Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism (excerpt)

7/31/2019 Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism (excerpt)

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Contents

Preae: Rg Dpo’ Mg / x

Anedents / xx

Part 1. Introduction

F Ecou: ukh Jwh mmg hkz School w Yok / 3

Wg ukh Jwh Ho: Mmo, uho,

oplhoo / 15

Part 2. Eighteenth-Century Conversations

Em fom h Hol L Cl / 35

4 Rvg h So of h Em fom h Hol L / 57

Part 3. Nineteenth-Century Conversations

Ru Cololm Cl Jwh Rou / 69

M of M: Locl Globl Rlgou

L Covo / 88

ulg ghbohoo Coucgukh Jwh / 120



Part 4. Twentieth-Century Conversations

Locl Jwh Fom / 139

ol Jwh Ogzo Ecou Locl Jwh

Commu Lf / 169

V of ukh Jwh / 203 gog uhc : ukh Jw Ecou

Ech Oh h Slf / 230

Jwh Ho Covo / 253

Ntes / 263

Biiray / 285

Inde / 295



During the cold war, when tensions between the oviet nion and the

nited tates were high, the plight o the Jews o the USSR was on the

oreront o the American Jewish public agenda. Te reusenik move-

ment, in particular, was given great attention and publicity. Among its

heroes were Anatoly haransky, Ida Nudel, Vladimir lepak, and others

who attempted to leave their homes or a place where they could identiy

as Jews without stigma, and practice their religion without ear. As aconsequence o applying or exit visas, they were declared enemies o

the state, lost their jobs, and were imprisoned.

While I was growing up in the nited tates in the 1970s and 1980s,

the stories o these reuseniks played a ormative role in shaping my Jew-

ish identity. I was among the many Jewish youth who signed petitions

on their behal, wrote letters o encouragement to them, sent money to

organizations that ought or their reedom, and wore bracelets signiy-

ing our solidarity with their plight. Tese activities sensitized me to thesituation o oviet Jews, but also strongly inormed my own ideas about

what it meant to be an American Jew. Tey instilled within me a strong

appreciation or the reedom that I had to practice religion and identiy

proudly as a Jew, all the while maintaining my sense o belonging to

America.

In 1991, the oviet nion dissolved and the Jewish world as I knew

it underwent dramatic changes. Te Jews o the USSR began to migrate

en masse to the nited tates and Israel, and I was compelled to meetthese people whose own experiences had so strongly shaped my under-

on e

First Ecutr:Bukhara Jwish Immigrats i a

Ashkazi Schl i Nw Yrk



4 Introduction

standing o my own Jewish identity. As it happened, this event occurred

when I was beginning graduate school in cultural anthropology, and was

starting to ormulate a research project. It seemed an auspicious time to

nd entrée into the lives o the Jews who were emigrating. I began study-

ing ussian and took a job at orah Academy, one o the many private

Jewish high schools that had been established in New York to help this

immigrant population.

I knew little about the school, other than that it was ounded to

provide the oviet émigré student population with a Jewish education,

which they had been denied in their home country. I learned much more

on the opening day o the school year, the rst time I was in the building

since my job interview a ew months beore. I picked up a memo waiting

in my mailbox, which in lieu o an orientation was my introduction to

orah Academy’s agenda and to the administration’s view o my posi-

tion. Addressed to all sta members, the memo began by describing

each student at orah Academy as a “Jewish soul” that was “thirsting

or the beauty o Judaism.” Te goal o the school, it continued, was to

reach out to these students in an eort to quench their thirst, and its

raison d’etre was to bring them “closer to Judaism and guide them in

their spiritual growth.”

Tis brie statement went a long way to explain the rather puzzling

hiring process that had brought me to orah Academy. Aer glancing

over my resume, and exchanging what seemed to me to be no more than

a ew pleasantries, the principal had oered me the position o social

studies teacher in the girls’ division. I would be responsible or teaching

our classes, ve days a week. Te money was meager, the very hasty

hiring process was perplexing, but I was a graduate student, excited or

the opportunity to have an entrée into the oviet émigré community,

and I agreed without hesitation. Not wanting to draw attention to the

act that I had no prior classroom teaching experience, I cautiously asked

the principal beore leaving his oce i he might advise me on how to

prepare or my classes. Just stay a ew pages ahead o the students were

his only words o advice. Everything will work out fne, he assured me

with a smile, and sent me on my way.

