Bucharian Jews

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Bucharian Jews are an ethno-religious group of Judaism in Central Asia. They live in Uzbekistan (see Uzbek Jews ), Tajikistan , Kyrgyzstan , and occasionally in Russia , Kazakhstan , Turkmenistan and Afghanistan (there was probably only one Jew left in Afghanistan at the end of January 2005: Zebulon Simentov ). Uzbek places where Bucharian Jews lived or still live today are Samarkand , Tashkent , Dushanbe , Bukhara , Kokand , Andijon , Margʻilon and Shahrisabz . After the collapse of the Soviet Union , many Bucharian Jews emigrated to Israel and the USA . They speak Judaeo-Persian, or Buchori , a Persian dialect written with Hebrew letters.

designation

Bucharian Jews around 1890

Since most of the Jews living in Central Asia in the 16th century were concentrated in the Emirate of Bukhara , European travelers referred to them as "Bukharan". This name was retained by those who later emigrated abroad. The name falsely suggests that all Bukharan Jews who emigrated came from the Uzbek city or province of Bukhara .

history

Jewish children with their teacher in Samarkand around 1910, early color photography by Sergei Prokudin-Gorski

After the Babylonian exile , many of the Jews expelled into the Achaemenid Empire emigrated to Central Asia , where they lived peacefully with the local population for many centuries. The earliest archaeological evidence from Merw and Baýramaly , which indicate the presence of Jews in the area of ​​Central Asia, date from the 2nd century BC. At that time Jews lived in Greek colonies in the Hellenistic world , including the territory of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom .

The first reliable reports about Jewish settlements in a number of cities and regions of Central Asia ( Merw , Balkh , Khorezmia ) date from the 8th / 9th centuries. Century. The large number of the Jewish population of Khorasan (this term included all regions settled by Iranians east of the Dasht-e Kawir desert , including Central Asia) in the 10th century is noted by the Arab geographer al-Muqaddasī . The scholar Yaqub al-Qirqisani speaks of the existence of Karaite communities in the same area and at the same time. Sources from the 11th century report the numerous, apparently Jewish, population in Balkh. The most important Jewish traveler of the Middle Ages, Benjamin von Tudela , tells of a large Jewish community in Samarkand. The first mention of a Jewish community in Bukhara goes back to the 13th century. Bukhara becomes the concentration point of the Jewish population in Central Asia in the 16th century. At the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, a Jewish settlement (the so-called Old Mahalla ) emerged within Bukhara . The Jews are forbidden to settle outside of this settlement. They are subjected to a number of restrictions to underline their lower status than the Islamic population.

In the 16th century the Safavids came to power in Persia and established Shiite Islam as the state religion . At the same time, Bukhara Khanate , the Sunni state of the Sheibanids, came into being . As a result, the Jews were now on the territory of two hostile powers and as a result split into three isolated groups: Afghan , Bucharian and Iranian Jews.

The first mass conversion of Bucharian Jews to Islam took place in the middle of the 18th century. A Tschala congregation emerged whose members continued to profess Judaism. In the first half of the 19th century, the second wave of forced conversions followed, which greatly increased the number of Tschala members. Remnants of the Chala community exist in Central Asia, especially in Bukhara, to the present day. Most of the forcibly converted Jews now list “Uzbek” as an ethnic affiliation in their national passports. As early as the end of the 18th century, the lack of access to the main Jewish cultural centers led to an abrupt decline in scholarship among Bucharian Jews. With the gradual disappearance of the religious experts, the Jewish community was threatened with complete assimilation . In 1793 the Moroccan Jew Josef ben Moses Mamon al-Maghribi made an exploration trip to Uzbekistan to visit the Bucharian Jews. His goal was to raise funds for the community in Safed , where he had recently settled. When he saw that the Jewish community in Bukhara was on the verge of disintegration, he decided to stay there. Thanks to his efforts, the religious and cultural life of Bucharian Jews could be revived. One of his most important reforms was the replacement of the previously practiced Persian way of presenting prayers and melodies by the Sephardic rite.

