The Divergence of Judaism and Islam. Interdependence, Modernity, and Political Turmoil

(Joyce) #1

204 · Alanna E. Cooper


their Muslim neighbors, while also remaining separate, the reasons were
nuanced and multifaceted. I will attempt to capture this complexity by
analyzing the process from a variety of angles.


Methodological Considerations


Since 1924, Central Asia’s Bukharan Jews lived within the realm of the
Soviet Union, concentrated primarily within the Uzbek Soviet Socialist
Republic. In 1991, Uzbekistan became independent. Today, the country
has a population of some 28,000,000, most of whom are Sunni Muslim.
Ethnically, the country’s population consists mainly of Uzbeks (80%). Mi-
nority groups include Russians (5.5%), Tajiks (5%), Kazakhs (3%), Kara-
kalpaks (2.5%), Tatars (1.5%), and others (2.5%).^14
During the Soviet era, it was difficult to enter the republic, much more
so to gain access to the small Jewish community living there. However,
in the early 1990s, when I began graduate work in cultural anthropology
and first considered traveling there, travel restrictions to the region had
eased. While I was alarmed by media reports that focused on the Jews’
mass migration under conditions of panic and duress, conversations with
researchers and Jewish aid workers who had recently returned from the
country convinced me that it was, in fact, safe to visit. Indeed, I encoun-
tered no difficulties as I traveled through the country’s urban areas, visit-
ing Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara, the cities with the largest Jewish
communities.
During that research trip, I took a keen interest in the way that local
Jewish religious practices and understandings were being reconstituted
in the wake of the Soviet era. While this topic eventually became the fo-
cus of my dissertation, there was no avoiding the fact that I was collecting
information in the midst of dramatic population change. The sense of
emptying out pervaded everything I saw, every conversation I had, and
it became a running theme throughout my field notes. There was not a
single person who did not have a child, a sibling, an aunt or uncle who
had not emigrated, and everyone was interested in discussing whether
they should leave, too, and if so, where they should go. Over the course
of five trips to Uzbekistan between 1993 and 1999, I had conversations
with some 150 individuals there about the topic. In these discussions,
people constantly weighed what they would be leaving—both the good

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