.” 75 Similarly, the young Jew who was rejected by the Jewish community on account of his “bad deeds” was not immediately accepted by the Muslim community. The governor tried to persuade him to give up his plan to convert. Only after insisting that he had come to the decision of his own free will and that he had no request or condition for his Islamization did the authorities accept his proposal.76 In 1943, Imam Yahya inspected a complaint by the mother of young Nadra of ‘Amran who had Islamized and married an officer in his army. The mother claimed that her daughter was cunningly taken from her house and forced to convert, and she asked to get her daughter back. After examining the case, the imam found that Nadra had converted willingly. Thereafter he dismissed the mother’s plea.77 What was the attitude toward the convert following the joyful ceremonies? The picture is incomplete because of a lack of relevant Arabic sources and fieldwork in Yemen. The prevalence of the phenomenon, however, suggests that the converts generally integrated into Muslim society. As to Jewish sources, they naturally attempt to present the absorption into Muslim society as difficult and unsuccessful. They report that the Muslims treated the convert with

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suspicion and viewed him with contempt,78 and they cite a Muslim saying “qad al-yahudi yahudi walaw aslama” (a Jew remains a Jew even if Islamized).79 According to Nissim Binyamin Gamlieli, there were some villages whose inhabitants were probably of Jewish origin; they were degradingly called al-muhtadyin and were treated with dislike.80 He also said that a muhtadi could not marry a tribeswoman unless he was well off.81 Some Yemeni expressions reflect the Muslim attitude toward Jews or Jewish converts: parents used to scold their unruly children by calling them “ibn (bint) Yahudi!” (Son [daughter] of a Jew!).82 These expressions raise a question as to how successful the converts were in fully assimilating into Muslim society. The Attitude of the Jews to Conversion and to the Converts Jewish sources differ in their attitude toward the phenomenon of conversion and toward individual converts. The phenomenon in general is described with rage and contempt. It is presented as deserting the true faith and a rich heritage for a lesser religion of inferior cultural values, and as a betrayal of the family and community. The initial moral and spiritual values of the converts are sometimes minimized by employing the sayings: “Whatever belongs to them returns to them,” 83 and “Their soul was defective.” 84 The converts’ achievements in Muslim society are usually downplayed: “Most of them are poor and miserable. The religion of Muhammad did not elevate them; on the contrary, it degraded them.” 85 Sources that discuss conversions as a result of famine, however, describe the phenomenon as a necessity of life and not as a betrayal. As to the individual converts, a female convert is always referred to with disrespect. Her morality is questionable, and her marriage to a Muslim is presented as a bad bargain.86 About the woman from Qa‘taba who ran away from her husband, it is said that the governor “married her to one of his lesser servants, a strong man with big muscles, and she produced his offspring like a bitch.”87 The northern Yemeni woman who Islamized at the end of the 1940s is presented as a “wicked woman” and “deviating from the right path.”88 The attitude toward the male convert, however, is usually ambivalent. Reservations are emphasized, yet there is no effort to avoid keeping in touch with him, his help is accepted, and he is helped. The texts even reveal a sort of attraction and admiration for his new personality and status. Shalom Gamliel sought the help of a muhtadi in his dispute with other members of the Sanaa Jewish community.89 And the description of Yusuf ibn Ibrahim al-

‘Uzani (formerly Yosef ben Shlomo), the convert from Mzahin, portrays him as a sheikh, his noble appearance reflecting wealth and power. It is said that he used to come to the weekly market, “and when he recognized one of his [old] community, he would attend to him and ask about his well being. . . . Indeed, many of the community members, his former friends, approached him, and were on their part welcoming . . . feeling affection toward him in mercy and pity.” Yosef ben Shlomo’s love and marriage to Muslim Shamsa, with whom he was acquainted early in his life, is explained with empathy and forgiveness: “Beyond carnal love and lust, it was something that was sowed in him since childhood, and also in her, in Shamsa, it was sowed since childhood, something of the mind that forces itself on a person.” 90 The representation of Yusuf al-‘Uzani as a sheikh and the descriptions of other converts also reflect these people’s feelings of superiority toward their former coreligionists. They exhibit their higher status and look down on those who remained Jews at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The ambivalent attitude toward the convert does not contradict the Jewish legal approach, which perceives the convert as “Israel who went astray” and whose Jewish identity does not evaporate with conversion.91 Therefore, Jews helped converts who wished to return to Judaism. Occasionally such Jews were judged in a rabbinic court and sentenced to 40 lashes, but most were not punished.92 From the Muslim legal point of view, apostates that left Islam were to be judged and severely punished; hence, many such Jews left their villages and settled elsewhere. Yet often Muslims closed their eyes to the return of converts to Judaism. For example, in al-Gadas at the beginning of the twentieth century, a hungry woman and a young man converted. After a while they returned to Judaism and the local tribesmen did not bother them.93 The youth from Damt mentioned above, who Islamized in the 1940s and became a soldier, fell very sick. Gamlieli relates that, since there was no one to care for the youth, his mother Zihra nurtured him and fed him. When he was cured, the convert asked her: “What shall I do now?” She told him: “Run away!” He ran away to Aden. He then returned to Judaism and thereafter immigrated to Israel.94 Gamlieli speaks of yet another Jewish convert from Damt who returned to Judaism. This man was disappointed with the attitude of the sheikh “through whom he was Islamized,” and he sought to escape him. He hid for a few weeks in Gamlieli’s house, until his beard and side locks grew, then slipped away to Aden and continued his life as a Jew.95 As mentioned above, the immigration of Yemeni Jews to Israel in 1949–50 resulted in the Islamization of some of the Jews who chose to remain in Yemen. This dramatic development also promoted a re-

