Where Have All the Jews Gone? Mass Migration from Independent Uzbekistan · 215with kinship ties. “We are all cousins here,” people often answered in
response to my questions about the relationships between them.
Ritual practice, then, which was so intimately linked to local space,
also became strongly connected to the articulation of kinship bonds. This
overlap between kin group, local space, and ritual practice was most
strongly articulated in the frequent memorial services that Bukharan
Jews hold in honor of the deceased. These services, held twenty-one
times during the first year after an individual dies, and once a year for
decades following a death, were generally conducted in the home where
the deceased had resided with his or her extended family. The services
included speeches in memory of the deceased, an elaborate meal, and
the recitation of evening and afternoon prayer services. The Soviets did
little to monitor or ban this mourning ritual. Taking place in the domestic
sphere, they were not subject to the same surveillance as those activities
that took place within institutional structures. As a result, despite the fact
that Soviets shut most of Central Asia’s synagogues, prayer services con-
tinued to be held throughout the twentieth century. In the domestic set-
ting, however, the obligation for daily prayer became deeply connected
to the memories of particular individuals and the honor of particular
families, rather than an experience that was part of an abstract and uni-
versal system of religious law.^33
In short, religious practice, Jewish identity, social relationships, and
place had become so strongly intertwined for Bukharan Jews that it was
hard to imagine one without all the others. Ironically, then, the prospect
of migrating to the United States or Israel—where Judaism can be prac-
ticed openly and without stigma—was linked to a fear that the trans-
mission of Jewish identity and practice might become impossible. The
decision to leave, therefore, was not a simple calculation: persecution and
marginalization as a Jew in Central Asia versus the freedom to be Jewish
without oppression. Rather, the calculation involved a careful consider-
ation of how to best negotiate the sudden tearing asunder of the links
between one’s identity, practice, kin group, community, and home.
Chain Migration
The fissures that ripped apart this complex relationship began to appear
in 1989, when migration restrictions were eased and the first Bukharan
Jews packed their bags and left. Like a heavy wind that begins to dislodge