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ABSTRACT
Established in 1843, the Jewish residential quarter in Samarkand (located at the time in the Bukharan kingdom, and today in independent Uzbekistan) has been emptied of its Jewish residents in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise. Since then, physical markers testifying to their history in the neighbourhood have also been eroding. This process has been organic, rather than a deliberate program of erasure. Still, these shifts in the built environment fit within Uzbekistan’s larger project of state-building, as Jewish homes and communal structures belie the Russian and Soviet colonial legacy, which has been spurned since independence. Drawing on recent and historical accounts, as well as my own observations in the 1990s and in 2013, this article documents the built environment in the very moment of transition, as physical structures transform and are separated from the history and memories that enlivened them. With this disappearance, a tourist opportunity for encountering global Jewish diversity is lost, and Uzbekistan’s project of nation-building – absent its historical minority populations – is further solidified.
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This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Signer, Itinerary.
2 For a detailed overview of Jews’ early history in the region, see Kaganovitch, “Jewish Communities of Central Asia,” 923–946.
3 Further information about the founding of Samarkand’s Jewish mahallah can be found in Abramov, Bukharan Jews in Samarkand [Russian] and Amitin-Shapiro, Essays [Russian].
4 In her book The Neighborhood Community, O. A. Sukharaeva catalogues and describes 200 residential neighbourhoods in Bukhara as they existed prior to the Soviet era.
5 Dadabaev, “Community Life,” 185.
6 Drawing on Sukharaeva’s work, Adeeb Khalid notes that the Jewish minority “lived in strictly segregated neighborhoods,” as did the Iranis. Other neighbourhoods were heterogeneous. See “The Residential Quarter,” 23.
7 For a full analysis of the causes of Jewish migration, see Cooper, “Where have the Jews Gone,” 199–224.
8 Bartov, “Eastern Europe,” 538; Bartov, Erased.
9 This approach draws on Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva, “Give Me a Gun and I Will Make all the Buildings Move” who describe the built environment as “a moving project … even once it has been built, it ages, it is transformed by its users, modified by all of what happens inside and outside,” 103.
10 Samarkand city archives, which were not consulted for this article, may serve as an additional information source.
11 For a historical survey of this era, see Morrison, Russian Rule in Samarkand. For changes affecting local Jews’ status, see Becker, Russia’s Protectorates, 164–167.
12 A 1926 census indicates that among the total of 7,740 Jews who lived in Samarkand, 7,208 resided in the mahallah. See Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 18. Even among those who moved into the new city, the mahallah remained Samarkand’s centre of Jewish life, most significantly because this is where kosher meat could be purchased. See Cooper, Bukharan Jews, 146–147.
13 Zubin, “The Jews of Samarkand,” 177.
14 Amitin-Shapiro, “Essays,” 88.
15 Arshavsky, “The Influence of Russian Conquest,” 213.
16 Fazilov, “History Preserved in Buildings,” 71.
17 For details see Cooper, Bukharan Jews, 69–97.
18 Photos are presented in Fazilov and Kimyagarov, Famous Bukharan Jewish Merchants.
19 Fazilov, “History Preserved in Buildings,” 73.
20 Also discussed in Cooper, “A Dying House,” 2020.
21 Like Muslims who were conferred the title ‘Haji’ upon returning from pilgrimage trips to Mecca, Central Asia’s Jews were given this nickname upon their return from Jerusalem. See Cooper, Bukharan Jews, 193; Fuzailov, Immigration and Settlment.
22 Referred to today as the ‘Bukharan Quarter.’ For more information about the development of the neighbourhood, see Fuzailov, Immigration and Settlement, and Cooper, Bukharan Jews, 120–139.
23 For example, compare Leviyev’s house to that of the Yehudayoff-Hefetz Mansion in Jerusalem’s Bukharan Quarter.
24 Fazilov, Famous Bukharan Merchants, 114.
25 In 2005, architectural historian Zoya Arshavksy and her team gained access to the building and documented its condition. Photos are available online at the Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art.
26 Comment posted on the website of Samarkand-photographer, Rashid Yumagulov https://ok.ru/profile/358172154477 (accessed January 17, 2017).
27 Ben-Zvi, Exiled and Redeemed, 86–87.
28 Abramov, Bukharan Jews in Samarkand, 29; Arshavsky, “The Influence of Russian Conquest,” 211–212.
29 See Fazilov, Famous Bukharan Merchants, 160.
30 Abramov, Bukharan Jews in Samarkand, 28.
31 Kandov, Time to Live, 273–275.
32 Organized by “Jewish Historical Seminars,” headquartered in Israel.
33 Arshavsky, The Influence of Russian Conquest, 21.
34 Menashe Abramov, the grandson of Rafael Abramov, wrote about the history of the house. See Abramov 1993, Bukharan Jews in Samarkand, 44–45. More recently, Zoya Arshavsky and Ruth Jacoby published Jewish Architecture in Samarkand, devoted to a description of the history and layout of the home. The work includes architectural drawings as well as photographs.
