220 · Alanna E.
Cooper
emigration, Central Asia came under Russian colonial rule. Likewise,
several decades before the Jews’ emigration from North Africa and the
Middle East, the region was colonized by Western powers. Under co-
lonial rule, the status of the Bukharan Jews as
dhimmi—like the Jews in
North Africa and the Middle East—began to erode. As secular gover-
nance was introduced, restrictions against the Jews in these regions were
lifted and they gained new rights. They were permitted to leave their res-
idential quarters and settle in new parts of the city. They were extended
rights to own property, encouraged to engage in trade, and given access
to secular education. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the colo-
nial power retreated from Central Asia, and new sovereign states were
born. At this moment in their history, the Bukharan Jews faced the dif-
ficult question of belonging. Central Asia had been their home for more
than a millennium, but would they (or could they) join in the project of
state-building? This question was also pressing for the Jews in North Af-
rica and the Middle East, when the colonial powers retreated from these
regions. In Uzbekistan, the question was answered with a resounding
no. As in North Africa and the Middle East, within a decade of the rise of
independent states, almost all of the Jews had left.
These structural similarities suggest that the analytical approach I have
taken can inform further study of circumstances surrounding the Jews’
departure from North Africa and the Middle East. First, my analysis does
not foreground the story of those Bukharan Jews who went to Israel—
roughly half of the immigrant population—over those who resettled else-
where (primarily in the United States, but also in Canada, Austria, and
Germany). While the midcentury migration from Arab lands is generally
framed in terms of resettlement in Israel, Jews from North Africa and the
Middle East—like those from Uzbekistan—moved in great numbers to
other countries as well, including Britain, France, and Italy. When Israel
as a destination ceases to be the centerpiece of the narrative, key factors
that are not directly related to the Arab-Israeli conflict can be taken into
consideration.
Second, by using ethnographic tools of analysis, the story of the mass
migration can shift from a focus on macro-political processes to one that
also takes into account the experiences of individuals navigating dra-
matic, difficult changes in their life circumstances. This framework al-
lows for the portrayal of individuals not only as passive actors, subject
Where Have All the Jews Gone? Mass Migration from Independent Uzbekistan · 221
to the forces of exile or expulsion, but also as active agents, navigating
a new political stage and making decisions about how to contend with
difficult transformations.
Finally, an honest ethnographic approach also makes a serious attempt
to separate the worldview of the researcher and author from that of the
people whom she or he is studying. The narrative of the Bukharan Jews’
mass migration from Uzbekistan that has appeared in the English-lan-
guage press has been largely informed by Western fears of Islamic fun-
damentalism. Likewise, the narrative of the Jews’ mass migration from
North African and the Middle East has been largely informed by politi-
cally charged concerns about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The analysis in this
chapter is an attempt to focus, instead, on the views and understandings
of those people who were themselves making migration decisions. This
approach depicts the mass migration as a nuanced process that mirrors
the complex space the Jews occupied in Muslim lands, as individuals
who were marginalized in certain respects but who were also deeply in-
vested and tied to the people and lands in which they lived.
Notes
1. Names have been changed to protect the privacy of all individuals.
2. Mikhael Zand, “Bukharan Jews,”
Encyclopedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater
(London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1990), 4:531.
3. Transoxiana was bound in the south by the Persian province of Khorasan
and by the Amu Darya (in ancient times called the Oxus River) and in the north
by the Syr Darya (in ancient times called the Jaxartes River).
4. Sergei Abashin, “The Transformation of Ethnic Identity in Central Asia:
A Case Study of the Uzbeks and Tajiks,”
Russian Regional Perspectives Journal 1,
no. 2 (2003): 32–33; Seymour Becker, “National Consciousness and the Politics
of the Bukhara People’s Conciliar Republic,” in Edward Allworth, ed.,
The Na-
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