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In the aftermath of the December 1947 anti-Jewish riots in British Colonial ‘Aden, local community leaders formed the Jewish Emergency Committee (JEC). The Committee embraced the tasks of rehabilitating the ‘Adeni Jewish Quarter and its residents, representing ‘Adeni Jewry to world Jewish organizations, and advocating for Yemeni Jewish refugees caught on the multitiered Yemen-‘Aden border. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) spearheaded the global Jewish effort to revitalize ‘Aden’s Jewish Quarter. Its relationship with the local Jewish community, however, quickly soured. The JDC, like the Alliance Israélite Universelle in North Africa, attempted to leverage its control of foreign monies to transform the culture, leadership, and gender dynamics of ‘Adeni Jewry. Ultimately, the JDC staff lost the trust of the local community, and the Jewish Quarter was never fully revitalized. Instead, the JDC grudgingly paid the migration costs of ‘Adenis whom it had failed to rehabilitate locally. The JEC fought the JDC’s cultural interventions by mobilizing popular protest, threatening violence, and exploiting fault lines between Jewish philanthropic organizations. Unable to convince the British Board of Jewish Deputies to hold the JDC accountable, the Committee turned to the disaffected World Jewish Congress (WJC), finding in it an organization willing to act as a gadfly against larger, better-established Jewish institutions. The ‘Adeni Jewish story is thus not only a case study in the cultural incompetence of philanthropic institutions in colonial contexts, but also an example of the ways in which indigenous Jewish activists found a voice in the international arena.