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verse process: the return of converts to Judaism and their departure from Yemen with the rest of the Jews and their immigration to Israel. Among them were some of the individuals described earlier, like Abdallah al-Mahwiti96 and the Jew from al-Shagadra with his two daughters.97 The Converts and Their Jewish Family Because Jewish religious law views converts as still being Jews, these people often continued to touch on the lives of their Jewish families in matters like inheritance,98 child custody, and deserted women, and in issues related to levirate laws. Converted men and women who wished to have custody of their children were always permitted to keep them.99 Sometimes Jewish family law could not solve problems that arose following the conversion of married men. A number of converts agreed to divorce their wives;100 others left their wives deserted, unable to remarry.101 This phenomenon increased with the 1949–50 emigration and the Islamization of Jewish men who remained in Yemen. The rabbinical court in Aden, in cooperation with rabbinical authorities in Israel, sent Jewish messengers to Yemen to search for the husbands and convince them to sign a get. A few of the men did so, but others refused to cooperate or were not found.102 Another legal complexity arose in cases of converted levirates. When the husband dies and the couple is childless, Jewish law demands that the woman’s brother-in-law, the levirate (yavam), marry her or, alternately, release her in a halitsah ceremony (when she takes off the yavam’s shoe). A converted yavam who refused to cooperate or who disappeared in the Muslim surroundings left his Jewish sister-inlaw chained to him and unable to have a family.103 Conclusion It is impossible to estimate the number of Jewish converts or the extent of the phenomenon of Islamization. It is safe, however, to state that Islamization was an existing and tempting possibility that materialized not only at the margins of Jewish society but also closer to the center. Saloniki-born merchant David Qaraso, who stayed in Ottoman Yemen in 1880–85, describes Jewish conversion as a common phenomenon: “[T]here is no year in which some Jews do not convert. I saw in my own eyes more than 40 converts, among them fathers

whose sons remained Jews, and fathers and sons who converted, and women too.”104 Nehemia Levtzion, who studied the conversion of non-Muslims in Muslim lands, concluded that social factors played the central role in this phenomenon.105 Jewish Islamization in Yemen, as presented in this article, corresponds to this view. Various social considerations, derived from the unique conditions in Yemen, persuaded Jews to convert, not deliberate pressure or premeditated temptation by Muslim authorities and individuals, as suggested by other scholars.106 Similarly, the role of religious conviction in this phenomenon seems insignificant. Against the background of Jewish conversion, the Jewish communal institutions grew weaker and were powerless against the tribe’s solidarity and the strength of Muslim society and its institutions. Economic hardships and cultural assimilation, which occurred through the close economic and social ties between Jews and Muslims as well as through the laws of tribal protection, contributed to this phenomenon. The small and weak Jewish community with its hundreds of scattered settlements had difficulty installing effective barriers that would prevent potential converts from leaving the Jewish community—whether by means of communal pressure or by taking care of the weak, the hungry, and the rejected. Among those who were attracted to Muslim society and to the supportive tribal structure were hungry persons, those who wished to improve their economic and social status, men and women for whom the Jewish society was not responsive to their agonies or was unable to tend to them, and those who chose to remain in Yemen while their brethren emigrated. It appears that, despite their religious and communal distinctiveness and its social implications, Yemeni Jews were part of the society in which they lived. Uttering the shahada and eating meat soup thus transferred the converts to a different yet familiar environment. This analysis is true mainly of Jewish society in the tribal-rural districts. In comparison, the largest and most organized Jewish community of Sanaa was generally successful in monitoring the lives of its members even during the political and socioeconomic developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Jews lived in the Jewish quarter that was separated from the Muslim city, and their ties with Yemeni Muslims were less extensive than those in the tribal space. Jewish conversions in Sanaa were more apparent in times of famine than for “regular” economic and social reasons, yet in the capital, too, there were conversions on such grounds. The Jewish theological approach toward Islam can probably be seen as facilitating the process of conversion in Muslim lands.107 In contrast to the religious antagonism and theological resistance of

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Jewish society toward Christianity, Jews perceived Islam, which opposed shirk (the association of other divine beings to God), as a monotheistic religion that spread the belief in God’s undivided unity.108 This view contributed to Jewish practice in medieval Islam: when persecuted by Muslims, Jews chose to Islamize rather than commit acts of martyrdom like Jews in Christian Europe.109 Likewise, the eighteenth-century Yemeni scholar Rabbi Said Sadi wrote: “Ein ha-yishmaelim ovdei avodah zarah” (the Muslims are not idolaters).110 Yet our discussion does not relate to Islamization as the result of religious conviction or attraction to the religious truth of Islam. It can be assumed that such cases did exist, but, like in other Muslim countries, they were exceptional.111 During the period under discussion, we do not know of religious debates or inter-religious conversations on the intellectual level, nor of the Islamization of rabbinic figures.112 The religious cultural climate in Yemen permitted a wide base for dialogue as well as for disagreement and awareness of the differences between Judaism and Islam (in matters like dietary laws and religious festivals). Jewish men were literate, and most of them continued religious studies throughout their adult years. In this respect, they held themselves to be religiously and culturally superior to the Muslim tribesmen, only a few of whom knew how to read and write. The Jews, who lived mainly in the tribal space and not near the Muslim learning centers in the towns, were attracted to Islam as a mighty community and to its communal-tribal structure more than to its religious principles. It is plausible, however, that the converts were absorbed into the Muslim religious experience and that their new religion fulfilled their spiritual needs. Their integration into Muslim society was probably facilitated by the essential character of both Judaism and Islam as religions that do not separate between religion and state and are not based on belief (except for the unity of God) but on positive commands. The saying “Nothing separates us except for ritual slaughtering and marriage” was well known among the Jews of Yemen.113 Islamization served the converts, therefore, to redefine their identity. In Yemen, which did not undergo a process of secularization, the individual’s place in society was determined by religious affiliation and tribal association. Converts could change their identity from Yemeni Jews to Yemeni Muslims, who more strongly belonged to the tribe and the surroundings in which they lived. Conversion enabled them to identify with the Muslim political and social structure and values, and to become immersed in it.

