Bukharan Jews
Bukharan Jews, also known as Bukharian Jews, are the Mizrahi Jewish sub-group of Central Asia that dwelt predominantly in what is today Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. The group's name is derived from the Emirate of Bukhara, a polity that once had a sizable Jewish population.
Bukharan Jews are one of the oldest Jewish diaspora groups, dating back to the Babylonian exile, and comprise a branch of Persian-speaking Jewry. They are also one of the oldest ethnoreligious groups in Central Asia.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most Bukharan Jews have emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia.
Name
The name used by the community to refer to themselves originally was Bnei Israel.The term Bukharan was coined by European travelers who visited Central Asia around the 16th century. The Jewish community at the time lived in the Khanate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Khanate of Kokand, with the term "Bukharan" likely being coined as the Bukharan Emirate was the largest of the three khanates.
The local populace referred to them as Yahudi or Juhood —the latter of which was a pejorative term.
Language
The Jews in the Achaemenid Empire spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and Persian. Persian would become the prominent language for Jews in Central Asia and Iran, though Jews who were educated in Jewish cheders spoke fluently in Hebrew, the latter of which lasted until the early 20th century.Up until the 19th century, Persian speakers in Central Asia had no name for the dialect/language and simply regarded themselves as speaking Farsi. By then, Bukharan Jews had dubbed their Judeo-Persian language "Bukharian" or Bukhori, which is most similar to the Tajiki and Dari dialects of Farsi, with linguistic elements of Hebrew and Aramaic to communicate among themselves.
This language—along with Hebrew—was used for all cultural and educational life among the Jews. It was used widely until Central Asia was "Russified" by the Soviet Union and the dissemination of religious information was halted, as the Soviet Union wanted Russian as the lingua franca in the region.
During the Soviet era, the two main languages spoken by Bukharan Jews were Bukharian and Russian. The younger generation, those born outside Central Asia or who left the region as children, generally use Russian as their secondary language, some do understand or speak Bukhori.
History
According to legend, Bukharan Jews are the descendants of exiles who were members of the tribes of Naphtali and Issachar during the Assyrian captivity, basing this assumption on a reading of "Habor" at II Kings 17:6 as a reference to Bukhara. However, modern day scholarship associate this legend with myths about the "Ten Lost Tribes", which were propagated in Europe.Historians trace their establishment in the region to the period following the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus the Great, when it became part of the Persian Empire. Cyrus granted all of the Jews citizenship and he also permitted them to return to the province of Judah, however, a significant number of them chose to remain in Mesopotamia and later, they dispersed themselves throughout the Persian Empire. According to some scholars, Jews may have settled in Central Asia as early as the sixth century, though it is certain that by the eighth to ninth centuries, they lived in Central Asian cities such as Balkh, Khwarezm, and Merv. During this time, until approximately the 16th century, Bukharan Jews formed a culturally and religiously cohesive group with the Jews of Iran and Afghanistan.
The first primary written account of the history of the Jews in Central Asia dates back to the beginning of the 4th century CE. It is recalled in the Talmud by Rabbi Shmuel bar Bisna, a member of the Talmudic academy in Pumbeditha, who traveled to Margiana. The presence of Jewish communities in Merv is also proven by Jewish writings on ossuaries from the 5th and 6th centuries, which were uncovered between 1954 and 1956.
Under the Kara-Khanid Khanate
In the 12th century, Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveler from Spain, wrote of the populous Jewish community in Samarkand and claimed that there were about 50,000 "Israelites" in that city, among them "very wise and rich men".Under the rule of Tamerlane
In the 14th century, in the Timurid Empire ruled by Tamerlane, Jewish weavers and dyers contributed greatly to his effort to rebuild Central Asia following Genghis Khan and the Mongol invasions. In the centuries following Timur's demise, Jews came to dominate the region's textile and dye industry.Splintering of the Judeo-Persian communities
Until the start of the 16th century, the Jews of Iran and Central Asia constituted one community. However, during the Safavid dynasty, Iran adopted the Shia branch of Islam, while Central Asia retained their allegiance to the Sunni branch of Islam. Due to the hostile relationship between the neighboring states that developed because of this, the links between the Jews of the area were severed, and the Jewish community was divided into two similar but separate communities. From this point, the ethnonym and cultural identity of "Bukharan Jews" began to form.A similar event happened to the Jews of Afghanistan in the middle of the 18th century. The Durrani dynasty took control of the Afghani kingdom while the Manghud dynasty ruled the Emirate of Bukhara. Due to the hostile relationship between the two dynasties, the ties between the Jews of Afghanistan and Bukharan Jews were split into two similar but separate communities.
