Swords of Iron Day 1082: The Last Jew Left in Yemen

One Jewish man is still imprisoned in Yemen because he tried to save an ancient Torah scroll. His name is Levi Marhabi, and I cannot look at his case and simply move on with my day.

A Red Line Nobody Expected

First, the news that has my attention. The Houthis, an Iranian aligned proxy in Yemen, reportedly launched a drone toward Mecca. Saudi authorities say they destroyed it before it reached the city’s restricted airspace.

Mecca is the center of Sunni Islam. That is not a border skirmish. That is a red line, and it shows how deep the Shiite and Sunni conflict underneath all of this actually runs.

We have serious training exercises on base right now, and I spent part of today watching Hercules planes fly low overhead. I used to jump out of those. Even so, my mind keeps going somewhere else.

The Mecca story will lead the news for a day and then vanish. The story I cannot shake, the story of Levi Marhabi, has been running quietly for a decade with almost nobody watching.

The Jews of Yemen

Jewish people lived in Yemen for thousands of years. War and ideology erased that community, and Levi Marhabi is what remains of it.

Think about the scale of that sentence. Thousands of years of births, weddings, funerals, synagogues and scholarship, gone inside a single lifetime.

Yemenite Jewish tradition preserved melodies and manuscript traditions you cannot find anywhere else on earth. Much of that survived only because families carried it out with them.

When a community like that disappears, the world does not just lose people. It loses a way of reading, singing and remembering that took a thousand years to build and one decade to end.

Who Levi Marhabi Is

There is reportedly one Jewish man left behind. Levi Marhabi.

Authorities detained him in 2016 after he tried to rescue an ancient Torah scroll, one that is reportedly around eight centuries old. A court ordered his release in 2019. He reportedly remained imprisoned anyway.

United States government sources have described beatings, electric shocks, starvation, food deprivation, solitary confinement, medical neglect and serious lasting injuries.

Sit with that for a second. One man, still in a cell, because he tried to save a scroll.

Not a weapon. Not intelligence. A scroll that his community had protected for centuries and could not carry out with them.

Israel Has Done This Before

Israel has rescued Jews from danger many times. Yemenite Jews came home through Operation Magic Carpet. Ethiopian Jews came home through operations that people still get emotional describing.

Israel eventually relocated nearly one hundred Yemeni Jews to safety in recent years. Levi Marhabi stayed behind.

That is the part I cannot make peace with. We got almost everybody. Almost.

And almost is a terrible word when it has a name and a face attached to it.

How Levi Marhabi Was Left Behind

For thousands of years Jews lived in Yemen under changing rulers and changing conditions.

Then the civil war intensified. The Houthis took control of large areas. Extremist jihadist ideology made Jewish life progressively more dangerous until it became impossible.

One of the world’s most ancient Jewish communities fled, and Levi Marhabi remained behind in the country they escaped.

What I Am Asking You to Do for Levi Marhabi

So I am asking you directly. Pray for Levi Marhabi.

Pray for his protection in that cell. Pray for his freedom. Pray that he will be rescued and reunited with his people while he is still alive to see it.

Share his name. A prisoner nobody is talking about is a prisoner nobody is coming for.

Governments respond to attention. That is not cynicism, it is just how these cases have always ended, and the ones that end well usually started with people refusing to stop saying a name.

The God of Jacob Defends

Psalm 20 says it this way. The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble. The name of the God of Jacob defend thee.

I believe God sees Levi Marhabi and hears his cry, even in a place where nobody else is listening.

And I am praying that God brings him out.

Watch the full update here: Swords of Iron Day 1082, FreeLeviMarhabi