The Jews of Tashkent have a unique custom on the eve of Yom Kippur. The Sun stands at the entrance of the synagogue with a whip made of strips of donkey and ox skin in his hands, and he hands the whip to anyone who enters so that he can whip with the whip on his back over his shoulders. This is to fulfill the verse “He knew that an ox was bought and a mule was eaten by him. Israel did not know, my people did not consider“. This custom causes them to purify their souls before the Holy Day of Judgment, and only after it are they ready for the “Tefila Zachah”.
We usually go to the cemeteries on New Year’s Eve to visit the graves of our parents. The Jews of Tashkent do this on Tisha B’av.
These special customs make us turn our attention to Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan. Today it is a modern city with 2.5 million inhabitants. It is the largest city in post-Soviet Central Asia. Until recently, Tashkent was the first Uzbek city we arrived at, because the flights from Israel were only to it. However, recently the Qanot Shark airline opened a direct flight line from Tbilisi to Samarkand as well.
Tashkent is the richest city in Uzbekistan. This is because when the Soviet heavy industry and food factories were bombed in World War II by German planes, they moved their defense industries to Tashkent and Central Asia to keep them out of reach of the bombers. In addition, they also built military hospitals in Tashkent, and ambulance trains brought wounded soldiers to the city. Most managers The factories and doctors were Jewish, and today you can see monuments dedicated to Jewish doctors from the war.
Among the cities of Uzbekistan, Tashkent is less interesting for tourists. Compared to the beautiful Samarkand, Tashkent has only a few mosques and madrasas and palaces covered with blue ceramics. It used to have historical buildings like the Registan Square in Samarkand, or the Kalyan Tower in Bukhara. But in 1966 there was an earthquake there that destroyed most of the city. The government in Moscow organized to clear the fragments and ruins, and rebuild the city in a modern Soviet style. With very wide roads, and green parks and boulevards throughout the city. Today it is a very clean and well-kept city, with a pleasant promenade on the banks of streams and canals, in the shade of large trees.
Some say that tourists have nothing to see and do in Tashkent. In my opinion, this is true and false. It is true that there is less to see compared to Samarkand and Bukhara, but not true compared to most of the European cities we visit. Here is a list of sites in Tashkent that you should visit:
Hazrat Imam Complex HAZRETI IMAM
The complex that was the religious center of Tashkent is surrounded by minarets 50 meters high. The tall and beautiful building is the Teleshaayakh Mosque. In front of it stands a modest building that houses the Barak Khan Madrasah. Inside it is the oldest book of the Koran written on parchment. It rests on a black marble table and is covered in a glass cabinet. Upon entering the hall we are required to take off our shoes. In the next room are kept copies of the Koran in 30 different languages, including Hebrew.
The Kukeldash madrasa is the largest madrasa and one of the most famous historical places in Tashkent. The building is still a fine example of Islamic architecture
Bazaar Chorz – Chorso market
The tourist attraction for Israelis is the market, most of which is inside a building with a huge dome, reminiscent of the cinema building that was in Tel Aviv. The dome is coated on the outside with blue ceramic tiles. From the inside, the dome creates acoustics that muffle the voices of the merchants. Inside the building mainly food products. I am not a person of shopping and markets like my wife, but I went to Chorso market because it is also a tourist site.
In the center are meat and sausage stalls, and next to them are homemade cheese stalls. The scents that rise from them blend together into fragrances that can drive us crazy. In the outer areas there are fruit and vegetable stands, as well as various pickle stands that enrich the aromas of the market. All foods and pickles were made in home kitchens and not in factories. There are several clay ovens where they bake fresh local bread. His smell is stupid. Pay special attention to melons. There are huge melons, bigger than our watermelons, and they taste very sweet.