Notes 1 For legal debates regarding apostates (people who had been Muslims and renounced Islam), see Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge, Engl., 2003), 121–59. 2 During the eighteenth century, Yemeni (Zaydi) legal interpretations formalized a unique statute, known in Jewish sources as the “Orphans’ Decree,” that obligated the Yemeni state to take custody of dhimmi (non-Muslim) children who had been orphaned and to raise them as Muslims. Regarding this law and its implementation, see Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, “The Forced Conversion of Jewish Orphans in Yemen,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33 (2001): 23–47. 3 For example, the Sanaa Jewish court records from the second half of the eighteenth century up to the second half of the nineteenth century (which are the only records that remained) register 20 cases related to converts. See Yehiel Nahshon, “Ha-hanhagah ha-yehudit be-teman (meot 18–19)” (Ph.D. diss., Bar-Ilan University, 1998), 167, 175–76. 4 See, e.g., Amram Qorah, Searat teman ( Jerusalem, 1954), 15; Said Sadi, “Dofi ha-zman: Korot yehudei teman bi-shnot 5477–5486 (1717–1726),” Sefunot 1 (1957): 59–116. 5 Shalom Lahav, “Yeladim she-uslemu be-teman,” Afikim 117–18 (2000): 56–58 and Afikim 119–20 (2001): 52–53, esp. 52; Yosef Tobi, “Ha-kehilah ha-yehudit be-teman,” in his Moreshet yehudei teman: Iyunim u-mehkarim ( Jerusalem, 1977), 87; Nissim Binyamin Gamlieli, Ahavat teman: Ha-shirah ha-amamit ha-temanit—shirat ha-nashim (Tel Aviv, 1996), 244, and an interview with me in June 1994; Shalom Benei Moshe, Ba-mesilah naaleh (Rehovot, 1988), 101. Hereafter, all interviews cited were conducted by me. 6 See, e.g., Yosef Tobi, “Ha-mivne ha-hevrati veha-kalkali shel yehudei teman ba-meot ha-19 veha-20,” in his Yehudei teman ba-et ha-hadashah ( Jerusalem, 1984), 200; and Yosef Tobi, “Hitaslemut be-kerev yehudei teman tahat ha-shilton ha-zaydi: Emdot ha-halakhah ha-zaydit, ha-shilton ha-imami veha-hevrah ha-muslemit,” Peamim 42 (1990): 105–26, esp. 122–23. Tobi wrote that Jewish existence in Yemen was perceived by the Muslim society as “an anomaly that has to be altered by constant pressure and various methods. This pressure was very efficient in converting Jews to Islam.” See also Nissim Binyamin Gamlieli, Teman bateudot: Yehudei damt veha-mahoz ( Jerusalem, 1998), 47, which describes Jewish Islamization as a rare phenomenon, known mainly in Sanaa and other towns and hardly ever in the small towns and villages, and Yehuda Ratzaby, Be-maaglot teman (Yemen Paths) (Tel Aviv, 1988), 234, regarding Islamization as a result of compulsion or as happening “by force of the time and fatal circumstances.” About temptation, see Aharon Gaimani, “Ha-yibum be-kerev benei teman le-halakhah ulemaaseh,” Mi-mizrah umi-maarav 7 (2004): 85–115, esp. 105.