As soon as the school year began and I had the opportunity to meet

the other teachers, I learned that orah Academy was run by an ultra-

Orthodox administration, was unded by ultra-Orthodox donors, and



5First Encounter

was almost exclusively staed by teachers who viewed the Judaic stud-

ies classes as the most vital aspects o the students’ education. Many o

the teachers who taught math, American history, science, and English

in the aernoons also taught religious studies classes in the mornings,

and aside rom two or three exceptions, none had college degrees. Most

were rom a relatively tight social and religious circle, lived in a ew

neighborhoods in Queens, had studied in the same religious academies,

and looked to the same Agudat Israel1 rabbis or guidance. As teachers at

orah Academy, they were ully committed to imparting their particular

understanding o Judaism to their students, most o whom were rom

the Central Asian republics o the ormer oviet nion. I learned how

strong this commitment was toward the end o the school year when I

ound out that most o the teachers had not received their paychecks in

a timely, regular ashion. In the spring, as a result o a donor’s serious

lapse in payments, the school’s nancial crisis reached a peak. At a sta

meeting I was surprised to discover that many o the teachers whom I

saw each day in the hallways busily rushing rom class to class, hold-

ing stacks o graded papers in their hands, had not been paid or our

consecutive months. More surprising was the act that there had been

so little discussion about this issue in the photocopy room and teachers’

lounge, and that I had been utterly sheltered rom any knowledge about

this situation.

It is this point that brings me to a ew words about my place in the

school, and the way in which my perspective inorms the analysis to ol-

low. Like the other teachers at orah Academy, I had grown up knowing

about the plight o the oviet Jews who were not permitted to study or

practice their religion. Also like the other teachers, I was excited by the

school’s project o lling this gaping hole le by the communist regime.

However, i this task had allen to my hands, I would have been at a loss.

Although I was deeply invested in my own Jewishness, I did not closely

identiy with any single variant o Judaism and would have been hard-

pressed to come up with an approach to teach the religion. As a young

child my amily belonged to a synagogue aliated with the Conservative

movement, and I attended an ultra-Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch sum-

mer camp. During my teenage years, my parents joined an Orthodox

synagogue and sent me to a nonsectarian Jewish high school, in which

many dierent religious perspectives were taught, each given equal



6 Introduction

weight. For college, I chose to attend Barnard both because o its large,

active Jewish student population and also because o the highly liberal

education it oered. Aer I completed my B.A., I remained committed to

practicing the religion as an insider, but also enrolled in a Ph.D. program

with the intent o studying Judaism and the Jewish world through a criti-

cal, analytic approach. As a doctoral student in cultural anthropology,

academic inquiry entailed or me an eort to investigate the ways in

which Jewish texts were translated into practice. By engaging in my own

ethnographic research and drawing on the writings o others, I worked

to gain an understanding o the great range o orms the religion had

taken on across the ar reaches o the diaspora.

At orah Academy, then, I was primarily driven by a desire to learn

about the ways in which my students’ experiences in Soviet Central Asia

had shaped their practices and understandings o Judaism. I also took

note o the great divide between the religious outlook o the school’s

student population and its teacher population, and was intrigued by the

conversations between them in which they negotiated claims to two very

dierent views o Judaism. In short, unlike most o the aculty members,

my goal was not to teach Judaism to the students. ather, it was to en-

rich my understanding o it through discussions with my students and

with the other teachers, and through my observations o the unolding

encounter between them.

In light o what I learned over the course o the year, I was able to

make some sense out o the way the teachers handled the lapse in their

paychecks, as well as about why I had been sheltered rom the situation.

Because my educational background, my social world, and my religious

views did not neatly overlap with that o the administration, I had not

been hired to teach courses that were integral to the school’s agenda. My

social studies classes, like the math, science, and English classes, were

included in the curriculum or the purpose o securing state accredita-

tion. Tis goal, however, was utilitarian, and was secondary to orah

Academy’s central mission.

