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October 26, 2001/Cheshvan 9, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 7
Central Asian Jews live near front
LEV GORODETSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
MOSCOW - The overwhelming support that Jews in Central Asia have for their countries' participation in the U.S.-led airstrikes against Afghanistan is not creating any troubles with their Muslim countrymen, say Jewish leaders in the region.
But given the tenuous state of relations between Jews and Muslims in the region, this assessment could soon change.
"There have been no acts of anti-Semitism recently. The situation is stable," Roman Bensman of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, told JTA, praising Uzbek President Islam Karimov.
Karimov does indeed appear committed to maintaining friendly relations with his country's Jews, and to his crackdown on Islamic fundamentalism.
But the reality for the estimated 50,000 to 60,000 Jews in the region - split between Bukharan Jews, who have long been in the region, and Ashkenazic Jews, who settled here in the past 75 years - is, and long has been, far more complex.
Bukharan Jews, who are descendants of the ancient Persian Jewish community and speak Farsi, are believed to have settled in what is now called Tajikistan as early as the fifth century B.C.E.
During the first few centuries of the common era, they moved north and eventually formed large communities in what is now Uzbekistan, southern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.
During the ensuing centuries, Bukharan Jews enjoyed a generally peaceful co-existence alongside their Muslim neighbors.
Bukharan Jews long made up the majority of Jews in the region, but after the mass emigration to Israel and the United States in the 1990s, they are now only an estimated one-third of Central Asia's 60,000 Jews.
Many of the remaining two-thirds are the Ashkenazic Jews who settled here during World War II after fleeing Poland and Western parts of the Soviet Union.
Many of these Jews were skilled professionals who, after the war, formed the backbone of the local intelligentsia and greatly enhanced the level of culture and technology in the region.
But as far as many ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kazakhs are concerned, the Ashkenazic Jews were Russian colonizers.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, nationalists in Central Asia started to press for the expulsion of all Russian speakers, no matter what their ethnic origin.
As a result, 80 percent of these Ashkenazic Jews left during the last decade for Israel, Russia, United States and Germany.
Those who stayed occasionally meet with animosity.
Maria Semenova, a university instructor, says she was recently harassed and beaten by ethnic Uzbeks in a Tashkent bus on her way to classes.
As Mikhail Degtiar puts its, "There is no state anti-Semitism. But on the everyday level there is a permanent pressure. All Russian speakers live in a state of a constant fear. Besides the Islamic terror, there is the terror of the authorities against everybody."
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