Saturday, June 6, 2020

Bukharan Jews Continue Their 2,000-Year History in Israel and the US, Nosonovsky Says


Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 3 – The Bukharan Jews, a community with roots extending back more than 2,000 years and having had a complicated life under Muslim, Russian and then Soviet power, are now continuing that history in Israel and in the United States, according to Mikhail Nosonovsky, a specialist on the Jews of Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

            There are only 1500 Bukharan Jews left in Uzbekistan and only 1,000 more in the Russian Federation, but this 2,000-year-old community continues in Israel and the United States where large groups, where there are more than 150,000 and 70,000 respectively (mostly in Queens, New York) maintain their distinctive language and culture.

            Mikhail Nosonovsky, a specialist on Jews from the East, provides a glimpse into the life of this community over the last century both in their longtime homeland, which is now part of Uzbekistan, and in Israel and the US for the Khan-Tengri journal (ia-centr.ru/han-tengri/detail.php?SECTION_CODE=orientalii/&ELEMENT_CODE=bukharskie-evrei).

            The Jews of Bukhara maintained ties with other Jewish communities both in Russia and further afield before they were absorbed by Soviet Russia in 1920.  They organized pilgrimages to Jerusalem, often of the elderly who wanted to die and be buried in the Holy Land. In 1890, they even formed a distinctive Bukharan Jewish quarter in that city, one that survives to this day. 

            Before the Russian and then Soviet conquest, the Jews of Bukhara lived under Muslim rule for more than a millennium. As people of the book, they were not subject to forcible conversion but did have to pay special taxes and wear distinctive clothing. Some were nonetheless converted but most retained their Jewish faith.

            After the Russian conquest, some members of the community illegally moved to Samarkand, something the tsarist authorities did not want and thus intervened to protect the community in the Emirate of Bukhara which had become a Russian protectorate.  Some merchants nonetheless moved to Russian cities where their class allowed them to escape restrictions on others.

            The modernization of the community in the years before 1917 was promoted by books published in Jerusalem in the language of the Bukharan Jews and then sent to Bukhara for the community, Nosonovsky says.  In 1910, a Bukharan Jew brought a printing press from Lithuania and began publishing the community’s first newspaper as well as a few books.

            All these publications were in the Hebrew script, but after the Bolsheviks arrived, the literary language was shifted first to Latin script and then to a Cyrillic-based one.  The Soviets supported the community for the first decade just as they did many non-Russian peoples. Then all the publications, organizations and schools of the Bukharan Jews were closed.

            There was even a local museum about the history of the community and a library. Nosonovsky says he has counted approximately 700 books published in Bukharan Jewish language in Soviet listings as well as another 300 published in Jerusalem but which reached the community in Central Asia. 

            Between the 1930s and 1960s, the community had few public activities; but members preserved the language and culture in their homes. When emigration became possible in the 1970s, many moved to Israel and the US, although there is a small third community in Austria as well.

            In the US, Bukharan Jewish culture has flourished, the Milwaukee scholar says. The community has its own synagogues, schools, newspapers and organizations including the World Congress of Bukharan Jews. And there is a remarkable Bukharan Jewish museum in New York city. They have maintained their distinctive identity far more that Russian Jewish emigres have.

            In Israel, he continues, Bukharan Jews are also very active with schools, a museum, conferences, publishing houses, a theater, and even several years ago, their own television serial, broadcast in Bukharan Jewish rather than Hebrew and devoted to the relations between generations in the community.   

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