JTA: Global Jewish News - 12.29.2006

Uzbeks Jews See Division, Economic Woes

Rift over root differences remains unmended for Jews of Uzbekistan

For Uzbek Jews it's the economy causing angst, not radical Islam

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JTA: Global Jewish News - 12.29.2006

Rift over root differences remains unmended for Jews of Uzbekistan

By Lev Krichevsky

BUKHARA, Uzbekistan (JTA) — Lev Gulden knew he was different from most of the Jews in this ancient city. 

Growing up after World War II in a Jewish neighborhood in Bukhara, Gulden said he would occasionally catch a disapproving glance from some Jewish neighbors on the streets. 

"They thought we were not proper Jews," recalls Gulden, now 57. 

Years later, his daughter came across a similar attitude. 

A young Jew recently "asked me if we were real Jews," said Oksana Gulden, 24, who works for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's local office in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital some 420 miles to the east of Bukhara. 

Father and daughter were both born in Uzbekistan, but they're unlike many Jews who live in this Central Asian nation: Their Jewish roots are in Eastern Europe. 

The attitude they encountered tells something about the longstanding, uneasy relationship between the two segments of the Jewish community here -- indigenous Jews of Central Asia, usually called Bukharans, and Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European descent, whom local, Persian-speaking Jews refer to as "European Jews." 

Around the same time as Lev Gulden was growing up in Bukhara, Zinaida Sichakova, a Bukharan Jew, often would go to the synagogue with her grandfather in Tashkent. 

Practicing Judaism "was very common among Bukharan Jews" even during the Soviet era, Sichakova explains. But few Ashkenazim here practiced at the height of communism, which was notorious for its enmity toward any religion. 

Gulden's father, a police officer in postwar Bukhara, was born in Poland, and his mother came from Ukraine. The two met during World War II on board a train carrying Jewish refugees to the safe haven of Central Asia. 

During the Holocaust, about 250,000 Jews from European parts of the Soviet Union and Poland found refuge in Central Asia. Most were assimilated Soviet Jews who surprised their locally born Jewish neighbors by neglecting all Jewish observance. 

But the distinctions were not only about religion: There were differences in lifestyle and culture that brought about estrangement between the Bukharans and Ashkenazim, an estrangement that has persisted for several generations. 

"The two communities practically do not overlap," said Olga Kipnis, a European Jew who is director of the Hillel youth group in Tashkent. 

Tashkent today is home to some 9,000 Jews, about three-quarters of Uzbekistan's Jewish population. The community now is mostly Ashkenazi due to the emigration of Bukharan Jews to Israel and the United States, but the city has two Bukharan synagogues and `one Ashkenazi one, run by Chabad. Each of the communities has its own cultural center. 

"Bukharan Jewish young men rarely come here," Kipnis said on a recent Friday evening in the Hillel club, where she was surrounded by two dozen young Jews, all of European descent. "Perhaps they all have emigrated? Or they go somewhere else." 

She admitted that her group never made a special effort to overcome the situation. And she might have a good reason not to try: Many of her activists might not like it. 

"When I meet a Bukharan Jew, I can clearly see social and cultural differences," Kipnis said. 

Lev Gulden's example may suggest that these differences can be reconciled: Though he's one of the few European Jews in town, Gulden a few years ago became the leader of the city's 900-strong Jewish community. 

But even he says there's little mixing between Bukharans and Ashkenazim, and they rarely intermarry. 

"I cannot recall a single example of a mixed marriage between Bukharan and Ashkenazi Jews here," said Gulden, who owns a small electrical equipment company. 

Markiel Fazylov, a Bukharan Jew and leader of another prominent Uzbek Jewish community in the city of Samarkand, agrees. 

"A Bukharan Jew would rather marry a Muslim Tatar than a European Jew," Fazylov said, pointing to the fact that despite its religious distinction, his community shares much more in common with local Muslims than with Jews of Eastern European descent. 

"European Jews are more educated, while Bukharan Jews are more traditional," said Fazylov, who has written several books on the history of Bukharan Jews. 

