Women of Valor: The Reflections of a 19th Century Yemeni Jewish Man on Rape Culture

• In Event: Women, Marriage, and Agency Among Jews of Muslim Lands in Modern Times

Abstract

A Vision of Yemen is a nineteenth-century travelogue written by an urban Yemeni Jewish man named Hayyim Habshush, who guided a European maskil and professor around Yemen in 1869. As Habshush depicts it, the journey served as an opportunity not only for Habshush to provide native expertise and guidance to the European outsider, but also for Habshush to newly discover people and cultures within Yemen who were new to him but with whom he identified, either as fellow Yemenis or as fellow Jews. The tale of foreign exploration is thus also a tale of self-discovery and reflection.
Among the most troubling discoveries and self-discoveries Habshush makes is about systemic structures that empower women, weaken women, and re-victimize women in the face of rape. This discovery comes about in the form of a dramatic encounter, in which Habshush and his European companion find themselves as houseguests of a bedouin Jewish family that is preparing to kill their daughter, who has fallen pregnant as a result of a rape. Habshush feels compelled to save the beautiful, pitiable young woman, but in his attempts to formulate a plan to do so he comes to untangle all the forces that have brought her and him to this point, all that might have prevented it, and all that stands in the way of moving forward and averting further tragedy. In so doing, he ruminates on biblical laws of rape; halakhah and legal attitudes towards the fetus, legitimate birth, polygamy, and the limitations of a legalistic worldview. He also probes his own selfish motivations and desires with respect to the woman and her family; and those factors which differentiate a woman who finds herself helpless from a woman who finds the means to struggle against predation. Habshush’s work thus provides us with an important glimpse into how traditional ideas on gender relations and the family were renegotiated at a time when Yemen was beginning to be overwhelmed by the New Imperialism, both Ottoman and European.

Author

• Alan Verskin, University of Rhode Island