Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Reviving tradition
Jewish Yemenites take pride in their heritage
At a recent henna celebration at the Yemeni Heritage Center in Rosh HaAyin, Israel, the bride had three ensemble changes, each representing a city or region in Yemen. Although the bride and groom were raised in Israel, honoring their Yemeni heritage was important to them.
“I am Yemenite on both sides, and it’s a celebration of my wedding,” the bride, Meyrav Yehud, 24, said. “These are my roots.”
The henna ceremony is a pre-wedding event that has been a tradition in Asian, North African and Middle Eastern cultures. During it, women paint designs or, in this case, placed dye onto the skin of the bride and her guests about a week before the wedding. In Yemen, the henna dye was believed to symbolize fertility; the deeper the color of the dye, the better it was for the woman. In some cases, they would apply it for days.
In a town that in the 1950s served as an immigrant transit camp for Jewish Yemenites, members gathered in an elaborately decorated venue meant to echo traditional life in Yemen, complete with a fake well and photographs of the new Yemeni immigrants in Israel. The town was more than 1,000 miles from Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa, which influenced the most striking look of the night: a tall cone-shaped headpiece, the tashbuk, traditionally made of pearls and flowers, accessorized with silver and gold jewelry.
It was “heavy and it hurts,” Yehud said. But she added, “It’s why you do the henna; it’s an experience.”
During the last few decades, henna ceremonies have regained popularity in Israel’s Yemenite Jewish community as an expression of pride in the heritage and traditions of Yemen.
A culture is being formed again around the traditional aspects including the bride and groom’s garments, which are rare and costly — dresses with jewelry start at $14,000.
Henna ceremonies were popular in Yemeni society, with Jews and Muslims sharing the custom. In 1949, Jews from all over Yemen were airlifted to Israel in a yearlong effort known as Operation Magic Carpet.
(Smaller numbers came earlier, pre-state, from the end of the 19th century, and in subsequent migrations.)
Many tried to take traditional bridal garments and jewelry, but because of their weight, most of the items were left behind. During the early years after the founding of the state, Jews emigrated from more than
80 countries and from several ethnic groups, forging a new Israeli identity that was often favored over the languages and other aspects of diaspora identities. Mizrahi Jews from North African and Middle Eastern countries were often looked down upon by the Ashkenazi establishment and pressured to leave their diaspora culture behind, and thus, henna ceremonies became smaller and more discreet among the Jewish Yemenite community.
That changed somewhat in 1965 when the Israel Museum in Jerusalem featured an exhibit of a Jewish bride from Sanaa, Yemen. Showcasing the garment was significant because it honored a part of the diaspora culture. But it wasn’t until the late 1970s, as a result of a political shift in Israel, that people started talking about ethnic pride in Israel.
Carmella Abdar, a professor in folk culture at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Achva Academic College, said that in contemporary Israel, the headpiece is made in advance for the bride. But traditionally in Yemen, artisans would assemble the headpiece by hand on the bride herself, who couldn’t move for hours.
By the design of the dress, the bride takes the shape of a triangle. “The shape is very central in the material culture of Yemen,” Abdar said. Triangles symbolize the woman’s fertility and are believed to have supernatural powers, but she said that in modern Israel, the ceremony has more to do with “ethnic identity than magical powers.”
In Yemen, there were many similarities between Muslim and Jewish brides. The practice of dyeing hands and feet has been used for centuries in India, Pakistan, Africa and the Middle East; Jews adopted the tradition from their Muslim neighbors. Abdar said Jewish jewelers in Yemen would make jewelry for Muslims and Jews. They also added some distinctly Jewish touches, like the necklace-like labeh, worn below the chin, and stacked bracelets.
When the celebration officially begins in Rosh HaAyin, the bride and groom stand below a talit, a Jewish prayer shawl, as they make their entrance. They are surrounded by entertainers who have adorned the celebration hall with symbols of old Yemen and who are also dressed in costumes reminiscent of Yemeni clothes, even wearing fake payot or simonim, which are sidelocks, which were once the signature look of Yemeni Jewish men. One man blows the shofar, a ram’s horn, to further welcome the couple.
Toward the end of the evening, the immediate family gathers on stage, and guests watch as the henna paste is mixed, speeches are made and songs are sung to praise the bride. The bride applies the henna paste to the palms of her guests. Once dried and removed, the henna paste will leave an orange tint, showing that they have been to a celebration.