Yemenite Jews

Yemenite Jews (Hebrew: יהודי תימן‎ Yehudei teiman; Arabic: اليهود اليمنيين‎) are those Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen. The term may also refer to the descendants of the Yemenite Jewish community. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the overwhelming majority of Yemen's Jewish population was transported to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. After several waves of persecution throughout Yemen, most Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, while small communities are found in the United States and elsewhere. Only a handful remain in Yemen. The few remaining Jews experience intense, and at times violent, anti-Semitism on a daily basis.

Yemenite Jews have a unique religious tradition that marks them out as separate from Ashkenazi, Sephardi and other Jewish groups. Yemenite Jews are generally described as belonging to "Mizrahi Jews", though they differ from the general trend of Mizrahi groups in Israel, which have undergone a process of total or partial assimilation to Sephardic culture and Sephardic liturgy. (While the Shami sub-group of Yemenite Jews did adopt a Sephardic-influenced rite, this was in no small part due to it essentially being forced upon them and did not reflect a demographic or cultural shift).

Yemenite step

The Yemenite step (Hebrew: צעד תימני‎) (Tsa'ad Temani) is a dance step widely used in Yemenite Jewish dancing and Israeli folk dancing.

Description

Yemenite step is a popular dance performed Jews during weddings and other Jewish occasions. The basic Yemenite step provides a swaying movement that changes the dancer's direction of motion, although the dancer may face forward throughout the step. It is usually a sideways movement, but may be done moving backward and forward (or vice versa). It consists of three steps, with a short pause on the final step for a "quick, quick, slow" tempo.

The most common variations are known as a right Yemenite (or Yemenite right), and left Yemenite (or Yemenite left). (The alternate form of each name—placing the adjective after the noun—is due to a common preference among dance teachers to emphasize the name of the step rather than its direction.) Each of these names specifies both the direction of the first movement, and the foot on which the movement begins (and ends).