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7 For different aspects of tribal society, see Dale F. Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1998). For the tribal society in Yemen, see Paul Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen (Oxford, 1989). 8 The first population census was undertaken in North Yemen in 1975, according to which its population numbered about 4.7 million. For more about this census and its findings, see Manfred W. Wenner, The Yemen Arab Republic: Development and Change in an Ancient Land (Boulder, Colo., 1991), 19–22. 9 Shlomo Deshen, The Mellah Society: Jewish Community Life in Sherifian Morocco (Chicago, 1989), 17; Michael M. Laskier, North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1994), 9. 10 Harvey E. Goldberg, Jewish Life in Muslim Libya: Rivals and Relatives (Chicago, 1990), 7. 11 See, e.g., Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (Philadelphia, 1991), 3–26. 12 For communal life, organization, and leadership, see Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, Yehudei teman: Historyah, hevrah, tarbut, 3 vols. (Raanana, 2004), 2: 68–89. 13 See Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, “Haskalah, yahadut ve-Islam: Hebetim hevratiyim ve-tarbutiyim,” in Kanaut datit, ed. Meir Litvak and Ora Limor ( Jerusalem, 2007), 133–80. 14 On a tribal war caused by the robbery of a protected Jew, see Hayyim Habshush, Masot habshush, ed. S. D. Goitein (Tel Aviv, 1939), 51–52. 15 Deshen, Mellah Society, 21; Daniel Schroeter, “Trade as a Mediator in Muslim-Jewish Relations: Southwestern Morocco in the Nineteenth Century,” in Jews Among Arabs: Contacts and Boundaries, ed. Mark R. Cohen and Abraham L. Udovitch (Princeton, 1989), 113–40, esp. 124– 25. For Libya, see Harvey Goldberg, Mordecai Ha-Cohen: Higid Mordecai ( Jerusalem, 1978), 45, and Goldberg, Jewish Life in Muslim Libya, 12, 81. 16 Dresch, Tribes, 118–23. In twentieth-century Sanaa, “Yahudi” ( Jew) was a derogatory name for a Muslim. A. Shivtiel, Wilfred Lockwood, and R. B. Serjeant, “The Jews of San‘a’,” in San‘a’: An Arabian Islamic City, ed. R. B. Serjeant and Ronald Lewcock (London, 1983), 391–431, esp. 422. In other places, after uttering the word “Jew,” Muslims would apologize as they would when saying something unpleasant; see R. B. Serjeant, Customary and Shari‘ah Law in Arabian Society (Hampshire, 1991), 122. 17 S. D. Goitein, “Al ha-hayim ha-tsiburiyim shel ha-yehudim be-erets teman,” in Ha-temanim: Historyah, sidrei hevrah, hayei ruah, ed. Menahem Ben Sasson ( Jerusalem, 1983), 199–215, esp. 201–2; Serjeant, Customary and Shari‘ah Law, 120; Yosef Qafih, Halikhot teman ( Jerusalem, 1978), 227; Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, “Yehudei ha-kfarim ba-hevrah uva-kalkalah shel teman,” Tehudah 15 (1995): 41–46, esp. 44; Carmela Abdar, “Ha-mivneh ha-miktsoi shel toshvei Surm al-’Awd ke-vituy lemamado veha-tahalikhim she-avru alav,” in Le-Rosh Yosef, ed. Yosef Tobi ( Jerusalem, 1995), 481–502, esp. 493.

18 S. D. Goitein describes Jewish and Muslim relations in Yemen as “a very tight symbiosis”; see his “Dyokano shel kfar orgim temani,” in Ben Sasson, Ha-temanim, 216–40, esp. 229. 19 Occasionally the government supplied the Jews with some food. For example, following the 1943 famine, Imam Yahya appropriated grain for the Muslims of Sanaa as well as for the poor Jews. It was sold to them below the very high market price. See the anonymous letter from Sanaa to Israel Yesha’yahu, May 11, 1943, Central Zionist Archives, S6 3802. 20 About famine, plagues, and Jewish conversions to Islam in 1724 and 1725, see Qorah, Searat teman, 15. Sadi, “Dofi ha-zman,” 205, describes Jewish Islamization in 1724 as a large-scale phenomenon in Sanaa and in the rural districts. See also Tobi, “Hitaslemut be-kerev yehudei teman,” 114. 21 The letter was published in Yehuda Ratzaby, “Le-toldot yehudei teman: Olelot historiyot,” Peamim 72 (1997): 106–23, esp. 112–13; the exact date of the letter was not noted. 22 Yehuda Ratzaby, “Ba-masor u-va-masok,” in his Boi teman (Tel Aviv, 1967), 67–102, esp. 69. 23 Zilberberg, “Kitsur dvarim meha-sihah shel hanhalat ha-mahlaka im A. Nissim, ba-kohenu be-aden she-nitkaymah be-yom 1.4.1945,” Central Zionist Archives, S6 3803. (Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from foreign-language sources are mine.) For more about Islamization caused by hunger, see Tobi, “Ha-kehilah ha-yehudit beteman,” 65–117, esp. 80, 97. 24 This is in contrast to the Islamization of lower-class dhimmis in Syria and Palestine for the purpose of avoiding payment of the jizya. See Nehemia Levtzion, “Conversions to Islam in Syria and Palestine,” in Conversion and Continuity, ed. Michael Gerves and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi (Toronto, 1990), 289–311, esp. 298. 25 Depending on place and time, Jews paid the jizya to the tribal sheikhs, to the imam, or to the Ottomans. In the tribal areas, tax payment meant, at times, participation in public projects such as clearing roads leading to the village or building a catch basin for water. During the first half of the twentieth century, Jewish taxpayers (i.e., males aged between about 13 and 60) in the imam-controlled areas were required to pay the following annually: the rich, 3–4 reals; the middle class, 2 reals; and the poor, 1 real. During the 1940s, the average wage for a few working days was 1 real. The jizya payment therefore equaled the earnings of a few working days and was estimated at one dollar or a dollar and a half per year. See the discussion about the jizya and documents related to its collection in Shalom Gamliel, Pikudei teman ( Jerusalem, 1982). See also Serjeant, Customary and Shari‘ah Law, 118, and Tudor Parfitt, The Road to Redemption: The Jews of Yemen, 1900–1950 (Leiden, 1996), 104–5. 26 Nehemia Levtzion, “Toward a Comparative Study of Islamization,” in Conversion to Islam, ed. N. Levtzion (New York, 1979), 1–23, esp. 9; Ber-

