As Jews around the world prepare for Yom Kippur, the last known Jew in Yemen will be forced to observe the holy day alone in an Islamist dungeon.
For the past seven years, Levi Marhabi has been held hostage by the ruthless and fanatical Houthi rebels who control large swathes of Yemen.
He is in poor health, and it is time for world Jewry to sound the alarm and press the international community to take action to bring about his release.
According to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a bipartisan federal government agency, Marhabi was arrested by Houthi forces in March 2016. He was accused of helping some of his fellow Yemeni Jews to take a family Torah scroll out of the country and was sentenced on March 13, 2018, to three years and six months in prison. The following year, a Yemeni appeals court ordered that he be set free, but Houthi officials ignored the ruling and continue to hold him.
According to the USCIRF’s database of religious prisoners of conscience, “Marhabi lives in inhumane prison conditions, where his health continues to deteriorate. He reportedly suffers from kidney and lung issues and has lost all his teeth from being tortured repeatedly.” Other reports indicate that he may be partially paralyzed as well.
Marhabi is the last known living heir in Yemen to a once-vibrant Jewish community that dates back at least 2,000 years and possibly traces its origins to biblical times.
The last heir to the 2,000-year-old history of Yemen's Jews
Scholars say that the earliest evidence of a Jewish presence in the country is from the 3rd century CE, but Yemeni Jews have various traditions and legends suggesting that their ancestors first settled in the area during the First Temple period or perhaps even earlier, under King Solomon.
Some 1,600 years ago, a remarkable event took place in the annals of Yemeni Jewish history. According to Simon Schama in his book The Story of the Jews, “By the late fourth century CE, just as life for Jews in Christendom was beginning to turn starkly harsher, Judaism made its spectacular conquest in Arabia, when the kingdom of Himyar (corresponding, territorially, to present-day Yemen, and the dominant power on the Arabian Peninsula for 250 years) converted to Judaism.” The king, Abu Karib, is said to have decided to convert after he fell ill and was saved by two Jewish doctors, Kaab and Assad. Archaeological finds, such as Hebrew inscriptions and an ancient mikveh, buttress the account of the realm’s conversion.
In the Middle Ages, after the advent of a false messiah in Yemen, Rabbi Yaakov – the son of Rabbi Netanel Fayumi – wrote to Maimonides in Egypt for guidance. The latter responded with what has come to be known as his Iggeret Teiman, or “Epistle to Yemen,” in which he encouraged Yemen’s Jews and expounded on various matters of Jewish belief.
Yemenite Jews then embraced Maimonides’ halachic rulings (with some exceptions) and sent him many queries about Jewish law. To this day, for example, Yemenite Jews follow Maimonides’ ruling and will reheat liquids such as soup on the Sabbath, in contrast to most Sephardim and Ashkenazim.
And on Sukkot, they recite a blessing upon entering a sukkah, even if they have no intention of eating there, which is also in accordance with Maimonides’ position.
Centuries later, amid the modern stirrings for Zion, large numbers of Yemenite Jews began moving to Israel in 1881, with many making the journey on foot. Subsequent waves of aliyah brought the number of Yemeni Jews living in Israel in 1947 to approximately 35,000. Following the 1948 rebirth of the Jewish state, another 50,000 Jews were brought to Israel from Yemen between June 1949 and September 1950 in what was dubbed Operation Magic Carpet.
In the decades since, Yemen’s Jewish population has steadily declined, a process that accelerated when the Houthi rebels stormed the capital of Sana’a in 2014. Openly professing antisemitism, the Houthis moved quickly to pressure Yemen’s remaining Jews.
According to a report issued last year by the United Nations special rapporteur on religious freedom, the Houthis have conducted a systematic campaign of persecution against various religious minorities such as Christians, Baha’is and, of course, the Jews.
As recently as 2016, there were still an estimated 1,500 Jews reportedly living in Yemen, but just two years later that number had fallen to 50.
Later, under pressure from Houthi extremists, nearly all the remaining Jews fled the country, including 13 families expelled from Sana’a in March 2021.
And now, it appears, Levi Marhabi is the last Jew in Yemen.
The US State Department, as well as Jewish organizations such as the American Sephardi Federation, have called for Marhabi’s release on a number of occasions.
With a UN-negotiated ceasefire in Yemen largely holding, and peace talks being held in Riyadh this week between the Houthis and the Saudi government, now is the time to raise our voices on behalf of Levi Marhabi and to push for his release on humanitarian grounds.
It won’t be simple, since the Houthis’ primary backer is Iran, which is unlikely to be moved by the plight of a Jew in distress.
But however difficult the situation might appear to be, it does not absolve us from doing what we can to try to save Marhabi’s life, appealing to politicians, decision-makers, and Jewish organizations to act.
And during the penitential prayers of slihot, which follow Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur night, when we ask the Creator, “Let our plea rise from evening, let our cry come [to You] from morning,” please keep Levi Marhabi in mind.
We owe it to him and to the glorious legacy of Yemenite Jewry to do no less.
The writer served as deputy communications director under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his first term of office.