The Guardian: Last Jews of Bukhara fear their community will fade away

AKIPRESS.COM - Once home to more than 23,000 Jews, the ancient Silk Road city of Bukhara now has around 200. Thousands of Bukharian Jews emigrated because of antisemitic policies under the Soviet Union, and still more due to Uzbekistan's bleak economic prospects after its independence in 1991. The emigre community is far larger than its wellspring, with more than 50,000 Bukharian Jews in New York and more than 100,000 in Israel. The Jewish community in Bukhara has shrunk to the point where its future is in peril, The Guardian reports.
Those remaining are mostly elderly.
Isak Gulyamov, 83, a retired geologist and father of five, fends off regular requests from his children to join them in Israel. All of his siblings have left, and three of his children have emigrated to Israel, and another to Kazakhstan.
He does not follow them because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and because the humidity is bad for his blood pressure, he says, but mainly because Bukhara is home.
"It's good for me here, I know everyone and everyone knows me," he says during a short tour of the 420-year-old synagogue, set among the stone houses in Bukhara's old Jewish quarter. Congregants take particular pride in a pair of centuries-old deerskin Torah scrolls, kept in a windowed cupboard beside gold-embroidered hangings.
But there is also little hope of seeing a generation of Bukharian Jews lost to emigration come back. "They've already put down roots, they've got a house, work. They've gotten used to it there, why come back?" says Gulyamov.
Congregants have tried to remain upbeat, saying that an improved economy and relaxed border controls could help bring more Jews back to the city, at least as tourists.
"It is like God said, propagate and multiply," laughs Shirin Yakubova, a real-estate investor and descendant of the synagogue's founder who is pregnant with her fourth child. "I have plenty of friends who want to invest in Bukhara now. Why shouldn't more Jews want to come back? Half the year here, half the year in Israel."