The Jews of Bukhara used to build special sukkahs. The sides of their sukkah were made of carpets, which are now very expensive. Bukhara women knew how to embroider carpets with special knots that created a thick and hard carpet. Young women and the daughters of the family have been busy all year making a new carpet for next year’s sukkah. Jewish families would compete with each other to see who could produce a more beautiful and more decorated carpet. The result was spectacular, say those who had the privilege of seeing Bukharit Esli’s sukkah. As in the black/white photo at the top of the page where you see a sukkah taken in 1900.
The special Sukkah inspires us to get to know Bukhara Judaism a little more, which is actually the Judaism of Uzbekistan.
Bukhara is the second oldest exile. The first was the Babylonian exile after the destruction of the first Bhikkhu, which also included the Jews of Persia. King Ahasuerus reigned from India to Kush, and during his time some of the Jews of Babylon and Persia migrated north, and also settled in Central Asia. To this day, the language of the Jews of Bukhara is a dialect of Persian and Tajik With Hebrew words, something like Yiddish for the Jews of Germany, or Ladino for the Jews of Spain.
In fact, the Jewish history of Uzbekistan is older than the history of the Uzbeks. The first Jews refer to their origin during the Assyrian captivity of the ten tribes. It is written in the Bible: “In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and discovered Israel as an Assyrian, and settled them in the wilderness, and insplicethe river Gozan, and the cities of Midi” (2 Kings 17/6). Some rabbis hold that Bokhara is a disruption of “Habur”.
There is also a claim that it was the Reuben tribe who gave the city of Bukhara its name, which in Aramaic is “first born”. Another version claims that they are members of the tribe of Ephraim who was crowned as Jacob’s firstborn, “I will lead you to the streams of water because I was Israel’s father and Ephraim his firstborn.” The estate of the tribe of Ephraim was on the slopes of Samaria. The name “Samarkand” means “city of Samaria”. “Kand” is a city, and the word “Samr” is Samaria.
Throughout the ages, Bukhara was the dominant city from a Jewish point of view, and its rabbis influenced the Israeli diaspora throughout Central Asia. That is why even Jews who lived in other cities are called “Bukhari”. It’s like when abroad they will also call Haifa and Eilat by the name “Jerusalemites”.
At the end of the 19th century, Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Ukraine arrived in Tashkent and Samarkand. Some of them also came to Uzbekistan, organized and established their own synagogues, schools, and communities, and thus two Jewish groups were created – the “Bukhari” who were the majority, and the “Ashkenazim”. The Bukharians were considered the local elite.
Torah study class in the yard of the Jewish school in Bukhara (Wikimedia)
In World War II, the German forces advanced eastward, and tens of thousands of refugees fled from Poland and Lithuania and also reached Uzbekistan. In a short time these Ashkenazis became the majority among the Jews of Uzbekistan. In Tashkent and Samarkand, the Chabad Hasidic ‘Innocent Supporters’ yeshiva were then opened.
All the Buharis were observant, and most of the Ashkenazim were secular. This created a disconnect between the two communities. The disconnection between the communities was so great that the expert on Bukhara Judaism, David Ishakkov, now a resident of Ramla, does not know how many Ashkenazim there were in the country at the time. It doesn’t interest him, and he doesn’t count them, literally. According to him, after the World War the Ashkenazi community evaporated, and the Ashkenazi left en masse to Israel or returned to Poland.
The Jews of Bukhara were Zionists even before Herzl founded the Zionist movement. In 1889 Bukhari families immigrated to Israel, and built a new neighborhood outside the Jerusalem wall. They called it “Streets” because of the verse: “And its name was called Streets, and it was said that now the Lord has enlarged us and made us fruitful in the land.” This was the luxury neighborhood of Jerusalem in those days. Today it is called the “Bocharim neighborhood”.
After the opening of the gates of the USSR in the 1970s, a wave of Uzbek Jews began, and only dozens of Jews remained from the large communities.
Jewish sites in Uzbekistan
The most famous tourist site in Uzbekistan in the world is Registan Square in Samarkand, and it also has a Jewish aspect. The Emir of Bukhara had a Jewish adviser who suggested that he stop supporting Samarkand financially. When this became known to the rulers of Samarkand, they sent an extermination squad to kill the Jew. When they arrived at his house he told them that if they kept him alive, he would teach them the secrets of architecture to build minarets and structures that would last for generations. When he finished teaching them, they came again to kill. This time he told them that if they kept him alive, he would teach them the secrets of the blue ceramic whose color would never fade. At the end of the crash course he tried to run away, and they chased him and killed him. His memory is preserved forever through the many public buildings throughout Uzbekistan that are coated with blue ceramics.
