For the first time since the State of Israel was founded, a state ceremony will be held to mark the immigration of Yemenite Jews. The event will reflect the faith, longing and yearning to ascend to the Land of Israel, and will honor those who perished on the way and never made it to the country.
The ceremony will take place on Monday, December 8, at the Jerusalem Theater, led by the Heritage and the Jerusalem Municipality Ministry. It will focus on the influence of Yemenite Jewry on Israeli society, from culture and music to Torah study and spiritual life, settlement, security and public service.
Special certificates of appreciation will be awarded to war wounded and to volunteers who serve the people and the land. The evening will conclude with a children’s choir from Pardes Hanna performing with singer Bar Tzabari the song 'Generation to generation.' Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar and Knesset member Yoni Mashriki are set to speak at the event.
Among the 400 names of those who died are members of the family of Miriam Libi, 102, who was born in northern Yemen. When the route to Israel opened, she set out on the long journey with her family and with the family of her husband, Moshe, who headed a transit station in Aden and helped organize the immigration. During a grueling trek over days and weeks, in freezing cold and blistering heat, they endured hardships, disease and bandits. Within a single year, Libi lost her entire family: her parents, four sisters and her grandfather. Despite everything, she continued on to the Land of Israel with her husband until they reached the Geula camp, where they learned that the state had been declared. Their first daughter, Mazal, was born there. Libi has eight children, 52 great-grandchildren and 10 great-great-grandchildren.
Shaul Libi, her son, said, “To this day, Mom misses two Yemeni Arab friends she lived with in real harmony. They told her then, ‘Why go up to the Land of Israel? It is a land of blood.’ But faith and the yearning for Zion brought her to Israel and to build a family to be proud of.”
Every immigrant has a name
Dr. Ben Shalom said the effort to locate and document the names collected so far began with the work of Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, professor emerita of history at the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “We know of at least 1,000 who died on their way to Israel, and our task is to complete the missing names and memorialize their memory. That is why we are appealing to the public, to the families of immigrants from Yemen, to add the names of their loved ones who never reached the Holy Land,” he said.
To advance the project, the association developed a dedicated app through which the public can add names of people who died and are still unknown. At the Yemenite Jewry Forest near Givat Ye’arim, there is also a memorial with stations offering information on Yemenite Jews in different areas, including history, culture, immigration and settlement, key figures and artists, as well as a list of those who perished. The forest was established at the initiative of the late Ovadia Ben Shalom, a former president and founder of the association. Dr. Ben Shalom and the Jewish National Fund have since turned it into a digital forest with information stands and QR code scanning.
Mashriki, who initiated the law to establish the annual state ceremony, said the event would raise public awareness of the rich history and culture of Yemenite Jews. “As a son of the Yemenite community, it is a great privilege for me to reach this moving moment, which for the first time, in an official state setting, lifts up the glorious heritage of Yemenite Jewry,” he said. “This special ceremony, which will be held every year in accordance with the law I passed in the Knesset, will express the immense contribution of this aliyah to Israeli society, from the earliest days of the Jewish community in the land to the present.”