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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