Bucks County EGA

Join our next meeting on Tuesday, February 21, 2023, for a Zoom lecture. Interested? Comment below or email us.

Lecture: Embroidery, Clothing, and Feminine Identity in Jewish Yemen
by India Hayford

Nothing identifies or disguises us as quickly as the clothing we wear. How we dress reflects our place in the world and how we want other people to perceive us. Nowhere has clothing and its embellishment been more important to identity than among the Jewish women of Yemen. When they were forced to abandon their national costumes and traditional wedding dresses during the 1949-1950 airlifts of Jews out of Yemen to Israel, they left behind precious symbols of regional, familial, and personal identity. Upon arriving in Israel, they saw their embroidery and traditional costumes ruthlessly adapted and modified by a country bent on creating a single national identity for Jews returning from the Diaspora following World War II. In the process, Yemenite Jewish women lost a significant portion of their own identities.

This virtual lecture is supplemented by dozens of photographs of embroidery and costume.