ABSTRACT
In 1839 the British conquered and began to rule Aden and its hinterlands. This put the British on the doorstep of Yemen and gave the Jews an outlet to the rest of the world. The Jewish community of Aden, closely related to that of Yemen, increased in well-being and importance under British rule, and they and the Yemeni community gained more access to the wider Jewish world. The middle of the nineteenth century was a period of heightened messianic expectation among Yemen’s Jews. Granted the very significant role of messianism in the decision to leave Yemen for Erets Yisrael, the prevailing political and economic conditions were also important. Although Jerusalem had a small population of Jewish merchants, primarily Sephaidim, an elite who had long lived in the Near East, many of the city’s European and Middle Eastern Jews were members of religious communities living from charity collected from Jewish people in the diaspora, including Yemen.
