Yemenite Jews were cast as living relics of the biblical era

Evidence

The perception of non-European Jewish communities and particularly the Yemenite as the “lost brothers” from a far distant biblical era, for whom time had stopped and in whom ancient traditions were preserved as they were, had also resonated in Palestine in the way the Yemenite Jews were regarded by Ashkenazi Jews. As Eliezer Ben-Yehuda remarked: “we still find among them the social condition of Israel as it was at the time of the mishna.” This view of oriental Jews, and the Yemenites in particular, was embedded in the Western perception of the Orient as inherently primitive where people “had not been subject to the ordinary processes of history.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 586

Categorization

• XREF: Strong echo of the ‘noble savage’ and ‘living fossils’ tropes applied to colonized peoples worldwide.