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nard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (London, 1984), 95. Lieut.-Colonel H. F. Jacob, “The Jews in the Yemen,” The Jewish Chronicle Supplement 29 (Apr. 1932), specifically discussed Jewish men in Sanaa who converted in order to better their social standing. Regarding the Islamization of a Jewish silversmith in the southern district of Hugariyya, see Ephraim Yaakov, ed., Temana: Mavo le-erets al-hugariyy (Nahariya, 1995), 136–39. See also Parfitt, Road to Redemption, 71 n. 19. Mordechai Yishari, Hayiti ben aruba be-teman (Rosh Ha-ayin, 1989), 213–20. Nissim Ashri, interview, May 1994. Shalom Qahta, interview, Oct. 1994. Gamlieli, interview, June 1994, and Gamlieli, Ahavat teman, 244. Other examples include a Jew from the Hatuka family who lived in the Rada district and who converted in the 1940s “because of poverty.” He wished that his only daughter, eight years of age, would convert as well. The rabbi of Rada, however, quickly married her as a second wife to an older man, thus proving that she was of age and should not follow her father. Sivya Yahya, interview, July 1994. And in the northern town of Sa’da, three young men of the Hala family converted in the 1940s. Yair Madar-Halevi, “The Relations between Jews and Muslims” (1982, manuscript), Bet Nehama ve-Yair Archives, Rehovot. Shari‘a does not require the conversion of dhimmi women when married to Muslims; however, the majority converted. On this phenomenon in the Ottoman Empire, see Lea Bornstein-Makovetsky, “Hitaslemut ba-khilot ha-osmaniyot ve-hitnatsrut be-Italyah uve-germaniah ba-meot ha-16 ve-ha-17,” Peamim 57 (1993): 29–47, esp. 35; in Yemen, all Jewish women who married Muslims converted. See Goldberg, Jewish Life in Muslim Libya, 75, about Jewish peddlers in Libya who were allowed to enter Muslim homes and have direct contact with the women of the household. His children remained with his Jewish wife, whom he divorced when she wanted to immigrate to Israel. Rason Halevi, Me-olam le-olam (Tel Aviv, 2002), 288–91. For more about Jewish men who Islamized after falling in love with Muslim women, see Zecharya ben ‘Awad al-’Adani, quoted in Tobi, “Ha-kehilah ha-yehudit be-teman,” 84. Two documents related to this story were published in Shalom Gamliel, Ha-yehudim veha-melekh, vol. 1 ( Jerusalem, 1986), 409–15. For example, Saida Sulayman and her husband immigrated to Israel in 1993. They left two daughters in Yemen, both married to Muslims. Their third daughter married a Jew in Israel. Naftali Hilger, “Boi teman,” Yediot aharonot, Feb. 13, 1998. This is seemingly a version of the same case reported by Galya Zeevi, “Ha-masa sheli le-teman,” Tehudah 19 (1999): 121–26, esp. 125–26. Hilger traveled to Yemen in 1998 accompanied by young Yemeni Jews who immigrated to Israel in the 1990s. Some of the Jews they met in Yemen said that they were reluctant to go to Israel because of its abundant temptations for religious

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people. The young visitors replied: “Are there not Jews here who were seen on the Sabbath in cars? Did not girls and boys Islamize here?” Hilger, “Boi teman.” Gamlieli, Ahavat teman, 226. Three of these songs were published in ibid., 227. Shalom Benei Moshe, “Dangerous Love,” in manuscript (ca. 1990), and in an interview with the author, Sept. 1995. Benei Moshe emphasized specifically that the woman was exceptionally beautiful and stated that the story was told to him by the couple, who lived in the Israeli town of Rosh Ha-ayyin. They had six children and about fifty grandchildren. Nissim Binyamin Gamlieli, Hevyon teman (Ramla, 1983), 86. Seadia Shaar, quoted in Tobi, “Ha-kehilah ha-yehudit be-teman,” 101. Benei Moshe, Ba-mesilah naaleh, 73–87. Khursan Madhala, Sefer toldot mishpahat madhala (Rehovot, 1983), 99–100. Ibid., 98. Information given by Shalom Lahav (the son of Yahya Hilba) in Kehilat yehudei bayhan (Netanya, 1996), 132–37. In 1996, Shalom Lahav, now living in Israel, searched for and found his Muslim half brother. This phenomenon is noted in Shemuel Yavneeli, Masa le-teman (Tel Aviv, 1952), 50. See also Isaac Holander, “Ibra’ in Highland Yemen: Two Jewish Divorce Settlements,” Islamic Law and Society 2, no. 1 (1995): 1–23, esp. 7. Sivya Yahya, interview, July 1994. Habiba Sanani converted with her daughter while her son remained with his father. In 1949, with the mass emigration of the Jews from Yemen, she fled to Aden, returned to Judaism, and immigrated to Israel. Her daughter remained in Yemen because she was married to a Muslim. Nissim Binyamin Gamlieli, Teman u-mahaneh geulah (Tel Aviv, 1966), 106. This story is also repeated in Benei Moshe, Ba-mesilah naaleh, 100–101. Yehiel Habshush, Sheerit ha-pletah mi-teman (Tel Aviv, 1990), 128. Neomi Cohen, interview, Mar. 1997. Wala Mahadun later married a Jewish man from Barat. In 1942, they immigrated to Palestine and settled in Rehovot, where she lived until her death in 1989. Heftziba Hilger, “Four Personal Stories,” in Bat teman, ed. Shalom Seri (Tel Aviv, 1993), 386–87. Aharon Ben-David, “‘Al aliyatam shel yehudei Sada veha-svivah le-erets Yisrael bi-shnat 1951,” Tehudah 19 (1999): 74– 81, esp. 77, tells about a Jewish woman fighting with her husband while traveling with her family to Aden on the way to Israel (in 1951). The woman refused to climb into a pickup truck with her husband and threatened that she would Islamize if forced to do so. Lewis, Jews of Islam, 95–96; Bornstein-Makovetsky, “Hitaslemut,” 29–47, esp. 33–34 and nn. 15, 16. See also the story above about Yosef Halevi, who was offered freedom if he Islamized. About Yosef al-Shaykh Levi and the circumstances of his conversion,

