Where Have All the Jews Gone? Mass Migration from Independent Uzbekistan · 223the Moslem Central Asian republics, where the growth of Islam has everybody
worried.” Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia, 17 January 1992.
- Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 18 June 1992, “Duschambe’s
Russians Fear the Tadzhiks.” Batsheva Tsur reported that Tajikistan is “in a
state of political upheaval, with the populace increasingly embracing Islamic
fundamentalism.” “Tajikistan Airlift Set to Begin,” Jerusalem Post, 23 September
- Garth Wolkoff, “Tears, Fears Found by JCF Leaders in Uzbekistan,”
Northern California Jewish Bulletin, 5 November 1993. - Perry A. Bialor, “Don’t Call Us Russians,” New York Times, 7 August 1994.
- Jewish Press Magazine, 5 August 1995.
- Suzanne Freeman, “Close Knit, but Closed Out,” New York Times, 16
March 1997. - Mikhail Degtiar, “The Jews of Uzbekistan—The End of an Epoch,” Cen -
tral Asia and the Caucasus 4, no. 10 (2001). Also posted on the Union of Coun-
cils for Soviet Jewry website, http://www.ucsj.org/news/jews-of-uzbekistan
-end-of-epoch. - Betty Ehrenberg, “A Bittersweet Visit to a Distant Land,” Amit, Sum-
mer 1997, and Maureen Greenwood, “Letter from Tashkent,” Forward, 28 March
- The “new city” is an area of Samarkand that was developed and planned
in the late nineteenth century under Russian colonial rule. - Aryeh Dean Cohen, “Uzbekistan’s Jewish Renaissance,” Jerusalem Post,
16 May 1997. - Betty Ehrenberg, “A Bittersweet Visit to a Distant Land,” Amit, Summer
- Alanna E. Cooper, “Looking Out for One’s Own Identity: Central Asian
Jews in the Wake of Communism,” in New Jewish Identities, ed. Zvi Gitelman
(Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), 191–93. - According to demographic statistics gathered by the Jewish Agency
for Israel, the population of Ashkenazi Jews in Uzbekistan in 1989 numbered
60,000. They were concentrated in the Uzbekistan’s most populous cities. Most
lived in Tashkent. According to M. Zubin’s article, “The Jews of Samarkand
in the Year 1979,” there were 4,121 Ashkenazi Jews in Samarkand. Pe ̔amim 35
(1987): 170–77. Fewer lived in Bukhara (personal communications with Ashke-
nazi and Central Asian Jewish residents in Bukhara, as well as local community
leaders). - Although official statistics on intermarriage between Bukharan Jews and
Ashkenazi Jews are unavailable, during the course of five months of ethno-
graphic research in Samarkand, I learned of six cases of Bukharan Jews in Sa-
markand who had married non-Jews and only two who had married Ashkenazi
Jews. - Based on a survey of 113 couples. See Alanna E. Cooper, Negotiating Iden-