Remembering the 1947 Pogrom in Aden

Last Saturday marked the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of anti-Jewish riots in the Yemenite city of Aden, then a British protectorate. Anticipating a violent response to the November 29 UN decision to partition Palestine, local Jews had organized to defend themselves and, when the vicious attacks by their neighbors began, were at first successful. Dani Goldsmith and Sarah Ansbacher write:

[O]n the second day of rioting, the British dispatched soldiers to “protect” the Jews. They sent in the so-called Aden Protectorate Levies (APL), a British-trained Bedouin legion. Instead of protecting them, however, they directed their rifles against the Jewish community and shot them as they ran through the streets and even while they sheltered in their own homes. There are harrowing first-hand accounts, such as that of a thirteen-year-old girl whose father was hit by a sniper in front of her eyes as the family stood on the roof [of their home]. . . .

The mobs were emboldened by the actions of the APL and the terror intensified, a bloodlust kindled by hate and opportunity. They went on a rampage with knives and set fire to homes and schools. Synagogues were burned, Jewish-owned shops were looted and wrecked. Everyone and everything belonging to the community was a target. . . . On the third day, the killing, injuries, and burning of homes continued unabated. Only sometime after midday did the commanders of the British army intervene and send in marines, who were moored at the port, to quell the riots.

The results of the three days of terror were dreadful. Eighty-seven Jews, members of the local Aden community and Jewish refugees from [the independent kingdom of] Yemen, had been slaughtered or burned to death. The count included children, women, and the elderly. Nobody was given quarter. Over 70 more were seriously injured. The two Jewish schools, several synagogues, and many homes had been destroyed; almost every single Jewish-owned shop had been looted and some burned down.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Anti-Semitism, History & Ideas, United Kingdom, Yemen

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society