Amir Timur Museum
Emir Timur is the national hero of the Uzbeks, who founded the Uzbek Empire in the 15th century from India to the Mediterranean Sea. He is considered the founder of the nation. While my friends were shopping at Chorso Bazaar, I took a taxi to the Amir Timur Museum. It displays paintings of the Emir, and his personal belongings. It also has a copy of the Koran, and models of the most important mosques in all of Uzbekistan. The inner dome is gold plated. The external architecture in the form of a winter hat of Uzbek warriors, or like Streimel’s in the style of Rozhin followers.
Statue of Emir Timur
The main square in Tashkent is named after Emir Timur. In the square there is a 7 meter high bronze statue of the Emir riding a horse. The square is surrounded by beautiful gardens and behind it is the Soviet-style “Uzbekistan Hotel”. It has more than 250 rooms spread over 17 floors, and it is said that the rooms on the higher floors have the most beautiful view in Tashkent.
“Beit Menachem” Synagogue
The Jews lived in a special neighborhood called “Sickness”. Tens of thousands of Jews once lived here, but with the opening of the gates of the USSR in the 1970s, most of them immigrated to Israel. Only 112 Jews remain in Tashkent today. They pray and gather at the Beit Menachem synagogue in the center of the disease. It is also considered a kind of Chabad house, but there is no in which there is a permanent messenger. Rabbi Shalich comes only for holidays and special events. In his absence, Dimitri Beckman fills his place. The prayer in the Ari text, and the Ashkenazi Torah books.
Every day there is a minyan here for morning and evening prayers. I came to visit after morning prayer, and I saw 7 old men looking at the Chomash, and one of them was still wearing a tefillin. Some of them come “for the sake of it”, and others come because after the prayer they are given a lunch box for the Butzer meal. Next to the prayer hall there is also a large hall for sanctifications and events, and a kitchen. We can also pre-order kosher food from this kitchen.
It is worth paying attention to the special wooden device (the stander) on which the arrangements are placed during prayer. It looks like a stand for the Koran among Muslims.
Behind the prayer hall and by the women’s aid is a small and fascinating Jewish museum. With the help of the women, there are glass cabinets in which embroidered Bukhari-style frills are displayed, some of which are hundreds of years old. There is also a wedding suit embroidered with gold threads that form the Star of David and the seven-caned lamp. charming!
In another room there are glass tables with shofars, scrolls, and a variety of sacred utensils.
The finds that fascinated me in this museum were in a table with secular textbooks for mathematics and physics. But when you open the book, you see that it is a siddur or cycle for Yom Kippur or an arranged table. Dimitri explains that the Soviets forbade praying and studying the Torah, so the Jews of Tashkent got smart and hid the holy books inside the covers of sand books that are in every home. This is for fear of being watched by the KGB or the neighbors.
I also saw a biography of Stalin in Yiddish in the museum.
Independence Square
In the center of Tashkent is Independence Square, which was called “Lenin Square” during the Soviet rule. It has large pools with water fountains. Among them are 16 marble columns that are connected by a bridge on which there are Hasidic statues that symbolize peace, the independence monument, and a statue of a woman holding a baby, the symbol of the homeland.
The square is surrounded by a grove of trees in the center of which is a monument to those who fell in World War II. This is their “white hand”. In the center is a sunken marble pool, where a flame is always lit. On the side is a large statue of a bereaved mother crying for her sons.
On the other side, there are two parallel gezuztras. On the walls there are niches dedicated to 40 regions in Uzbekistan. In each niche there are copper plates that you can flip through like a book, and on them are engraved the names of the soldiers who fell in the battles. In total, the names of 265,000 dead are listed here, and another 35,000 are missing.
The metro stations
Tashkent has some of the most beautiful metro stations in the world. Most subway stations are designed and decorated like a museum. They are reminiscent of the Moscow subway. Some of them are even nicer than Moscow, but they are not as famous as the Moscow metro stations. This is because until 2018 it was forbidden to photograph the stations, which are intended to be a nuclear shelter. It was considered a military secret, and when the Cold War ended someone forgot to lift the ban on photography.