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see Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, The Jews of Yemen in the Nineteenth Century: A Portrait of a Messianic Community (Leiden, 1993), 94–95. The heads of the Jewish community’s petition to the Ottoman governor helped to ensure that the youth would not Islamize. He was guided to say in public that he did not wish to convert; thus, the Muslim scholars ruled that he should not be forced to Islamize. See David Qaraso, “Zikhron teman,” translated into Hebrew by Y. R. Molkho, in Yehudei teman ba-meah ha-esrim: Toldot u-mekorot, ed. Y. Tobi (Tel Aviv, 1976), 121–90, esp. 163–65. Qaraso adds that any Jewish prisoner who stated his wish to convert was released from prison. Goitein, “Dyokano shel kfar orgim temani,” 230. Yosef Dahuh-Halevi, interview, Apr. 2002. Imam Ahmad (r. 1948–62) opposed such conversions; see Goitein, “Dyokano shel kfar orgim temani,” 230. For Jewish men who Islamized and remained in Yemen, see Reuben Ahroni, “Addressing the Plight of the Yemeni ‘Agunot,” in Be-derekh lo slulah: Ovadia ben shalom—mishol hayim u-mifal hayim, ed. A. Mizrahi (Netanya, 2000), 267–77. Serjeant, who visited Habban in Dec. 1947, wrote that after his visit most of the Habbani Jews immigrated to Israel but some remained and Islamized; see Serjeant, Customary and Shari‘ah Law, 120–21. After 1973, Yehiel Mabari called on the Israeli government to help him bring his mother and her family to Israel. However, she passed away in Yemen in 1986. See the correspondence relating to this matter in Bet Nehama ve-Yair Archives, no. 43. Yair Madar-Halevi, “Naarah she-husharah al yedei aviha be-teman,” Bet Nehama ve-Yair Archives, Shaarayim File. Lahav, Kehilat yehudei bayhan, 124. The efforts of the boy’s Jewish relatives to contact him succeeded when they met him in 1995. The story and the efforts to locate ‘Abdalla alMuslimani were told by his cousin to Shalom Lahav (Kehilat yehudei bayhan, 120–31). The story was published again in Lahav, “Yeladim she-uslemu be-teman.” Zadoc ‘Umaysi, interview, Oct. 1994. This act was also performed in the case of the Islamization of minor orphans. But the orphan was not asked to pronounce the shahada. Being an orphan, he was not perceived as yet educated in the religion of his parents and therefore did not have to “convert.” See Eraqi Klorman, “Forced Conversion of Jewish Orphans,” 84. See Ratzaby, Be-maaglot teman, 231; Holander, “Ibra’ in Highland Yemen,” 1. This refers mainly to samna (clarified butter), an essential ingredient of the Yemeni kitchen that was eaten with bread. About Jews eating in tribesmen’s homes, see, e.g., Benei Moshe, Ba-mesilah naaleh, 86–87; Moshe Libi, Bi-ntivot mosheh, ed. Aharon Ben David (Qiryat ‘Eqron,

