Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism

11 Negotiating Authenticity and Identity: Bukharan Jews Encounter Each Other and the Self

Having explored the experiences of Bukharan Jews who emigrated (or whose ancestors emigrated) from Central Asia during four different eras, and under four very different sets of circumstances, we return here to a critical examination of the Edah Paradigm. This conceptual framework is used as a vehicle to contend with cultural difference within the Jewish world. With strong parallels to the biblical portrayal of ancient Israelite tribes, it allows for a great range of diversity among the Jewish People by legitimizing and celebrating the unique histories and traditions of various diaspora groups (characterized as edot, the plural of edah), while maintaining a view of the Jews as a common, united people. Theparadigmhingesonthenotionthatlikeother edot,theBukharan Jewish edah has its own unique history, a well-defined territory that came to be thought of as their diaspora homeland, and a clear set of traditions and character traits. In this model, variations between the edot are presented and understood to be ordered, predictable, and even sacred, rather than random or idiosyncratic. For this reason, regional differences and historical change within each particular edah tend to be flattened in exchange for an image of a static, culturally isolated group. Along these lines, museum exhibits, documentary films, and folk festivals present Bukharan Jews as a reified community; these venues gloss over the very same cultural and historical differences among them that were carefully developed in the previous chapter. What this means for Bukharan Jews’ understandings of themselves is complex. Through intimate, firsthand knowledge, Bukharan Jews are eleven Negotiating Authenticity and Identity: Bukharan Jews Encounter Each Other and the Self acutely aware of the great historical and cultural diversity that exists among them. Yet, they are simultaneously exposed to the same images presented to a wider Jewish public and have internalized this view, at least to some extent. These two sources of knowledge—the intimate, on the one hand, and the public, on the other—often generate contradictory messages. This chapter is about two sorts of conceptual negotiations that surround Bukharan Jews’ own efforts to understand and define this aspect of their identity. The first consists of debates between various individuals, each with different sorts of historical experiences, about what Bukharan Jewishness is, and who has the authority to decide. The second is the individual’s complicated effort to navigate between a view of himself or herself as belonging to a reified, clearly defined edah, alongside the understanding of the category’s dynamic and slippery nature. Encounters It used to be that anthropologists would travel to discrete and bounded sites called “the field,” stay there, do research, and then return home. As an anthropologist studying Bukharan Jews in the 1990s, my experience was very different.1 Massive emigration, which splintered apart family and community groups, has meant that there is no longer a “homeland” or single place where they might be studied. Over the course of my traveling fieldwork, which took me to far-flung sites in the United States, Israel, and Uzbekistan, I found that just as there is no single place that might be considered “home” to the Bukharan Jews, so, too, there is no model “Bukharan Jew.” The life stories of Leora, Rahel, Shlomo Haye, and Dina presented in the previous chapter are an effort to capture the multiplicity of understandings of what being Bukharan Jewish is all about. This sort of presentation, however, only tells a part of the story, for in this portrayal , each individual occupies his or her own separate frame. In reality , immigrants from the various waves do not occupy discrete places. Rather, they pass through shared spaces. Just as I, the anthropologist, came into contact with a wide array of Bukharan Jews, so, too, they came into contact with one another in a variety of forums, described below. Negotiating Authenticity and Identity 231 232 Twentieth-Century Conversations Institutional Life Bukharan Jewish institutional life is one important area of encounter. In the 1990s, mass migration from the former Soviet Union put a strain on social service aid agencies already in place to help new immigrants, such as the Ministry of Absorption in Israel, and nongovernmental organizations in the United States, such as the New York Association for New Americans and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. In response, Bukharan Jews who had left Central Asia in decades past (or whose parents or grandparents had) took an interest in the fate of those who were newly arriving; they poured funds...