Operation Magic Carpet

You're listening to the Everything Jewish Ten Minutes at a Time podcast, where you'll learn about every Jewish topic imaginable in about ten minutes.

Today's topic is Operation Magic Carpet.

Please forgive my Hebrew and in Arabic pronunciation.

The history is real, but the voice is AI.

So if Yemen sounds like a deli order, blame the software, not anyone's bubbe.

Operation Magic Carpet was the nineteen forty-nine and nineteen fifty airlift that brought almost fifty thousand Jews from Yemen, Aden, and nearby territories to Israel.

Its Hebrew name was Operation On Eagle's Wings, from Exodus, where God says, "I carried you on eagle's wings." That beats, "Place your tray table upright," although both involve, uh, baggage policies today.

Yemenite Jewish history did not begin with airplanes.

Some arrived through dramatic operations.

Operation Magic Carpet brought most of Yemen's Jewish community in nineteen forty-nine and nineteen fifty.

Operation Ezra and Nehemiah transported most Iraqi Jews in nineteen fifty-one and nineteen fifty-two after Iraq permitted emigration under conditions including lost citizenship and property.

Jews arrived from Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Poland, Romania, and elsewhere through combinations of Zionism, persecution, insecurity, economics, policy, and family choice.

At any rate, their existence as artisans led to extreme solidarity and strictest religious discipline.

they lived the old talmudic law to the letter and bore the closest resemblance to the original jews of palestine by whom they had been converted to judaism like other yemenites the yemenite jews lived by western standards under sub-normal conditions but the yemenite jews were no worse off than their neighbors were These Yemeni Jews were transported to Israel in an operation colorfully labeled the Magic Carpet in two stages, December 1948 to March 1949 and July 1949 to September 1950 at a cost of approximately $5.5 million.

The Near East Airlines handled this airlift with five Skymasters and one tutor.

These medieval people, most of whom had never seen a plane before, wished to hurry to Israel largely for religious reasons.

So there, this is important, guys.

Why would they name them Operation Ezra and Operation Nehemiah? And then another one, Operation Magic Carpet.

Isn't that interesting? Operation Moses, Operation Solomon.

What are those? These are historical true events.

It still says Egypt, so some people did go back home.

But if you look at all that, this is the four corners of the earth, right? Yemen is not on Isaiah's list by name, but it sits at the far corner of Arabia.

The archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee record almost 49,000 Yemenite Jews flow to Israel between December 1948 and September 1950 in what most people call Operation Magic Carpet.

Yeah, that was that, again, the, again, we, we, we have Operation Nehemiah, Operation Moses, Operation Ezra, right? All these things were like wings like eagles, right? God was bringing, gathering back his people.

Last

one here, Operation Magic Carpet.

Operation Magic Carpet concludes after transporting 45,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel.

Yeah, after they made Israel, after Israel was a thing in like, what is it, 47 or 48? when Israel is sort of Ben-Gurion.

I can't remember if it's 47 or 48.

Lots and lots of Jews decided to do that, including Yemeni ones.

Those in Yemeni, in Yemen.

Operation Magic Carpet.