Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism (Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies)

To say that this is an excellent book or an enjoyable read would be inaccurate. It is an experience. Anyone, Jewish or otherwise, who is interested in learning about a little known branch of the Jewish people who are most likely direct descendents of the 10 Lost Tribes of ancient Israel will find it fascinating.I met Professor Cooper at the end of last summer when she attended the annual picnic of our small southwestern Pennsylvania congregation, where she was doing research on the struggle of small mid country synagogues to stay alive and relevant. She told me that she had written a book about Bukharan Jews. I knew nothing about the Bukharan branch of our people, so we chatted for a while. My greatest regret looking back is that I spoke too much and listened too little to her, for once I started reading this text I realized that I had been in the presence of a vastly superior intellect, and would have benefited more if I had confined myself to listening.This work is the product of 20 years of incredible research, in the US and Israel where most Bukharans immigrated to after the fall of the Soviet Union, and prolonged periods of living among them in their central Asian homeland before that mass migration. To accomplish that, she had to master several foreign languages, including Judeo-Tajik, the common language spoken by the Bukharans, like Yiddish was a common language for Eastern European Jews.Almost all of what had been written about these folks from the late 19th through the late 20th centuries was written through the prism of European Ashkenazi Jews who came to dominate religious and university life in Israel. Those establishment religious leaders sent "emissaries" to Central Asia who, in their encounters with the local population, sought to teach rather than to learn. Differences in customs and religious practices were largely viewed by those writers as "deficits" in the knowledge of the Bukharans due to their relative isolation from western establishment Judaism. Professor Cooper writes the story starting with accepting the Bukharan religious traditions as just as valid as mainstream Ashkenazi traditions and delving into them. Indeed, she discusses the question of what defines membership in "the Jewish people".She also brings to bear the history of this group. It is most likely that they are descendents of ancient Jews taken away to Babylonia when that nation conquered ancient Israel and laid waste to the First Temple in the early 6th century BCE. 7 decades later, when the Persians conquered Babylonia, they offered the subjugated people the chance to go back to Israel, which many did, but many also stayed behind and some of those found their way to what is now Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and became the Bukharan Jews.Finally, Professor Cooper explains differences between pre Soviet and post Soviet Bukharan religious practices. While the Soviet Union suppressed religious activities in Churches, Synagogue and Mosques, it was unable to do the same to household religious activity. As an example, the Bukharan Jews mourn dead members starting in the same way that Jews in the rest of the world do: they say prayers every day for 7 days after burial, then every Sabbath for almost a year, then on the annual anniversary of the death. However, they do so in their homes, with all members of the extended family plus family friends. It is an hours long event that includes a large community meal. During the Soviet era, this practice became a venue for teaching younger Jews prayers in Hebrew and Jewish religious practices and customs. The Soviet Union forbid the printing or importation of religious texts, so this passing on of tradition was done orally. When Prof. Cooper attended one such event in a Bukharan home in Central Asia, she noted that most of the attendees could not read Hebrew nor even knew what many of the prayers meant, but they joined in at appropriate times to say "Amen" or other congregational responses to leaders who did the main reading. What those congregants did know was that they were practicing the religion of their forefathers, despite Soviet efforts to suppress it over 70 years.The book is written in a manner that allows those who have little knowledge of Jewish practices and customs to learn them as one reads. I urge anyone who thinks this topic might be of interest to them to buy and read this book. As a child I attended a small town Conservative synagogue and have never been really immersed in Jewish culture or strict religious observance, having lived in overwhelmingly Christian communities my entire life. I have never studied nor worked in any field related to religion. If I was able to understand this book, so will you.

For students of Judaica and Central Asia, this well-researched book covers much territory in history and social and cultural anthropology. I obtained it to supplement a Bukharian ethnomusicology book. While early chapters become bogged in the historical minutiae of a polemic that concerns conflicting interpretations of Jewish regulations, the remainder develops more interestingly and broadly under the rubric of not only 'Who are the Bukharian Jews?" but also the larger question,'Who is a Jew?", which becomes important in the Israeli Right of Return. Moreover, the book is concerned with the historical interactions between Jewish institutions in Jerusalem and the communities in Central Asia, including the relationships with both finance and power. The conflicting parameters of political nationality, religious affiliation, socio-political lineage and genetic endowment, and cultural self-identification muddy the waters. Indeed, in the history of the Bukharian Jews, the Sefardic chief rabbi in Jerusalem sent an Ashkenazi Hassid to Bukhara to instruct in Jewish liturgy and conduct for a population already versed with fundamental Jewish teaching but with local customs, as much as Yeminite and Ethiopian Jews and other edah, or ethnicities, have local cultural variations. During the Soviet era, Jews (or those who have Jewish family roots) were considered a separate nationality whether living in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, or the Ukraine. Jews who dwelled in Tashkent or Samarkand called themselves Bukharan, largely because of a 19th-century bureaucratic shortening of the name of an organization of Central Asian Jews in Jerusalem. Jewish identification is by custom through the mother, except in Bukhara, where as with the Muslim population, Jewish identification was patrilineally transmitted. During World War II, fleeing Ashkenazi Jews came to Central Asia but being European, integrated with the Russian population and hence were regarded as not true Jews by the Bukharans. Such are but a few of the remarkable notes in this book. The adjustments of Bukharian immigrants in Israel and the United States are taken up in the final chapters; presently, as with many recent immigrant ethnicities, the ties to traditions are still tight but will doubtlessly soon loosen. Foods, Tajik-Persian or Bukharit or even Russian language, music, and certain customs in weddings, for instance [Bukharian grooms break a plate, not a glass], will likely persist, but social identification of a Bukharian Jew already is problematic among Jews of Central Asian ancestry. Alanna Cooper's study and interviews are an important contribution to Jewish history.

Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global by Alanna E. Cooper is a fascinating dive into a Jewish community that is not widely known. And that is part of what her whole thesis is about: what is the “dynamic” of Jewish communities and this thing called world Jewry? What can we say about the Burkharan community of Jews in an informed way?Cooper, along with many other scholars studying Jewish communities and topics, no longer postulates an entity like Jewish Culture, or normative Judaism. Really, we have an interplay between different varieties of Judaism that are in constant conversation with each other; elements of communal Judaism across the globe are evolving through time, shifting, and changing. The time of static historical categories is over.

As a Bukharian Jewish reader, I found this book well written and insightful.

Great book! Fabulous Job Dr. Cooper.