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2004), 67; Abraham Madhala, Ein li erets aheret (Tel Aviv, 1997), 34; and Eraqi Klorman, Yehudei teman, 2: 47–48. For the eating in public of meat soup by the Jewish convert, see Benei Moshe, Ba-mesilah naaleh, 86. For this act as a final proof of conversion, see ibid., 90. Regarding a youth who was forcibly fed meat soup by Muslims and believed that he had Islamized, see Gamliel, Ha-yehudim vehamelekh, 399, 402–3. For a folk tale that explains the Islamization of the Jews in the village of al-Salaf as a result of their eating nonkosher meat, see Nissim Binyamin Gamlieli, Hadrei teman: Sipurim ve-agadot (Tel Aviv, 1978), 207; another version of this tale can be found in Gamlieli, Hevyon teman, 85–86. For Jews who Islamized and then returned to Judaism and were punished by the Jewish court with 40 lashes, see Tobi, “Ha-kehilah ha-yehudit be-teman,” 80. Aharon Eraqi, interview, Feb. 1996, as told to him by his father, Shlomo Eraqi of al-Hajar. Gamlieli, Teman ba-teudot, 47–48; Yehuda Ratzaby, “Yehudim be-teman be-arkaot shel goyim: 11 shtarot hadashim (1864–1950),” Mi-mizrah umimaarav 6 (1995): 97–130, esp. 123; Gamliel, Ha-yehudim veha-melekh, 392. Gamlieli, Hevyon teman, 87, mentions the name ‘Abd al-Rahman alMuhtadi; Gamliel, Pikudei teman, 97, indicates the name ‘Ali Salih Isma’il al-Muhtadi; in Ahroni, “Addressing the Plight of the Yemeni ‘Agunot,” 271, a Jewish convert was named ‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Nasir Husayn; Shivtiel et al., “The Jews of San‘a,” 422, writes that in Bayhan, in addition to alMuhtadi, the name al-Muslimani was known for Jewish families who had converted in earlier generations. In places other than Yemen, the convert also received the family name of al-Muhtadi. Sometimes the preferable name was Muhammad. See Amnon Cohen, Jewish Life Under Islam: Jerusalem in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 127. Gamlieli, Teman ba-teudot, 49; Benei Moshe, Ba-mesilah naaleh, 86; Nissim ‘Ashri, interview, May 1994. For descriptions of the conversion ceremony, see also Yishari, Hayiti ben aruba, 220; Tobi, “Ha-kehilah ha-yehudit be-teman,” 68, 97; and Ratzaby, Be-maaglot teman, 234. Benei Moshe, Ba-mesilah naaleh, 87, summarizes the conversion steps in his view: “[C]utting the side locks as well as putting on the headdress, wearing the dagger, riding a horse, and eating animals not slaughtered ritually, symbolize the exit from the Jewish religion and the entrance to the Muslim religion.” See Shivtiel, “The Jews of San‘a,” 422. See Madhala, Sefer, 100, regarding a Jewish convert in northern Yemen. See also Yishari, Hayiti ben aruba, 220. Ibid. See also the story mentioned above about the Jewish youth who converted and was made a soldier (Gamlieli, interview, June 1994). Yosef Tobi, “Horaat bet din Sana be-inyan yehudi she-hemir et dato (1887),” in his Moreshet yehudei teman, 111–14. Madhala, Sefer, 98–99.

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76 Ibid., 100. 77 Gamliel, Ha-yehudim veha-melekh, 409–15. In 1941, Imam Yahya returned 12-year-old Yosef to his parents after the governor of al-Raydah had taken the boy in and fed him meat soup—turning the boy, so to speak, into a Muslim. The imam ruled that the governor acted unlawfully, since the boy was not an orphan. Ibid, 399–408. 78 Gamlieli, Teman ba-teudot, 49–50; Tobi, “Ha-kehilah ha-yehudit beteman,” 97. 79 Gamliel, Ha-yehudim veha-melekh, 392, 404; Gamlieli, Teman ba-teudot, 49; Ratzaby, Be-maaglot teman, 234. 80 Gamlieli, Teman u-mahaneh geulah, 70. 81 Gamlieli, Teman ba-teudot, 50 n. 4. 82 Thomas B. Stevenson, Social Change in a Yemeni Highland Town (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1985), 44. 83 Ratzaby, Be-maaglot teman, 234. 84 Quoted from Zcharia Dori, “Yatmut u-ndod—shmad ve-hasala—aliyat ha-yetomim be-mivtsa al kanfei nesharim,” Tehudah 19 (1999): 25–31, esp. 26, in spite of the fact that he was referring to minor Jewish orphans who did not choose their conversion. 85 Gamlieli, Teman u-mahaneh geulah, 70. 86 According to Muslim law, the marriage of a woman who converted to Islam and her husband who did not is irrevocably annulled. See Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, 164–66. 87 Gamlieli, Teman u-mahaneh geulah, 106. 88 Madhala, Sefer, 98. 89 Gamliel, Ha-yehudim veha-melekh, 392–98. 90 Halevi, Me-olam, 291–92. 91 See Jacob Katz, Bein yehudim le-goyim ( Jerusalem, 1977), 76. For the halakhah’s perspective toward the convert and his descendants, see Michael Corinaldi, Hidat ha-zehut ha-yehudit ( Jerusalem, 2001), 107–13. 92 Tobi, “Ha-kehilah ha-yehudit be-teman,” 80. 93 Goitein, “Dyokano shel kfar orgim temani,” 230. 94 Gamlieli, Ahavat teman, 244; Gamlieli, interview, June 1994. 95 Gamlieli, Ahavat teman, 244. 96 He contacted Jewish acquaintances who encouraged him and helped him to cross the border to Aden. See Yishari, Hayiti ben aruba, 221–37. 97 Dahuh-Halevi, interview, Apr. 2002. For more Jewish converts who returned to Judaism and immigrated to Israel, see Tobi, “Ha-kehilah hayehudit be-teman,” 90, 97. 98 For problems related to the division of property in cases of inheritance or divorce when one of the parties Islamized, see Nahshon, “Ha-hanhagah ha-yehudit be-teman,” 175. 99 See, e.g., Madhala, Sefer, 99. Ahroni, “Addressing the Plight of the Yemeni ‘Agunot,” 267, writes about a woman who immigrated to Israel in 1950 while her husband remained in Yemen and kept their two infants.

