Art exhibit highlights Yemenite Jewry

The project titled “Come Forth, O Yemen” describes my journey to the material culture and riches of the Yemenite Jewish community through the image of the Yemenite woman, particularly the Yemenite bride, with her splendid clothes and jewelry. The image of the Yemenite bride is at the heart of the art project – colorful, adorned, and uniquely different in cities and villages across Yemen’s various regions.

I began my journey researching Jewish brides from Islamic countries in general, as in my eyes they epitomized the pinnacle of cultural riches and aesthetics, wearing the finest clothes and bedecked in ample ornamental jewelry.

Yemen was my journey’s first destination, but before long I understood I had to take time and expand my research, leaving behind Sana’a and its bridal attire, commonly identified as “a Yemenite bride’s attire.” This wondrous research opened a rich world of color, symbols, mysticism, and social and educational meanings. It introduced me to unusual fabrics and the complex and astonishing gold and silver crafting of Yemenite Jews, the best of its kind.

The development of Yemenite Jewish culture

Geography plays a central role in a culture’s development and helps in its understanding. Yemen’s location on international trade routes that run across it contributed to its cultural shaping and increased its visibility. The viewer will find among my works paintings depicting Yemen and Jewish life there. I came across two Jewish photographers who worked in Yemen. The first is Yihye Haybi (1911-1977), the only photographer in Sana’a in the 1930s and 1940s. Haybi learned photography from Italian physicians who arrived in the capital city, and the government authorized him to take photos there. His photos document life in Sana’a, specifically the life of its Jewish community, and are rare and significant documentation of that period. The second photographer is Myriam Tanji, a French Jew born in the 1960s, who visited Yemen several times in the 1980s-1990s and documented its last remaining Jewish communities. From the rare black-and-white pictures of the two, I picked out several documenting the urban landscape, Jewish life, and women working at various crafts. The photos inspired me to bring to life this lost culture through my creations.

The journey, which began as an aesthetic investigation of the culture and awe at its material and decorative richness, deepened my understanding of the social, mystical, and educational significance attributed to the bridal attire. In a society that attaches greater importance to family, social, and religious contexts than to the individual, rites of passage with their typical clothes and customs are didactic by nature. Their purpose is to prepare individuals for a new phase and status in their social life. Thus, the bridal rituals and clothes intend, among other things, to prepare the young bride for her new life, where she replaces her childhood life in her parents’ home with that of a married woman, with everything this implies. The Yemenite bridal attire, with the large, heavy jewelry the bride must wear for long hours, exemplifies this passage, symbolizing the weight a woman must bear once she begins her life as a married woman.

A selection from Avigail Ohana’s art exhibition. (credit: AVIGAIL OHANA)

During my studies, I conducted field research with the support of the nonprofit Association for Preserving the Social and Cultural Heritage of Yemenite Jews. As part of my research, I met with women who immigrated to Israel from Yemen, some in the 1950s and some with the last Jewish aliyah from Yemen in the 1990s. The women generously shared with me their personal experiences, the meaning of a wedding at a very young age, different rituals, their feelings, and lives. Their stories shed additional light on the Yemenite bride image, inspiring my work. Most of all, I wanted to present the bride with her background as a metaphor for a woman who blends into the home once she weds.

Besides the women who had married in Yemen, I interviewed second- and third-generation members preserving traditional crafts: gold and silver crafts, embroidery, and painting. They spoke about their work and shared their sense of mission, the significance they attached to safeguarding their tradition, and their efforts and activities to preserve and bequeath this tradition to the next generations. Some edited excerpts from the interviews are available on the attached link.

The Association for Preserving the Social and Cultural Heritage of Yemenite Jews proved to be a significant partner to this project and generously financed the exhibition. Headed by Yigal Ben-Shalom, it engages with cultural, educational, and research aspects of the Yemenite Jews’ heritage. It manages the Yemenite Jewish Heritage Museum in Netanya, holds cultural activities across Israel, publishes books and journals, and supports young artists in music, dance, and art inspired by the Yemenite Jewish tradition in their work.

The exhibition, which was on display at the Jerusalem Theatre until the end of July, was curated by Batsheva Goldman-Ida.■

Avigail Ohana, born in 1993 in Jerusalem, is an MA student in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Department of Art History. She is a creative and community artist, engaging in education and participatory art. Her works relate to all aspects of society, tradition, heritage, foreign culture, and social and community features and deficiencies. In her work, she combines art, research, and society, addressing social and cultural issues while inviting the participation of other society figures who could contribute and benefit from the joint work.