By 1950, the vast majority of Yemeni Jews lived in Israel. Like all immigrants, they carried their foodways and food preferences with them. Some of these were highly resistant to change. Despite political barriers, Yemeni Jews insisted on importing foods from Yemen and preserved culinary practices in order to remain connected with their country of origin, and to assert ethnic distinctiveness. For example, after the establishment of the state of Israel, Yehiel Hibshush, a merchant from a prominent Sanani family, petitioned the government for permission to import samna (clarified butter) and a small dried fish called wazif from Yemen. This quickly brought him into conflict with State authorities and the Ashkenazi rabbinate, which deemed these items non-kosher because they were produced by Yemeni Muslims. Hibshush, invoking the memory of his ancestors, insisted that these items were kosher and essential to Yemeni Jewish life. He clearly did not understand migration, nor the establishment of the state of Israel as signifying a complete break with Yemen or with Yemeni Muslims. Migration, however, always provokes changes in foodways. Immigrants encounter new comestibles and cooking techniques, and their “traditional” ingredients may be inaccessible or expensive. Previously used methods of preparation may be difficult to reproduce in their new places of residence. In Israel, the government exerted pressure to alter aspects of Yemeni foodways as part of its “melting pot” ideology, and the Arab League boycott made importing foods from Yemen impossible. Soon the samna and wazif that Hibshush had been so insistent on importing fell out of common use. Using Yemeni Jewish memoirs and primary sources, this paper asks: 1. why Yemeni Jews deemed some food practices indispensable, while transforming or eliminating others; 2. how they’ve used memories of food in Yemen, and in Palestine/Israel during the first half of the twentieth century, to negotiate ethnic, national and diasporic boundaries, and 3. how these memories themselves have been reconstructed in the process. For example, how was Yemeni ethnicity created from the various local identities that would have been of greater importance in the period before migration? And how was a Yemeni Jewish cuisine created in this process? How have Yemeni Jews employed food memories to negotiate relations with other Jewish groups in Israel? How have food memories linked Yemeni Jews with Yemeni Muslims, and Palestinian Muslims and Christians, in some ways, while highlighting difference in others?