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Madar-Halevi, “Naarah she-husharah,” writes about a woman who Islamized in 1949 and took her two children with her. Yehuda Ratzaby, “Maasei bet din sana ba-meah ha-18,” Mi-mizrah umimaarav 4 (1983): 79–109, esp. 88. ‘Umaysi (interview, Oct. 1994) told about a Jew from Rada who Islamized in the first half of the twentieth century and deserted his wife. One Friday the Jews came to the mosque and asked the Muslim notables: “Is this person a Jew or a Muslim?” They answered: “He is a Muslim.” The Jews asked: “If this is the case, why does he have a Jewish woman?” They asked that the convert give his wife a divorce. The Muslim notables said that they did not have any objection, and the convert signed the get. About a Jew who Islamized in 1942 and agreed to divorce his wife who refused to convert with him, see Laurence D. Loeb, “Gender, Marriage, and Social Conflict in Habban,” in Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries: History and Culture in the Modern Era, ed. Harvey E. Goldberg (Bloomington, Ind., 1996), 259– 76, esp. 271. About women who were deserted following the conversion of husbands or brothers-in-law in medieval Jewish society, see Katz, Bein yehudim, 77–78. For the legal deliberation concerning the effort to release a young woman whose husband Islamized and disappeared when she immigrated to Israel in 1950, see Shlomo Siyani, Orhot shlomoh (Bnei Braq, 1992), and Ahroni, “Addressing the Plight of the Yemeni ‘Agunot.” Yemeni rabbis ruled in accordance with Jewish law that requires halitsah from a converted yavam. In very few such cases did they permit the release of the widow without halitsah. See Gaimani, “Ha-yibum bekerev benei teman,” 104–5, nn. 95, 96. Qaraso, “Zikhron teman,” 163. About Qaraso himself, see ibid., 122– 23. Seemingly there were whole villages that Islamized. These were probably the al-Muhtadiyin (reference to a Jewish past) villages in the Ashar district that might have Islamized as the result of a catastrophic event. They engaged in weaving, which was a typical Jewish trade. See Gamlieli, Teman u-mahaneh geulah, 70. Nehemia Levtzion, “Conversions and Islamization in the Middle Ages: How Did the Jews and Christians Differ?” Peamim 42 (1990): 8–15, esp. 10; Nehemia Levtzion, “Toward a Comparative Study of Islamization,” in Conversion to Islam, ed. N. Levtzion (New York, 1979), 1–23, esp. 9. See also Richard Bulliet, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” in Conversion and Continuity, ed. Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi (Toronto, 1990), 123–33. Tobi, “Hitaslemut be-kerev yehudei teman”; Ratzaby, Be-maaglot teman; Gaimani, “Ha-yibum be-kerev benei teman.” For the conversion of Jews in Muslim lands in medieval times, see Lewis, Jews of Islam, 95–102. On conversions in medieval times in the geniza documents, see S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. 2 (Berkeley, 1971), 299–311. For the conversion of Jews in Ottoman Jerusalem, see A. Cohen, Jewish Life Under Islam, 74–76, and Amnon Cohen

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and Elisheva Simon-Pikali, Jews in the Moslem Religious Court: Society, Economy and Communal Organization in the 16th Century Documents from Ottoman Jerusalem ( Jerusalem, 1993), 127–30. For more on Jewish Islamization in the Ottoman Empire, see Bornstein-Makovetsky, “Hitaslemut,” 29–47; Zvi Zohar, Masoret u-tmurah: Hitmodedut hakhmei yisrael be-mitsrayim u-ve-Suryah im etgarei ha-modernizatsyah 1880–1920 ( Jerusalem, 1993), 187–93; and Nissim Kazzaz, “Hamarot dat be-kerev yehudei Iraq ba-et ha-hadashah,” Peamim 42 (1990): 157–66. See Maimonides’ attitude toward Islam and Christianity in Amos Funkenstein, “Tfisato ha-historit veha-meshihit shel ha-rambam,” Tadmit ve-todaah historit (Tel Aviv, 1991), 103–56, esp. 139–42, and Amos Funkenstein, “Political Theory and Realistic Messianism,” Miscellanaea Mediaevalia 11 (1970): 81–103. See also Eliezer Schlossberg, “Yahaso shel ha-rambam el ha-islam,” Peamim 42 (1990): 38–60. Regarding the absence of absolute rejection of Islam’s values, see Menahem BenSasson, “Le-zehutam ha-yehudit shel anusim: Iyun be-hishtamdut bitekufat ha-almuwahidun,” Peamim 42 (1990): 16–36, esp. 20. About Jews in Jerba, Tunisia, showing religious empathy toward their Muslim neighbors and saying that they are true monotheists and have “descent laws,” see Shlomo Deshen, “Yehudei drom Tunisyah: Tsarfatyut, arviyut, yahadut,” Zmanim 82 (2003): 4–15, esp. 11. See Mark R. Cohen, “Ha-Islam veha-yehudim: Mitos, mitos negdi, historia,” in Sofrim muslemim al yehudim ve-yahadut, ed. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh ( Jerusalem, 1996), 21–36, esp. 34–35. For the Jews’ attitude toward Christianity, see Y. Yuval, “Ha-nakam veha-klalah, ha-dam ve-ha-alilah,” Zion 58, no. 1 (1993): 33–90. Sadi, “Dofi ha-zman,” 87. See Sara Stroumsa, “Al intelektualim yehudim mumarim bi-ymei habenayim ha-muqdamim tahat shilton ha-Islam,” Peamim 42 (1990): 61–75. Nevertheless, Rabbi Yahya Qafih and Hayyim Habshush, leading maskilim in Sanaa at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, were interested in Islamic lore and read Islamic history books and legal literature in Arabic. Habshush even conducted dialogues with Muslim scholars on these matters, but their content was not registered. See Eraqi Klorman, “Haskalah, yahadut ve-Islam.” Ratzaby, Be-maaglot teman, 231; Holander, “Ibra’ in Highland Yemen,” 1.