Where Have All the Jews Gone? Mass Migration from Independent Uzbekistan · 203mosques. Khomlos where children studied Jewish traditional teachings
were shut down, as were kittabs. The Soviets also saw to it that celebra-
tions of rites of passage, such as weddings and births, came under gov-
ernment control. Public aspects of these events came to be structured
around civil idiom rather than around traditional religious practice. The
result was a further blurring of differences between Jews and Muslims.
The fading of these differences, however, should not be overstated. So-
viet antireligious campaigns were not as harshly enforced in Central Asia
as they were in western parts of the USSR. Furthermore, the region’s slow
pace of industrialization and urbanization allowed the traditional orga-
nization of society to remain largely intact. People had little incentive
to leave their hometowns in search of employment, education, or high
culture. Geographic mobility, therefore, remained low and social bound-
aries remained high. In Uzbekistan, intermarriage between Uzbeks and
non-Uzbeks was rare, and the locals maintained use of their native lan-
guage—as opposed to Russian—as their first language.^11 Similar patterns
were found among Central Asia’s Jews. Almost every city and town in
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan that was home to a Jewish community had
a Jewish mahallah (residential quarter). Throughout the Soviet era, Jew-
ish populations remained concentrated in these mahallahs, which func-
tioned as centers of Jewish life. The communities’ physical boundaries
reinforced their social boundaries. Rates of intermarriage with non-Jews
remained low, and a strong sense of Jewish identity persisted.^12
In 1989, on the eve of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, 35,000
Bukharan Jews lived in Uzbekistan and 10,000 in Tajikistan. By 1993, the
first time I visited the region, a majority had already emigrated, leaving
behind only some 20,000.^13 Over the years, that number continued to
dwindle. With less than 1,000 remaining in Central Asia today, Bukharan
Jews have worked to rebuild community life in their new homes in Israel,
the United States, and Austria. They have opened schools, created news-
papers, built synagogues and community centers, and formed theater
groups in an effort to maintain cultural and social continuity with the
past while also adapting to the new circumstances they encounter.
This article focuses on their emigration, the reasons for the sudden
massive population upheaval, and the factors they considered in decid-
ing to leave their longtime Diaspora homes. Given the Bukharan Jews’
deep roots in the region and the ways in which they had come to resemble