Each station has its own theme. In the station named after their national author, Elisher Naboi, we see mosaics on the walls and ceiling inspired by his books. Another station is dedicated to cotton, which was the main crop of the Tashkent region. On the walls are mosaics in the form of cotton wool, and the chandeliers in the station look like cotton leaves before picking. The Cosmonaut station was designed Inspired by space. The walls and roof are a deep blue like the sky, and have large circles with portraits of famous cosmonauts on them. My tour guide friends say it’s worth flying to Tashkent even just to hang around its metro stations for a day. (By the way, a day pass costs only 15 cents).
The center of the Flov
Plov is the national dish of the Uzbeks for lunch. It is prepared in huge bowls called Kazan Qozon, which are the diameter of a tractor wheel. They sit inside an oven called Oychuk, under which a fire is lit. Rice and pieces of beef and lamb are put into the kazan, carrot and onion slices and various spices are added, and heated for many hours. In such a pot, hundreds of plov dishes are cooked that are sold in restaurants, and sometimes also on the sidewalks. It’s worth seeing even if it’s not kosher for us. For those who want to taste horse meat, you can also get Plov with horse meat, but at a more expensive price per dish.
The TV tower
The tower is near the center of Plov. Its height is 375 meters, and it is in the 11th place in the world in terms of height. On the sixth floor there is a lovely observation deck from which you can enjoy a panoramic view of the city. On the seventh floor above it there is a restaurant for a meal or a cup of beer. Tip: at the entrance they demand to see a passport.
Magic City
If you come to Tashkent with children, take them to the new Magic City amusement park that resembles Disneyland. About 300 meters from the gate there is a large pool behind which is a building that looks like it was taken from a Walt Disney painting. There are picturesque Dutch streets with houses in the style of the Tower of London, Swiss houses, Luxor palaces in Egypt, houses from Moscow, etc. The houses are not for residence but for business. They all have restaurants, ice cream parlors, cafes, toy or souvenir shops, or clothing and brand stores. The Luxor house also has an amusement park, and another area has an aquarium.The area can keep our kids busy for a whole day.
Judaism
The Jews of Tashkent were divided into two communities, the “Bucharim” and the “Ashkenazim”. The Bukharians are considered the privileged locals who have been living in Tashkent for generations. The first Ashkenazim came from Russia during the tsarist period at the end of the 19th century, when they fled the pogroms. They were the minority of the community, until World War II.
Before the Nazi invasion of Poland and Lithuania, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled to northern Russia. They suffered the disgrace of hunger, cold and epidemics there. In those days, a best-selling book “Tashkent the City of Bread” was published, which describes the types of bread that were in Tashkent that did not suffer from the famine. Tens of thousands of the Polish refugees migrated south to Tashkent in hope. Most of the Hasidic refugees concentrated in the ‘Stri-Gord’ (Old City) area. Thus the Ashkenazim became an overwhelming majority of the Jews of Tashkent. The Bukhari community was unable to cope with the number of new refugees, and hunger and disease arose among them. Many of them continued to migrate to Samarkand.
Young Jews were also recruited for the war against the Nazis. About ten thousand of them fell in battles, and an entire generation of sons was lost to the Jewish community. Uzbek Jews cultivate their graves and tombstones in Tashkent and other cities at the level of a national pantheon.
The Jewish community in Tashkent numbered about 50,000 people, most of whom immigrated to Israel or immigrated to America after the opening of the gates of the Soviet Union in the 1970s. They are considered good Zionists. Already in the 19th century, many of them immigrated to Israel and established the Buharim neighborhood in Jerusalem. They wanted to fulfill the verse from the Eighteenth Prayer “And to Jerusalem thy city in mercy thou shalt return, andTashkent In it as you have spoken, and build it soon in our day a world building, and the throne of David your servant hasten to prepare it.”
Amen!
The writer was a guest of the Ministry of Tourism of Uzbekistan and the airline Qanot Shark
