‘Here's your dinner, Jews’: Yemenite-Jewish lamentation in Israel as a commemoration of shame

A covert reason for the decline of ritual wailing among Yemenite-Jewish women in Israel is the community's memory of its stay in Yemen as a period of ‘exile’ manifested in dhimmi status. According to respondents’ oral history, Jewish lamentation was exploited by members of the majority Muslim population to compel Jews – mostly men – to wail in honor of Muslim dead. The article makes its main contribution by revealing this historical episode and...