Over the centuries, whether it was to escape political turmoil, persecution, or to pursue economic opportunities, Jews from Iran and Central Asia would frequently migrate to each other's communities. Notable instances that spurred such migrations include persecution under the Safavid dynasty in the mid 17th century which caused Jews to flee Iran and forced conversion to Islam in the mid 19th century which resulted in Jewish flight from the Afghan cities of Kabul and Herat. Other Jews from Iran and Afghanistan migrated during the Russian conquest of Central Asia as the Russians had extended greater freedoms and economic opportunities for Jews. However, when Joseph Stalin and Soviet authorities consolidated their hold over the borders in Central Asia in the mid 1930s, living conditions for the Bukharan Jews deteriorated drastically, forcing a significant number of them to migrate to Iran or Afghanistan.
Under Sunni Muslim rule
In the Khanate of Bukhara, Bukharan Jews lived under the status of Dhimmi, and experienced a series of discriminatory practices from the Muslim majority. They were forced to wear clothing that identified them as Jews, such as a yellow patch, a hat called a Tilpak, and belts made of rope while the leather belts were reserved for Muslims. Jewish homes also had to be marked as "Jewish" with a dirty cloth nailed to their front doors, and their stores and homes had to be lower than Muslim ones. In court cases, any evidence from a Jew was inadmissible involving a Muslim. They were also forbidden to ride horses and donkeys and had to transport themselves by foot. Lastly, when paying their annual Jizya tax, the Jewish men would be ritually slapped in the face by Muslim authorities. Despite these prohibitions and humiliations, the Jews were able to achieve financial success primarily as merchants and established lucrative trade businesses.Towards the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, the Jewish quarter, Mahalla, was established in the town of Bukhara. The Jews were forbidden to reside outside its boundaries.
During the 18th century, Bukharan Jews continued to face considerable discrimination and persecution. Jewish centers were closed down, and the Muslims of the region forced conversion on a significant number of Jews, under a threat of torture and agonizing execution. Some were killed for refusing to convert. Jews who forcibly converted were known as Chalas, a term meaning "neither this nor that".
By the middle of the 18th century, practically all Bukharan Jews lived in the Bukharan Emirate. In the early 1860s, Arminius Vambery, a Hungarian-Jewish traveler, visited the emirate disguised as a Sunni dervish and noted in his journals that the Jews of Bukhara "live in utmost oppression, being despised by everyone."
Adoption of the Sephardic liturgy
In 1793, a missionary kabbalist named Rabbi Yosef Maimon, who was a Sephardic Jew originally from Tetuan, Morocco, travelled to Bukhara to collect/solicit money from Jewish patrons. It was during his search for funds that he chose to stay, in order to strengthen Judaism within the local Jewish population, who were said to be in a state of disarray.Prior to Maimon's arrival, the native Jews of Bukhara followed the Persian religious tradition. Maimon staunchly demanded that the native Jews of Bukhara adopt Sephardic traditions. Many of the native Jews were opposed to this and the community split into two factions. The opposing faction was led by Rabbi Zacchariah ben Mashiah, who was originally from Sanaa, Yemen. The followers of the Maimon clan eventually won the struggle for religious authority over the native Bukharans, and Bukharan Jewry forcefully switched to Sephardi customs. The supporters of the Maimon clan, in the conflict, credit Maimon with causing a revival of Jewish practice among Bukharan Jews which they claim was in danger of dying out. However, there is evidence that there were Torah scholars present upon his arrival to Bukhara, but because they followed the Persian rite their practices were aggressively rejected as incorrect by Maimon.
Maimon's great-grandson Shimon Hakham continued his great-grandfather's work as a Rabbi, and in 1870 opened the Talmid Hakham yeshiva in Bukhara, where religious law was promoted. At that time Bukharan Jews were getting only a general education, which mostly consisted of religious laws, reading, writing and some math. Even though they studied Torah, many Bukharan Jews did not speak fluent Hebrew. Only a few books were written in Persian and many of them were old and incomplete. Hakham decided to change this situation by translating religious books into Bukhori. However, since there was no printing in Bukhara at that time, he went to Jerusalem to print his books.