As half Afghani/half Persian Jew who's wife is half bucharian, thank you so much for these last 2 episodes. Thoroughly fascinating. We were always taught that Afghani Jews were from the first exile and never returned to Judea for the second temple.
Probably true for some of the migration, but, over time, not exclusively. India has 3 population groups of established *"native Jews." 1 of the 3 is called *"Bagdadi," they migrated to India several hundred yrs ago from Iraq
I’m in the same boat. Having heard the stories of our Jewish ancestors from my grandfather, this topic has always intrigued me, but unfortunately there isn’t a lot of recorded material or documentation available.
A little side note: The Bucharan kippa is unique in its style and form. It's more ornamental and arguably looks more like a short fez than any traditional "flat" kippa found in Israel or North America.
Do you happen to know why it gained popularity or at least association with Sephardim? My own family has them, Including myself and I vastly prefer them personally. However for some reason it seems like it became heavily associated with Sephardim for a while and I have no idea why. I've tried looking into it and had very little luck. But any time you look up "Sephardic Kippah" or even those words too close together you get ads for various Bucharan Kippot. The best lead I have is the way Sephardim are counted and Bucharan are seemingly not in Israel and the general lack of presence of both groups in general consciousness today (particularly in the US but I'm not sure how far this extends. I know Sephardim also live in France and the UK still ) and the fact that some Sephardim chose to wear them a bunch during the last 100 years or so has kind of gotten the 2 lumped together or at least associated to some degree. But I have no idea how accurate that is and this has actually been bothering me for a while now.
I am a Russian Jew born in Uzbekistan I have all my life been interested in our history. Living in the states for so long with so little of my own culture I Only cook Uzbekistan food or Israeli food. Don’t want my kids to forget the taste of there home We LOVE your content. Awsome thank you
I'm from Uzbekistan, I'm among many that have a positive view on Jewish community in our and in the World. Jewish people had been forward thinking throughout the world
You shouldn’t or can’t since you guys are not semites . You are Central Asians converts to Judaism during the silk trade .Not hebrews , so not semites . You get it ?
I'm so excited for next episode, I always was interested in the history of Jewish people in Asian countries. Mainly because the cultures are so distinct and I was interested in knowing how the Jewish community became distinct in its own way. But I was always bad at research and could never wrap a whole story of how Jews even reached east asia. Cant wait for next episode man, keep up the good work!
Hey Sam, thank you for covering the history of this important but not well-known Jewish community. We have Jews as well but they're mostly Russian-speaking, Ashkenazi Jews who mostly arrived here when they evacuated from western parts of the USSR during Operation Barbarossa. We don't have that deep history of Jews living here, like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan but ironically we have the biggest number of Jews living in Kazakhstan.
Jews living in Russia are Ashkenazi who were settled in Europe long ago & only fled to USSR b’coz of holocaust while Jews of Central Asia are/were just Persian Jews Who came from Middle East i.e Persia. Both of them have different history & culture.
I’m Palestinian and grew up in Jordan, there is a small Bukharian Muslim community in Jordan , they are very hospitable and nice people and the rice they cook is fire .
The rice meal is called osh/polov. Its uzbek meal. It was invented by uzbeks, but persians and especially tajiks love to say its persian or tajik invention, but its not! Its uzbek invention! You can visit Uzbekistan and Osh city(in Kyrgyzstan but Osh was and is uzbek's land. Lots of uzbeks in Osh city) and try the rice meal there and then just for comparison visit Tajikistan and uzbek cities Buhoro and Samarkand, there are lots of persians and tajiks and there is a their own style-cooked osh/palov(the rice meal) so try for comparison that Buhoro Samarkand style polov and try Tajikistan made polov and you will umderstand that uzbek style osh/polov is the best. And it will become obvious to you who invented the meal.
@@cookiemasta1658Lmao. Polov & Ash (noodles) are both Persian words. You can’t claim to be the first one to cook meat & rice together. Persian have much older history and older enough when you were still living in Mongolia. Ash, Palav, shorba, yakhni, naan, kala pacha, ishkamba etc are all Persian staples. Persian foods were introduced in India with Naan, Biryani, Samosa etc being originally Persian. Persians and Indians only got Gorma (stew) & meat dumplings (Mantu) from Turkic tribes but that foods as well ain’t Turkic but Mongolic in origin. Now Pilav were introduced to Spain via Abbasid caliphate and became famous in Europe but the word itself has origin as far back to Tamil people in Southern India. Many nations cook their own varieties of Pilav but of course the uzbek version of pilav and naan is among the most delicious out there. In Afghanistan, we normally say Qabuli pulav but sometime just as Qabuli and Qabuli-e Uzbaki is among the most eaten varieties of pilav there.