When Central Asia fell under Russian rule in the mid-19th century, the Russians officially referred to local Jews as "indigenous Jews." The term "Bukharan Jews" became an official definition for these Jews in the 1930s shortly after the region was included in the Soviet Union. 

Jews settled in the region as far back as 20 centuries ago. Coexisting with Muslims, they adjusted to local customs and traditions without compromising their religion. 

"We have very much in common with Uzbeks in culture, in traditions of hospitality, in dress," Sichakova said. 

Some of the similarities were striking. Until before the war, "some local Jewish women wore face veils," similar to Muslim Uzbek women, said Sichakova, who heads Hesed Yehoshua, a JDC-run Jewish welfare center in Tashkent. 

Her organization is probably the only one in Tashkent that is making a concerted effort to get the two parts of the community to socialize. 

"Yes, we have different culture and music, and Ashkenazi Jews are more 'civilized,' " she said. "But in our Hesed we try to bring these two cultures together." 

The two cultures don't meet easily. 

At a cultural event in the center, when a violin starts to play a traditional Eastern European Jewish tune, some "Bukharan Jews grumble, 'Why do we need this Gypsy music?' " Sichakova said. 

When traditional Bukharan Jewish music, rhythmical and heavy on percussion, is played, a typical reaction of a European Jew is, "Is this a funeral?" 

Although the Bukharans now have their own intelligentsia, it is a relatively new phenomenon. 

"My relatives all have higher education, but the majority of our ancestors were illiterate: shoemakers, barbers, tailors," Sichakova said. 

Old stereotypes die hard. European Jews still tend to think of Bukharans as culturally backward. And Bukharans have their own view of Ashkenazim. 

During communism, European Jews did not become part of the Jewish community because they were building their Soviet careers, says Mikhail Elnatanov, 56, former deputy manager of a state-owned motor transport depot in Bukhara. 

"They were doctors, college teachers or communists; they couldn't go to the synagogue," he said. "Others worked two, three shifts a day, so they didn't have time to." 

Lev Gulden says one reason Bukharan Jews could maintain their traditional lifestyle was because many were self-employed or worked in small organizations or workshops. They found it relatively easy to go to the synagogue without jeopardizing their jobs in a society that did not approve any form of religious observance. 


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JTA: Global Jewish News - 12.29.2006

For Uzbek Jews it's the economy causing angst, not radical Islam 

By Lev Krichevsky

FERGANA, Uzbekistan (JTA) — As soon as he discovered his passenger was Jewish, the cab driver issued a warning. 

"When we come to Fergana, don't tell anyone you are Jewish," said Jamshi, 33, a Muslim from Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent. "I don't mind it, but some Muslims there have a different view. They think Jews are evil." 

The government in Tashkent, and those who have followed the development of Uzbekistan in the 15 years since its independence from the Soviet Union, believe the region known as the Fergana Valley is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. 

But the Jews who live here don't seem panicked. 

Semyon Abdurakhmanov, who heads the Fergana Jewish community, said local Jews have no specifically "Jewish" problems and that the most important issue facing both Jews and non-Jews in the country isn't radical Islam but the poor economic situation. 

Abdurakhmanov, 53, a lawyer and financial inspector, runs a tiny community office in a one-story building in the center of this city of 200,000 people about 260 miles east of Tashkent. 

As if to prove that Jews do not have to hide in the predominantly Muslim valley, a sign in Uzbek and Russian above the door to the community office reads "The Jewish National Cultural Center." The office has no security, and through the window passers-by can easily see a large Israeli flag hanging on the wall alongside an Uzbek one. 

But the idyllic impression is misleading. 

In recent decades, the Fergana Valley, a densely populated, multiethnic region split among Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, saw violence and bloodshed that harshly affected ethnic groups of Muslims as well as Jews. 

In 1989, interethnic clashes between Uzbeks and the Meskhetian Turks, a Muslim people exiled to Central Asia from the Caucasus during Josef Stalin's rule, resulted in approximately 150 deaths. 

The following year, anti-Jewish pogroms took place in the city of Andizhan, some 50 miles from Fergana. 

In May 2005, popular unrest in Andizhan led to many civilian deaths. Human rights activists claim the toll surpassed 800 when the Uzbek army opened fire on the raging crowd. 