35 Arshavsky, personal communication, 2016.
36 Arshavsky and Jacoby, Jewish Architecture in Samarkand, 17.
37 The new owners had planned to convert the home into a hotel. The project, however, was never completed in part because of new regulations the government had imposed for registering as a “hotel.”
38 For this section I am indebted to the researchers who have used a variety of primary sources to piece together information about the museum and the collection. These include: Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 222–225; Levin, “Reportage,” 305–311; Lukin, “An Academy,” 381–306; Nosonovksy, “Isaac Lurie,”; and Nosonovsky, “Library and Archive,” 187–255.
39 Kantor, L.M. Native Jews in Uzbekistan, 27.
40 In “Isaac Lurie,” Nosonovsky notes, “Unfortunately, there is not a single publication on the results of his years of work in Central Asia.” Lukin references Lurie’s article published in the Russian Jewish weekly magazine Rassvet (Dawn) in “An Academy,” 297.
41 See Amitin-Shapiro, Essays; and Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 223.
42 Avrutin, Photographing the Jewish Nation, 5.
43 Nosonovsky, “Isaac Lurie.”
44 Lukin, “An Academy,” 299.
45 Sholochova, “The Phonoarchive.”
46 Lukin, “An Academy,” 297.
47 Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 222.
48 Kantor, Native Jews, 26.
49 See Slezkine, “The USSR.”
50 Ibid.
51 Rhezak, “The Linguistic Challenge,” 37–55.
52 Although Jews in Central Asia became connected to Jews living in Ottoman Palestine at the turn of the twentieth century, these relationships were complex and tension-ridden. Most pressing was contestation about where religious and political authority ought to be centred: in the hands of leaders living in Jerusalem or in the hands of those living in Central Asia. For a full examination of these debates, see Cooper, Bukharan Jews, 88–136.
53 Amitin-Shapiro, Essays, 123–124.
54 Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering.
55 Nosonovsky, “The Mystery.”
56 Kheifetz, “Photoarchive,” 248–269.
57 Fazilov, Years, People, Facts, 58.
58 Dvorkin, Jews in Central Asia. Many of these photos were taken in the 1930s, after Lurie had already been fired from his position. Nosonovsky compares the collection to Roman Vishniac’s photos of Eastern Europe’s Jews just before Word War II. In my opinion, the technical and artistic quality do not compare. That said, the photos – taken on the streets, in synagogues, schools, markets and homes - have much to offer for piecing together a rich ethnographic portrait of Jewish life in Samarkand in the 1920s and 1930s.
59 Unfortunately, much information about the origins of these artifacts and what they signify is missing. For example, no information is provided about when the halitzah shoe was made or used. (Fazilov provides a picture of it in his book, but incorrectly identifies it as a “synagogue slipper.”) A photo of a “circumcision shirt” appears in the Narkiss index, but with no explanation. Additionally, the quality of the image makes the embroidered words difficult to decipher. Confusing matters, some of the images that appear in the online index were collected long after Lurie had left the scene. For example, one curtain for a Torah ark dates to 1968, and another to 1973.
60 In the former home of wealthy Jewish merchant, Abraham Kalantarov. He built the house at the turn of the twentieth century, and it was requisitioned by the Soviets in the 1920s.
61 Levin, Collectivization and Social Engineering, 305.
62 Levin, “Reportage.”
63 Ibid.
65 Adams, “Ethnicity.”
66 Paskaleva, “Ideology in Brick and Tile,” 419
67 Cited in Paskaleva, “Ideology in Brick and Tile,” 423.
68 Ibid.
69 In Shahrisabz – Tamerlane’s home town - two old neighbourhoods (designated in 2000 as a ‘medieval town’ and included as UNESCO World Heritage sites) were actually destroyed as part of an urban plan to create a plaza with an open view of the imposing Tamerlane statue erected in 1996. In response, UNESCO considered revoking the city’s status. See Synovitz, “Bulldozing History.”
70 Brink-Danan, Jewish Life, 33.
71 Lioy and Kaminski, Lonely Planet: Central Asia.
72 Posted on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XYNFnkltWg (accessed June 2022).
73 For further details, see Cooper, “Muslim Couple Preserves.”
74 Curtis, “Uzbekistan,” and Dadabaev, “Post-Soviet Realities.”
75 See Abashin, “Nation Construction,” 164; Djumaev, “Nation-Building,” 333.
76 Abashin, “Nation Construction,” 165.
77 Cooper, Bukharan Jews, x–xi.
78 See Fazilov and Danielov, “Jewish Cemeteries,” and website www.samarkandfund.org
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alanna E. Cooper
Alanna E. Cooper Cultural anthropologist serves as the Abba Hillel Silver Chair in Jewish Studies at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism. [email protected]