The Bukharan Jews never returned from the Babylonian exile. Now 40,000 of them call the community of Forest Hills home.
by Victor Wishna
The leposhka is baked over an open flame and rises very quickly, which is why it is always served warm. Standing at the counter of Beautiful Bukhara bakery in Queens, I bite into the delicious hubcap-sized wheel of toasty bread, which Jews in Uzbekistan were making centuries before the first bagel was boiled in Europe.
The bakery, like many of the businesses and schools and community centers along this stretch of 108th Street in Forest Hills, is operated by Bukharian Jews, so-called because they hail from the city of Bukhara, Uzbekistan, and the Central Asian countries of Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that surround it. Outwardly, the neighborhood appears much like any other immigrant enclave. Most of the signs are in Russian or Farsi, as are the labels on the foods lining the grocery shelves, and the music wailing from radios is undeniably "foreign." The occasional Hebrew poster or piece of Judaica are the only signs these streets are home to one of Israel's lost tribes.
The Bukharan Jews trace their ancestry to an Israelite clan that never made it back from Babylon after exile in the 7th century B.C.E. In Bukhara, they survived for centuries subjugated to one conquering influence after another, first the Persians, under whom they learned to speak Farsi, then the Muslims, then the Mongols, then the Muslims again. Some traditions say the three magi who came to Bethlehem bearing gifts for Baby Jesus were rabbis from Bukhara (known in the bible as Hador), though the Bukharan Jews were essentially cut off from the rest of the Jewish world for 2,000 years.
Under Soviet rule, anti-Semitism got worse, and the establishment of Israel fueled frictions with the Jews' Muslim neighbors. Finally, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, refusenik status was lifted and some 100,000 Bukharan Jews emigrated. Half wound up in Israel, while nearly all the rest - more than 40,000 - came here, to Queens.
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Leaving the bakery, we walk along what has been dubbed "Bukharan Broadway," where an abundance of restaurants and gift shops sit side by side. My guide for the day is a friend named Yana Babaev. Yana was born in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, and immigrated to the U.S. with her family when she was only two. Today, she's in business for herself as a children's party clown under the name Freckle Speckle. Growing up in the far-flung Queens province of Bayside, a good 20 minutes from here, she admits to feeling a slight disconnect from her roots. She speaks Russian, but unlike her parents, no Bukharian (a form of Farsi mixed with a little Hebrew - something of a Persian Yiddish). She complains that many of her countrymen don't recognize her as one of their own. I understand a little how she feels.
"And what is he?" asks Ada, the young woman behind the counter at Dali's Deli, where we stop in to stare at the dried fish and fried meat. "Ah, at least he is a Jewish like us," she sighs, still pointing but not looking in my direction.
However, I can't help but feel a connection. As a community, the Bukharians define what it means to be close-knit. When a member dies, I learn, hundreds of mourners will show up for shiva - most without any personal relationship to the deceased. Informal house loans - "no bank notes," I am told, "no nothing" - are common among family and neighbors. Synagogues operate on donations but no official dues. At weddings, in lieu of gifts, guests bring cash to cover their share of the cost. On the other hand, at Bukharian nuptials, it's not that unusual for folks to walk out during the chuppah ceremony to smoke or chat about business. After all, one needn't be so formal with family and friends.
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Yuhan Benjamin slaps the table to make his point. "The Bukharan community is the closest to what original Judaism is," he says. "Only Bukharian Jews follow the Old Testament."
We are sitting in Café Ellara, a restaurant he owns in Brighton Beach. Russian techno music blares in the background. A waitress brings him a bottle of water. He grabs her hand and kisses it.
Yuhan - known to all by his first name only - came here 11 years ago when he was 29, and until recently was the premiere Bukharian wedding performer and emcee, singing and swinging at event halls all over New York. Business has fallen off a bit and he has retreated to this large Russian enclave in Brooklyn to work on his music, open his eatery, and plot his return.
Meanwhile, Yuhan is recording his third album of shashmaqam, a magical Bukharian music infused with Central Asian rhythms, Muslim melodies, Russian accents, notes of Klezmer, and even a few Spanish chords ("After all, we are Sephardi," he reminds). He also hosts his own weekly radio program in Russian and Farsi, and writes regularly for the Bukharian Times, the largest of several community newspapers.
"I am proud of what I am doing for my community," he proclaims, opening his palms and slamming then on the table. "I want always to keep them 'on.'" He believes Bukharian Jews are the ultimate cultural chameleons, ever assimilating elements of the majority culture without losing their identity, a recipe he highly recommends. "If you are making a pilaf, you are not going to put a potato and leave it," he says. "No, you are going to put rice and meat and vegetables. But you keep Hebrew and keep the Torah, and that will keep you Jewish." He waves his expressive hands and sits back. "Bukharians understood this much earlier than the Ashkenazis."
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However, like their Ashkenazi cousins before them, Bukharian-American Jews are learning that, after 20 centuries of oppression and imposition, freedom - particularly, freedom of choice - may finally be a force too powerful for tradition to withstand.
"Yes, of course, I am worried," says Israel Itshakov, gently, when asked about the compounding ills of assimilation: ignorance, apathy, intermarriage, invisibility. Itshakov, himself born in Uzbekistan and raised largely nonobservant in Israel, now organizes religious services and study sessions for the Jewish teens who live near the Beth Gavriel Bukharian Congregation on 108th Street. The gatherings here range from seminars on Bible code-breaking to co-ed classes on dating dos and don'ts. His youthful charges all call him "Rabbi," though, technically, he is not. In five years, he has attracted more than 200 young men and women, mostly from completely assimilated families. "But for every one who comes in," he says, "I have 20 who don't."
Slowly, according to community reports, a number of Bukharian Jews are moving away from the "old" neighborhood, mostly south, to Atlanta, Houston and Southern California, where the climate more resembles what they knew in their homeland. Dispersed, it will of course be harder for Bukharians to keep their unique, community-based way of life.
Yet, as we stand to leave his classroom, Itshakov reassures us that he is not discouraged. "There is a saying… we have a spark inside, the Bukharian people have a spark," he says, leaning across the table, and sounding very much like a rabbi. "And as long as you have a spark, you can always make a fire."
Victor Wishna is a freelance writer in New York City. He can be reached at LetterFromNY@juno.com.
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