@@Passque666 it's osh! not ash! ash is leftover after fire😂 we Turks uzbeks always were conquering you Persians and we brought you all these food! best osh(what you call palov🤮) is Uzbek osh! no Indian no Persian can cook more tasty than Uzbek! seethe and cry but the fact is best osh is Uzbek one! best somsa is uzbek one! best shorva is Uzbek one!
I visited the remaining synagogues in Bukhara a few years ago. The community is shrinking further and further and soon will not be able to support itself. I was also told that only 2 families were left in Samarkand. In one or two generations everyone will most probably have relocated, which is crazy when you think that the population can be estimated as 10000+ Jewish residents in Bukhara in the 19th century.
Similar stories are happening everywhere which is not a rich country. Jews in general tend to leave for western countries an Israel for mostly economic reasons. As example Turkish Jewish community was estimated to be around 15k while I was growing up but these days people say it's closer to 10k. Low birth rates, families moving to Israel for economic reasons and students moving to study abroad are the reasons for population drop.
I haven't even finished the video yet, but I simply can't wait and have to say that it is absolutely fascinating! Also, I'm so thankful you are not pronouncing 'kh' as k. Who even came up with this digraph anyway and thought that it is a good idea to spell like that a sound that is almost the same as the regular English 'h' and nothing like 'k'? Maybe that's just me. :) Edit: After finishing the video, I want to add that it was the first time I've heard about Simintov.
The sound represented by KH isn't that close to English H, though. In hindsight, it might've been better to just leave it as H, but the idea behind KH was to write a sound that doesn't exist in standard English at all, and is a fricative halfway between H (at the glottis) and K (velar).
@@varana All "h" sounds sound similar to many Europeans, including Poles and Anglos, and even to some Ashkenazi Jews, even though they may be two or even three distinct sounds in other Jewish dialects (hei, chet, khaf). Even if we can hear the difference many people have difficulty pronouncing it differently. Ironically we used to have two different sounds in Polish (probably similar to Sephardic soft khaf and soft ghimel), still reflected in historical spelling, but no one pronounces the difference anymore.
I feel like you should have mentioned the Bukharian community in Tajikistan, specifically Dushanbe. While most maintained connections to Samarkand (such as being buried there), they numbered about 11,000 as late as 1989. Also, the dialect of Farsi closest to Bukharian language is Tajik, as you mention.
@@dogbert52 Jews were not in slaved Under Muslim Caliphates , but of course treated as second class citizens. Unfortunately the people who didn’t historically genocide Jews and didn’t historically in slave anyone , are paying the price of all the discrimination that Jews went threw .
Excellent video, VERY WELL DONE! I am Bukharian and I can confidently say that this is perhaps the single handedly most resourceful video on the history of bukharians, and pretty well done considering it was only 15 min!
I'm an Ashkenazi living in Queens who has a hobby of language learning. I am currently learning 24 languages, and I made a point to have Bukharian one of them.
He is hella sus though, claims to be from Kazakhstan, says random Polish words, and filmed his alleged home village in Romania. I'm suspecting he might not be actually from Central Asia at all!
Thanks. These specials in particular take as long to make as they take to come out, even working on them full-time, which is why I'll be glad to finish for a good long while after China.
Great video as always sam, I can't wait for China, i know alot about both Bukharian and Persian Jews but i don't know anything about chineese jews, like at all, so it's gonna be interesting
I'm of the understanding that most of them are sadly either crypto due to the Chinese Governments not so friendly treatment of them or now living in America/Israel. It think that it will probably (at least up in till he does his beta Israel video) be his most important video because i would say most of us know of the Keifengim but not many of us know about the keifengim.
@@SamAronow The other part, I assume, would be the Victorian tycoons-the Sassoons and the Kadoories? (The Kadoories are well-established in HK; they provide most of our electricity, for one!) Also, Milton Friedman gave us a very good name…..but I suppose that is orthogonal to the point?
As it happens, I will not be covering the Sassoons and Kadoories because Hong Kong as far as I'm concerned is its own thing, and Hong Kong's Jewish community was actually quite small until the 1970s. I'm talking about the much larger communities of Harbin and Shanghai.
