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PREFACE: Reining in Diaspora’s Margins
- Indiana University Press
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Preface Reining in Diaspora’s Margins For countless generations, Jewish houses of prayer, schools, neighborhood associations, and markets dotted the landscape of Central Asia’s ancient silk-route cities. Although historians are not certain when Jews first appeared in the region, most believe they were among those who were exiled—or whose ancestors were exiled—from the Land of Israel in the sixth century bce at the hands of the Babylonians. They moved eastward, probably as merchants along trade routes, spreading out as far as the fertile river valleys of present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. As the centuries passed, their descendants continued to carry the collective memory of exile and loss of the Jewish homeland. Over time, however , their historical experiences became intimately linked to the Central Asian landscape in which they found themselves. So much so, that the Jews whom I met there in the 1990s characterized themselves as “indigenous ” to the region. We arrived here before Islam was introduced to the area, and before the Uzbek dynasts conquered the territory, they explained. Even their language testifies to their deep Central Asian ties. Like Jews around the world, they spoke a dialect that set them off as a distinct community, separate from the non-Jews among whom they lived. Unlike the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe, however, whose language was derived from experiences in a previous diaspora home, the language of Central Asia’s Jews evolved within the confines of Central Asia itself. Whereas Yiddish—a Germanic language—marked Ashkenazi Jews as outsiders in Poland, Judeo-Tajik is one of the many variants of Tajik (a Persian language) spoken in the region by Jews and Muslims alike. x preface In spite of their deep roots, the ties that bound the Jews to Central Asia were, nonetheless, not strong enough to withstand the changes that swept through the region at the end of the twentieth century. As soon as the USSR dissolved, these Jews (who lived in the Central Asian territories that had been incorporated into the Soviet Union in the 1920s) began emigrating en masse. I met many of them as new arrivals in an immigrant school in New York, where I taught in 1993 (and which I describe further in the book). Curious to learn what it was like to be Jewish in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan , I asked my students to tell me about the homes, schools, synagogues, and neighborhoods they had left behind. They began to answer my questions , but the language and cultural barriers that stood between us proved serious obstacles, and we quickly reached the limits of conversation. If you want to know the place we call home, they concluded, you will have to go visit for yourself. Several years before, this would not have been possible. Now, however, Soviet restrictions on tourism had been lifted and travel to the region was a real possibility. My curiosity was piqued. But you had better go quickly, they warned. The rise in nationalism and antisemitism, coupled with economic instability and a fear that the window of opportunity for leaving might be short-lived, had led to rapid chain-migration. Everyone’s aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and friends seemed to be packing their bags, leaving, and resettling in Israel and the United States. Soon it will be too late to see Jewish life in Central Asia, my students cautioned. And they were right. In 1989, approximately 50,000 “indigenous” Jews lived in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.1 Just a decade later, their population in the region had been reduced to about a tenth of its size. And today, no more than several hundred remain. In a historical instant, Jews have all but disappeared from this corner of the world, and a long chapter in diaspora history has come to a close. The story of Central Asia’s Jews’ deep roots and sudden rupture is not an isolated one. Indeed, it is part of a much larger phenomenon: a dramatic demographic shift that has occurred over the past century. Whereas today more than 80 percent of the world’s Jewish population is concentrated in the United States and Israel,2 several decades ago this portion of the world’s Jewish population was dispersed across regions in which they simply are no more. Gone are the Jewish communities in [3.236.19.251] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:25 GMT) xi preface Eastern Europe, which were decimated during World War II. Empty stand the Jewish communal structures of the predominantly...