"Oriental Jews"

"We go into a Yemenite synagogue. The early arrivals have left their shoes at the door, Arab style. Bearded, dark-faced, they sit along the wall. You see their stockinged feet on the footrests of their lecterns. It is traditional on Friday afternoons to read the Song of Songs aloud, and they are reciting or chanting it now, in long lines, un-European in intonation. This chanting resembles the collective recitations you hear when passing Arab school rooms.

"Ben-David knows a lot about the lives of Jews from the Arab countries. He often makes the point that they, too, are refugees who fled from persecution and whose property was confiscated. World opinion concentrates on the Palestinian refugees while these Oriental Jews--nearly a million of them--are given no consideration. It is inevitable that he and I should turn to politics. Sightseeing is all very well, but our heads are full of news, omens, and speculations."

~~ from Saul Bellow's To Jerusalem and Back