At the beginning of the 19th century the second Jewish settlement (the so-called New Mahalla) was built. In the middle of the 19th century it was given the Amirabad district within Bukhara. In 1843 the Jews purchased a piece of land to build a Jewish mahalla in Samarkand. Other Jewish settlements were in Qarshi , Merw, Chatyrtschi, Shahrisabz, Kattakurgan , Kermine, Marg'ilon and Dushanbe.

At the end of the 19th century, Uzbekistan was conquered by Russia. As a result, Ashkenazi Jews from western Russia also immigrated to Central Asia. During the Soviet era , Jews were required to speak Russian and many lost Hebrew.

Current situation

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the majority of Bucharian Jews emigrated to Israel and the USA. Today only a few Jews still live in the independent states of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, although a little more Jewish traces can be found in Uzbekistan.

With 1,171 people (500 families), the Bucharian Jews of Austria living exclusively in Vienna form the largest group of the approx. 6,900 members of the Jewish Community of Vienna . In 2013, 85% of Bucharian Jews in Vienna were under 50 years of age.

In 2009 there were around 800 Bucharian Jews in Germany in Düsseldorf , Hanover , Leipzig and Trier . The largest community with around 340 people is in Hanover.

Known Bucharian Jews

literature

  • Max Albrecht: Travel Pictures from Trans Caspia, Bukhara and Turkestan , Hamburg 1896. About Bucharian Jews: from p. 125. Digitized at: archive.org .
  • Harald Haarmann: Studies on the multilingualism of Ashkenazi and Oriental Jews in the Asian part of the Soviet Union , Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-87118-380-6 .
  • Grigori Galibov: The History of the Bucharian Jews in Vienna. Translated from Russian: Irmgard Soukup-Unterweger. Österreichischer Kunst- und Kulturverlag, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-85437-026-1 .
  • Chana Tolmas: Bukharan Jews. History, Language, Literature, Culture , World Bukharian Jewish Congress, Tel Aviv 2006, ISBN 965-7093-46-5 .
  • David Straub: Jews in Central Asia , in: M. Avrum Ehrlich: Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora. Origins, Experiences, and Culture , Vol. 1, Santa Barbara 2009, pp. 1122-1129, ISBN 978-1-85109-873-6 .
  • Jürgen Paul: Zentralasien (Neue Fischer Weltgeschichte, Vol. 10), S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-010840-1 .
  • Alanna E. Cooper: Bukharan Jews and the dynamics of global Judaism , Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2012, ISBN 978-0-253-00643-1 .
  • Thomas Kunze: Central Asia. Portrait of a Region , Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86153-995-7 . On Bucharian Jews: pp. 51–58.

Web links

Commons : Bukharian Jews  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ NC Aizenman: Afghan Jew Becomes Country's One and Only . In: Washington Post . January 27, 2005 ( online [accessed February 15, 2009]).
  2. ↑ Article 'Bukhari Jews': бухарские евреи , in: Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia, accessed on May 16, 2020.
  3. ^ Jüdisch-Bucharisch-Sefardisches Zentrum Deutschland in Hannover eV: About Bucharian Jews , accessed on June 14, 2020.
  4. ↑ Article 'Bukhari Jews': бухарские евреи , in: Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia, accessed on May 16, 2020.
  5. ^ Jüdisch-Bucharisch-Sefardisches Zentrum Deutschland in Hannover eV: About Bucharian Jews , accessed on June 14, 2020.
  6. ↑ Article 'Bukhari Jews': бухарские евреи , in: Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia, accessed on May 16, 2020.
  7. ↑ Article 'Bukhari Jews': бухарские евреи , in: Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia, accessed on May 16, 2020.
  8. ↑ Exodus from Bukhara . In: TIME Magazine , August 1, 2011, Vol. 178, No. 5, p. 73.
  9. ↑ Descent, age structure and marital status website of the Association of Bucharischer Jews Austria. Retrieved February 10, 2013.
  10. ^ Bukharian Jews open first synagogue in Hanover . In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung . September 8, 2009 ( online [accessed November 22, 2009]).