Te peripheral nature o the relationship between the courses I

taught and the school’s primary agenda explained why I had been hired

so quickly and casually. o, too, it explained why I continued to receive

my salary in the midst o the school’s grave nancial troubles. Each

time the principal handed me my paycheck and I accepted it, we jointly



7First Encounter

acknowledged that my work, unlike that o the Judaic teachers, was not

organically linked to orah Academy’s core purpose. By contrast, the

act that the teachers who did not receive their paychecks voiced almost

no public protest, and continued to work without any clear sense o when

they would be compensated, brought into sharp relie just how strongly

and authentically they identied with the school’s objectives.

Tese objectives were articulated by a number o teachers in re-

sponse to my survey question, “What are your goals as a teacher at o-

rah Academy?” One woman wrote, “I wanted to imbue my students

with a love or Judaism, which unortunately they don’t get rom the

home.” Another wrote that her energies were directed toward giving

her students “an awareness and appreciation o who they are—as Jews.”

Tis teacher pointed out the urgency o her task by explaining that the

“students have much opposition rom their parents—many o whom nd

religious observance to be anatical and a thing o the past.” Tis trope,

that the students did not grow up with an appreciation o Judaism and

that they had to be taught it rom scratch, was strongly articulated in

Judaic studies lessons.

oward the end o the academic year, a number o teachers gave

me permission to sit in on their classes, which gave me the opportunity

to watch them in action in their eort to “bring the students closer” to

their religion. Tey read religious texts with their students, prayed with

them, and taught the religious strictures pertaining to keeping kosher

and to observing the abbath and holidays. o, too, they taught them

moral precepts such as those related to dressing modestly, respecting

elders, and reraining rom gossip. But more than just teaching the rules

o the religion, the teachers worked hard to convince their students to

incorporate these practices into their lives. As part o their eorts to

“sell” Judaism, the teachers told stories with moral lessons, highlighted

the power o divine retribution, described the ways in which religious

laws could add meaning to lie, and chided those who did not observe

them.

Te work o the teachers was described in an article about the school

that appeared in New York Newsday the year I taught there. Proud that

his school was eatured in the paper, and pleased with the story jour-

nalist usan Bereld told, the principal hung the article on his oce

door and distributed it to all the teachers. When I picked up the copy



Introduction8

in my mailbox, I was drawn to the headline, printed in large bold type,

“Heritage 101.” Tis title oered a preview o Bereld’s description o

orah Academy’s curriculum as an introductory course on Judaism or

students who had arrived in the nited tates, “knowing nothing about

being Jewish except to hide it.” As a result o the restrictions posed by

the oviet nion, the piece began, the school’s students, almost all o

whom were rom oviet Central Asia, had been isolated rom the rest o

the Jewish world or most o the twentieth century. Over the course o

this contemporary period o isolation they had orgotten how to practice

their religion and had lost their sense o connection to Jewish history

and to the Jewish People. Tey came to the nited tates with only the

vaguest historical memory o their ties to the rest o the Jewish world.

pon arrival, the story continued, many had been ortunate enough to

nd their way to orah Academy. Here, they were given the opportunity

to learn about their religion and reconnect with their people.

Was the school successul? Did the teachers manage to imbue stu-

dents with a “love or Judaism” and an “awareness” o who they are

as Jews? Was the principal able to bring the students “closer to Juda-

ism” and help them achieve “spiritual growth”? Tese were all critical

questions or the teachers, who had invested vast stores o energy and

time in working toward these goals. o, too, they were critical or the

administration, whose primary directive was to carry out the mission

they shared with the school’s donors. Finally, they were essential to

the donors themselves, whose unding was conditional on the school’s

success in meeting its stated goals. Te answers to these questions were

addressed in sta meetings and memos, and at the school’s graduation

ceremony, an ideal orum to assure the teachers, administrators, and

donors o orah Academy’s success. Te caps and gowns, the awards,

the ormalized speeches, the podium, stage, and perormative nature

o the event all served to imbue the graduation ceremony’s message

with a powerul aura o truth. Tis message was not just that the stu-

dents had mastered a certain body o knowledge, or that the school had

been successul in educating another cadre o young adults. More than

anything, the students’ receipt o their diplomas signied their passage

rom a state o religious ignorance to a state o Jewish knowledge and

commitment, and rom a state o disconnection rom world Jewry to

connection.



9First Encounter

Te marking o this transormation was oreshadowed in the invita-

tion to the event, which urged recipients to come witness a “miracle”:

the transormation o children “rom a world o atheism to a world o

Judaism.” It was the story o this miracle that was eatured as the main

theme o the ceremony. In the speech delivered by the assistant prin-

cipal, the students were characterized as “young men and women . . .