The autocratic Uzbeki government of President Islam Karimov said that fewer than 100 people were killed and blamed the rebellion on Islamic extremists who, the government claimed, pursue the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the region. 

During the Andizhan events last year, the Israeli Embassy in Tashkent prompted Jewish leaders in the Fergana Valley to compile lists of community members "in case there will be a need to airlift people to Israel." 

Since then, Abdurakhmanov keeps the list handy -- several handwritten pages in a college notebook with names, addresses and phone numbers. One copy is kept in his office, another at home. 

"Thank God they didn't touch anyone" from the Jewish community during the Andizhan bloodbath, he said. 

In their daily lives, there's little to remind local Jews that they're living in what was dubbed the heartland of Islamic resistance to Karimov's rule. 

The Fergana Valley has a half-dozen functioning synagogues, half of all the synagogues in the country. Several cities in the Uzbek part of the valley still retain a noticeable Jewish presence, from communities of several hundred people in Fergana, Namangan and Kokand to about 100 in Andizhan and 40 in the town of Margelan. 

Abdurakhmanov believes there is no immediate threat to Jewish life in the area, and much of what people say about his community is a result of government propaganda against Islamists. 

"Tashkent is scared of us," he said, adding that "all revolutions and wars in Uzbekistan -- from the tsars and up until today" -- began in this region. 

The regime -- notorious in the West for allegedly abusing human rights and trampling Muslim activists -- is seen by local Jews as the best guarantor of their safety. 

When Karimov comes to visit Fergana, several police are on duty at the Jewish center, Abdurakhmanov said. 

More worrisome than possible outbursts of Islamic extremism is the poverty of his community and its demographic situation. 

Abdurakmanov's list of emergency contacts includes 113 Jewish names, though he insists there are up to 800 Jews in Fergana, most of whom do not take part in communal activities. The vast majority are elderly, and only 23 have full-time jobs or are officially employed. Most Jews are pensioners or are involved in petty trade, Abdurakhmanov said. 

Not long ago it was different, he sighed. Fergana Jews were a visible part of the local economy, working as store and warehouse managers, barbers or soda-water vendors -- typical occupations for Persian-speaking Jews in Central Asian under the Soviet Union. 

Ilya Musheev, 69, is a vestige of this old community. He is the last Jewish shoemaker in Fergana, where not very long ago shoemaking was almost exclusively a Jewish trade. 

On a recent weekday, Musheev was sitting in front of his small, rundown apartment in the backyard of the Jewish center fixing a pair of old Soviet military-style boots. In a few days, Musheev -- who is deaf, destitute and has no family -- was to leave for Israel. Asked why he was leaving, he had no answer, only a smile. 

But Abdurakhmanov is not ready to pull the plug on Jewish life in his hometown. The building his Jewish office occupies is to be demolished in a few weeks due to reconstruction on the street. He already sold the old property and is now dreaming about a new center -- not just two small rooms as he used before. 

"This could be a bright building with two floors, the only two-story Jewish center in all of Uzbekistan," he said. 

Abdurakhmanov still lacks $10,000 -- a significant amount by local standards -- to build the center of his dreams. But in any case, who would need the new facility in a community that has shrunk by more than half in the past 15 years? 

Yura Abdurakhmanov, the community leader's 21-year-old son, says there are still enough young Jews in town who are eager to congregate with other Jews. 

Like other communities in the region, Fergana Jews receive some aid from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and from Chabad in Tashkent. But the father and son want to be self-sufficient. 

In recent years, Abdurakhmanov opened several businesses under his center's title -- from computer literacy courses to a barber shop -- and spends part of the revenues on Jewish charity. 

"Last year we earned $700 for the community," the elder Abdurakhmanov said. "This year we'll get about $1,000." 

Meanwhile, his son does not have an immediate plan to leave. He studies pedagogy at the local university and wants to earn a primary-school teacher diploma, something he says could be useful wherever he goes. 

Yura is also learning English and Hebrew, and wants to see the world. 

"If he wants, after college he can go to Russia or to Israel," his father said. "This is life. What if they tell us to get out? Who could have predicted the Andizhan events?"

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