Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Temanim (Hebrew: יהודי תימן, romanized: Yehudei Teman; Arabic: اليهود اليمنيون, romanized: al-yahūd al-yamaniyyūn), are a Jewish diaspora group who live or once lived in Yemen and their descendants who maintain their customs. After several waves of persecution, the vast majority of Yemenite Jews emigrated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet between June 1949 and September 1950. Most Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, with smaller communities in the United States and elsewhere. As of 2024, reputedly only one Jew, Levi Marhabi, remains in Yemen. However, Ynet cited local sources stating that the actual number is five.

Yemenite Jews observe a unique religious tradition that distinguishes them from Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and other Jewish groups. They have been described as "the most Jewish of all Jews" and "the ones who have preserved the Hebrew language the best". Yemeni Jews are considered Mizrahi or "Eastern" Jews. However, they differ from other Mizrahis, who have undergone a process of total or partial assimilation to Sephardic law and customs. While the Shami Yemeni Jews did adopt a Sephardic-influenced rite, this was primarily due to it being forced upon them, and did not reflect a demographic or general cultural shift among the vast majority of Yemenite Jews.

Records referring to Judaism in Yemen started to appear in Himyar, a polity established in what is now Yemen in 110 BCE. Various inscriptions in the Ancient South Arabian script in the 2nd century refer to the construction of synagogues approved by Himyarite kings.

In the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132, there was significant Jewish emigration from Roman Judea to Yemen, which was then famous in the Greco-Roman world for its prosperous trade, particularly in spices. The Christian missionary Theophilos the Indian, who came to Yemen in the mid-fourth century, complained that he had found great numbers of Jews. By 380, Himyarite religious practices had undergone fundamental changes. The inscriptions were no longer addressed to Almaqah or Attar but to a single deity called Rahmanan. Debate among scholars continues as to whether Judaism or Christianity influenced Himyarite monotheism.

Jews became especially numerous and influential in South Arabia, a rich and fertile land of incense and spices and a way station on the incense trade route and the trade routes to Africa, India, and East Asia. Yemeni tribes did not oppose the Jewish presence in their country.

In 390, the Himyarite king Abu Karib led a military campaign northwards and fought the Jews of Yathrib in the Hijaz. When Abu Karib fell ill, two local Jewish scholars, Kaab and Assad, took the opportunity to travel to his camp, where they treated him and persuaded him to lift the siege. The scholars also inspired the king with an interest in Judaism, and he converted in 390, persuading his army to do likewise. With this, the Himyar, "the dominant power on the Arabian peninsula", was converted to Judaism. In Yemen, several inscriptions dating back to the 4th and 5th centuries have been found in Hebrew and Sabaean praising the ruling house in Jewish terms for "helping and empowering the People of Israel".

By 516, tribal unrest broke out, and several tribal elites fought for power. One of those elites was Joseph dhu Nuwas or Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar as mentioned in Ancient South Arabian inscriptions. The actual story of Joseph is murky. Greek and Ethiopian accounts portray him as a Jewish zealot. Some scholars suggest that he was a convert to Judaism. Church of the East accounts claim that his mother was a Jew taken captive from Nisibis and bought by a king in Yemen, whose ancestors had formerly converted to Judaism. Syriac and Byzantine sources maintain that Yūsuf Asʾar sought to convert other Yemenis but they refused to renounce Christianity. The actual picture, however, remains unclear.

In 2009, a BBC broadcast defended a claim that Yūsuf Asʾar offered villagers the choice between conversion to Judaism or death and then massacred 20,000 Christians. The program's producers stated, "The production team spoke to many historians over 18 months, among them Nigel Groom, who was our consultant, and Professor Abdul Rahman Al-Ansary [former professor of archaeology at the King Saud University in Riyadh]." Inscriptions attributed to Yūsuf Asʾar himself show the great pride he expressed after killing more than 22,000 Christians in Ẓafār and Najran. According to Jamme, Sabaean inscriptions reveal that the combined war booty (excluding deaths) from campaigns waged against the Abyssinians in Ẓafār, the fighters in 'Ašʻarān, Rakbān, Farasān, Muḥwān (Mocha), and the fighters and military units in Najran, amounted to 12,500 war trophies, 11,000 captives and 290,000 camels and bovines and sheep.