[who] came rom an oppressive, atheist society determined to suppress

religion in general and Judaism in particular.” He then turned to the

audience, asked “Can you believe it?!” and with infections o amazement

continued, “Coming rom the society that they did, that they now have

the basic bedrock o belie?” Tis miracle was reiterated in a screening

o a promotional lm about the school. Against the backdrop o scenes

o children actively engaged in a class, the narrator explained, “Tese

young students come spiritually devoid o everything and anything Jew-

ish.” As a result o the education they receive in the school, the narrator

continued, they develop “strong eelings or Yiddishkeit [Jewishness],”

are “increasing their level o [religious] observance, [their] homes are

being made kosher, habbat is being kept, and amilies are being drawn

closer together.”

Most powerully, it was in the speech o the valedictorian that the

message o transormation was conveyed. Esther was chosen by her

teachers because she seemed to most closely embody orah Academy’s

successes. “oday is one o the greatest days o my lie,” she began,

and then, like the others, she invoked the term “miracle” to describe

her graduation. Esther armed her choice to attend orah Academy

upon her arrival in the nited tates, which gave her the opportunity

to choose “the right path—the path o orah and Hashem [God]” aer

having lived so many years in the oviet nion. Each day she spent in

the school, she explained, she “grew stronger” in her “resolve to live a

orah way o lie,” and graduation marked her ull commitment to this

choice.

Esther’s speech was a clear articulation o the nal chapter in a tri-

partite story about Central Asia’s Jews that I would come to hear many

times over: isolation, encounter, and then the triumph o the educator

in reuniting these Jews with the wider Jewish world and with their own

Jewish selves. Tis tale, however, was told by the voices that dominated

in the public sphere. In the private, unocial sphere—in my classroom





11First Encounter

borhood in Queens that was teeming with Bukharan Jewish immigrants.

Tese newcomers arrived with almost no English skills, with little un-

derstanding o the school system in the nited tates, and with very

meager nancial resources. Te school was appealing to them because

tuition was almost ully subsidized, students were given ree hot lunches,

and parents who were rightened o New York and New Yorkers were

given the security o knowing that their children were in school with

others like them. Parents did not send their children to orah Academy

with the hopes that they would increase their level o religious obser-

vance. In act, the teachers’ great eorts to instill new Jewish values and

understandings seemed to have taken many o the students and their

parents by surprise.

Te great divide between the motives and interests o the admin-

istration and teachers, on the one hand, and the parents and students,

on the other, gave rise to two dierent sorts o stories about the school

which bore little resemblance to one another. orah Academy’s ocial

narrative presented its students as Jewishly ignorant prior to their arrival

in the nited tates and portrayed their education as a religious trans-

ormation. I this public story was well packaged by the school’s donors

and administration, much in the way o an advertising campaign, the

voices o the students were soer, and their narratives were not well ar-

ticulated. Indeed, they came in many dierent versions, and no strong

spokesperson assembled them together into a single, clear story that

might be publicized. I mysel only began to tease out the various aspects

o their stories aer careul listening and refection on conversations

that I had with my students and their amily members over the course o

that year. Tese stories began with discussions about their memories o

Jewish lie in Central Asia. Tey moved to descriptions o the surprises

encountered at orah Academy, and ended with dicult questions about

whether the orm o Judaism they had practiced in Central Asia ought

to be preserved, about how the Judaism presented at orah Academy

compared with other orms o American Judaism, and about how to

characterize authentic Judaism.

In one sense, this book is structured around these very narratives,

not necessarily the ones told by the students at orah Academy but rather

by individuals who occupied the Bukharan Jewish diaspora landscape

over the course o the past two centuries. In this eort, I carried with me



12 Introduction

an important lesson about ethnographic research taught by Bronislaw

Malinowski, considered one o cultural anthropology’s ounding athers.