Uzbekistan was under communist rule, but in Uzbekistan the Russians did not succeed in suppressing and abolishing Judaism. The Jews lived together in neighborhoods called “Machlah” (in Mala’il). Although today Uzbekistan has almost been emptied of Jews, it still has beautiful synagogues and Jewish cemeteries.
Synagogues
In Samarkand is the ancient synagogue “Gombaz” (the dome) in the center of its ceiling is a large dome that is painted light blue on the inside. The walls are covered with wood with beautiful engravings, and above them are stone reliefs, some of which are gilded.
On the cantor’s page I found this sweet arrangement:
In the city of Bukhara is located the ancient synagogue “Etaret Hezekiah”. Its establishment is related to the construction of the Nadir Diwan Bigi Mosque 500 years ago. A Jewish widow lived next to the mosque. The Wazir wanted to dig a well on the territory of her house, so he offered to buy her house at any price. When she refused, the Wazir ordered a canal to be dug from the river to flood her house. She surrendered, and agreed to hand over her house to the vizier in exchange for a plot of land to build a synagogue. The Wazir gave her his private lot, and the Jews built this synagogue on it. For the rest of her life she lived in the attic of the synagogue.
The “Beit Menachem” synagogue operates in Tashkent. It looks as modern as a regular high school in Ra’anana or Ramat Hen, but it is worth visiting because of the small Jewish museum in the women’s aid. The most interesting items are arrangements and cycles inside the cover of mathematics and physics textbooks, which testify to how the Jews lived with a sense of a kind of martyrdom.
cemeteries
The tomb of Daniel the prophet lies on the outskirts of Samarkand. According to tradition, only Daniel’s leg is buried here. Emir Timur Lang had a hard time conquering Persia, and it was explained to him that the power of Daniel, buried in Shushan, is what protects the Persians. Timur ordered to bring to Samarkand the bones of Daniel the prophet, but they managed to get only the bones of one leg, and returned to Samarkand.
Since then the trend of the battles has reversed, and Timur returned to win. He understood that it was thanks to Daniel’s bones. That’s why Timur ordered to bury them and build a “respectable and large” tombstone, so that they wouldn’t know that only one leg was buried here. The tombstone builder understood the word “big” as simple, and built a tombstone 18 meters long. The place became holy for Muslims and Christians as well.
The Jewish cemetery in Samarkand is divided into a Bukhari area and an Ashkenazi area. The area of the Buharis is very well maintained, paved paths and beds and lawns, ornamental trees between the gravestones and there are also benches on the side of the paths. The Ashkenazi area looks neglected and desolate.
The German Nazis did not come to Uzbekistan. But many Jewish soldiers in the Russian army fell in battles in World War II. At the entrance to every Jewish cemetery you see a memorial stone with the names of local Jewish soldiers engraved on it. Beside them is a tall statue of the bereaved mother crying for her sons.
A special Jewish cemetery is also found in the city of Shahrisabez south of Samarkand. In front of the entrance gate is the ancient cemetery complex with an area of about 100 by 500 meters. It was recently re-paved, 1,200 uniform concrete headstones were placed on it. There are no names on the tombstones, except for a few tombstones on which the remains of original tombstones were placed.
Uzbekistan is also related to the ‘Children of Tehran’ case in Israel. In fact, the children of Tehran are not of Persian origin, but the children of Poland. When Jewish refugees arrived in Uzbekistan during World War II, a Jewish orphanage was established in Samarkand. It was easier to live in Tehran, so they moved the orphanages to Tehran. The Jewish Agency organized to bring to Israel the Jewish refugees who arrived in Tehran, including the ‘children of Tehran’.
The “Tehran children affair” was a public uproar in Israel where these children would be taken in. The Mizrahi movement and the ultra-orthodox wanted to take them in, because most of the children came from religious homes and had wigs. The kibbutz movement also wanted them as cheap labor for work. Finally, the thousand children from the first shipment were divided between the religious and the kibbutzim, while the ultra-Orthodox won only crumbs. The Tehran children affair caused the ultra-Orthodox to form parties, so that they too would have political power. They apply this lesson to this day.
The writer was a guest of the Uzbek Ministry of Tourism and the airline Qanot Shark