Writing and researching in the 1920s, Malinowski rejected the methods

o “arm-chair anthropologists,” who wrote ethnographies o indigenous

peoples by drawing solely on the data collected by British colonial o-

cials, missionaries, and travelers. Tese Westerners may have lived in

the colonies or years, with “constant opportunities” to observe “the

natives” and to communicate with them, but because they were driven

by a particular agenda they “hardly knew one thing about them really

well.”4 One o the rst anthropologists to engage in intense eldwork

himsel, Malinowski set up camp in Papua New Guinea, and learned

about the people there through their own voices, rather than through

descriptions that were ltered through the prism o the colonizer. Keep-

ing this approach in mind, I recognized that much o what has been

published on Bukharan Jewish history and culture has been written by

Western scholars, many o whom have brought a priori assumptions

to bear on their work. o peel away the lters that have inormed their

scholarship, I would have to seek an understanding o Bukharan Jewish

history, identity, social relationships, and practices as seen through their

own eyes, and as ramed on their own terms.

Yet, this task o listening to Bukharan Jews and working to see the

world as they view it is only hal the project. At orah Academy, I was

also intrigued by the encounters between the school’s student population

and teacher population, in which they negotiated claims to two very di-

erent views o Judaism. Tis ormative experience shaped the direction

o my research as well as the structure o this book. Te gateway story

this chapter presents, then, is not only intended to provide ethnographic

details about the interactions between orah Academy’s ultra-Orthodox,

Ashkenazi establishment and the school’s Bukharan Jewish immigrant

students, an encounter that unolded in a very particular time, place, and

cultural context. It is also meant to serve as a narrative about the eorts

o the religious establishment (however that broad and shiing term

is dened) to strip Bukharan Jews o eatures it characterizes as mis-

guided or not authentically Jewish. In this respect, the interactions that

unolded at orah Academy are not an isolated phenomenon. Te book

ocuses on similar eorts undertaken over the course o two hundred

years o history. During this period, a range o Jewish institutions, lead-



13First Encounter

ers, and intellectuals have worked to bring Bukharan Jews—whom they

have understood to be situated at the margins o the Jewish world (both

in terms o their practice, as well as their geographical location)—into

alignment with that which they classiy as “Center.”

At another level, this narrative need not be read as pertaining to

Bukharan Jews alone. While this book ocuses on the particulars o

this group, it oers a more general ramework or understanding the

ways in which groups—throughout Jewish history—have been labeled

and treated by other Jewish groups as marginal, deviant, or backward.

Likewise, it is about the eorts o the latter to reeducate and resocial-

ize the ormer as part o a larger project; that o reining in diaspora’s

centriugal orces.

Keeping in mind this broader narrative, the book deliberately began

with a story that takes place in the nited tates rather than in Israel.

Tis starting point serves as a response to a current trend in Jewish

tudies scholarship: most works that ocus on the dynamics between

the Jewish establishment vis-à-vis Jewish groups that are disempow-

ered and marginalized are set in Israel. Tey call attention to relations

between the country’s Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews (who are o North

Arican, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian extraction), and discussions

are generally couched in terms o West and East; colonizer and native;

white-skinned and dark-skinned. More specically, this discourse tends

to center on power relations between the country’s hegemonic, white,

Ashkenazi, Zionist establishment and the disempowered, dark-skinned

Mizrahi populations.

Tis book does not exclude Israel as a site o investigation. Yet, Israel’s

interethnic and class tensions are not the ocus o analysis. Likewise, the

work does not exclude power relations rom the discussion. However, the

colonial and imperialist urge associated with the West’s eort to domi-

nate the East, and ascribed by many to the Ashkenazi establishment’s

exertion o power over Israel’s Mizrahi citizens, is not treated as a driv-

ing mechanism. Instead, relations among Jewish groups within Israel

are regarded as but one maniestation o a phenomenon that has been

present throughout much o Jewish history: the project o maintaining

a single religion and people in the ace o global dispersion. Tis project

extends well beyond the borders o modern-day Israel and begins long

beore the history o contemporary Zionism or European colonialism.



14 Introduction

ather than drawing on postcolonial theory or an orientalist cri-

tique to understand the relationship between Bukharan Jews and the

other Jews they encounter, then, it is diaspora studies that inorms this

work. Along these lines, the nal level at which this gateway story—and

more broadly this book—can be read is not about Jews in particular.

ather, it is about world religions more generally. At this level, the ocus

is on the work involved in navigating between diaspora’s centripetal and

centriugal orces: the centralizing claims o a global religion in tension

with the pulls o varied local belies and practices.

Documents

Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism (excerpt)