Wow, I'm just blown away. Not even sure how I stumbled upon this video. I very much enjoy jewish history. I really appreciated this video, from beginning to end. Your style is refreshing, brilliant and 1 of a kind. Most definitely subscribing!
I’m so glad you talked about the Bukharan Jews, I live by a lot of them so it’s good they are talked about. Also one small note, the Seljuk flag is the double headed eagle not the black flag
Good video, can you create a video about Mountain Jews from the Caucasus ? Aka Juhuro, Kavkazi Jews. Would be a great contribution. I can get you in touch with local Scholars and Rabbis on the matter. Toda
Another excellent video as always! Somewhat unrelated to the video, but I have always loved your use of Zelda music (and that one track from Assassin's Creed II).
Like the Bukharian Jews we in India have Bene Israel which is a group of Marathi speaking Jews , along with that we had the Bagdadi Jewish community in India who had fled to India from Bagdad.
You gotta love these stories...even when there are only two jews left in the country,they disagree on something...Luckily,the last jew is now in the US...Wish him health...
I like this episode but want to disagree in some points: Contrary to many other countries, Afghanistan did not lose its Jewish population because of anti-Semitism. In fact, the country’s ruling class, mainly consisting of the Pashtun ethnic group showed a lot of sympathy toward the Jewish minority. For example, Mohammed Zahir Shah-the last Afghan king, who reigned until 1973-once claimed to be a descendant of the Israelite figure Benjamin and said that Afghan Jews were considered as an important pillar of Afghanistan’s society.
My mother was born in 1959 and raised up in Mazar-e-Sharif in this time she never heard and saw about anti semitism and there was a jewish Community living next top her. But my stepfather wo was born in 1937 told me as a child that in kabul through germans bad influence that afghan we're believing in this typical German Nazis Story that jewish people are murdering childs and the afghans believe it. And the only thing what I remender was that they were stupidly trying to get them out. But I think more that the jewish Community want to Aliyah . Sad that the jewish History becomes to an end. There ist also the Story of Tovah an afghan jewish Woman who married an Muslim but never converted.
Hello Sam! Great video! I also can't stop noticing that you're using the long s (ſ) in several of your video thumbnails. Is this just a stylistic choice or do you actually use this letter in your day-to-day endeavors as well? Hope to hear from you :)
@@kasyakyoubfgamindikisborat why mongol is mad about? Bukharans speak a dialect of Persian and they are originally Persian Jews. And honestly why are you mongols here? The video and topic ain’t even about you guys.
I've always called this topic: Diaspora Studies. The stories of distant, lesser known Jewish populations. This needs to be taught in at least a college, Hebrew School, & Jewish studies departments. 🎯
I thought about putting the end date as 2021, but I couldn't have made a separate video. The China video *had to* come out on 22 October. You'll find out why.
Dear Sam Aronow. I wonder if you could answer a question I have made myself related to the Jews and it is: Why have the Jews always been persecuted, accused of committing horrible crimes like poising wells and killing small children for rituals? I thought only the Nazi hated and committed such infernal crimes against the Jews, but after reading and investigating, the Jews have had such a bad time in all ages and were punished or not given the same opportunities as other people for example, Jews were not allow to posses land, they had to pay much more taxes than other people, the Christians blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus (who was a Jew), nowadays there is still racism against the Jews. I have met only few Jews, but all the Jews I have met have been wonderful people, with interesting conversations and who help you in everything they can if you ask them too. Thanks
Love my bucharian friends and their food. Been to so many of their homes for Shabbat and heard about their lives in Buchara, Tashkent, and Samarkand. Thanks for giving me just a little more background about their history. PS: Kew Garden Hills also has lots of Bucharians including my favorite Bucharian synagogues!
In an earlier video you posited that Jesus may have been apart of the Sanhedrin. Was that just a personal hypothesis or did you have a source for that? Thx.
It's unlikely that he would have been a member of *the* Great Sanhedrin, as it would appear that it had no representatives from the Galilee. He may have been a member of a municipal Sanhedrin.
Not only is Central Asia and the people underrated but Jewish people in CA are unheard of to most people and it’s good that people are starting to acknowledge and learn about them more.
Thanks for making that video! Appreciate it a lot! Would it be of interest for you to make one about the Jewish Bukhrian Merchants that became so economically successful in the 2nd part of the 19th century? Sources are scarce and probably mostly in Russian and Hebrew, both which I am not capable to read.
The Beta Israel actually _did_ become totally isolated in a way that the Bukharim never did, and did so before Jews were living in Central Asia at all. I need to do more research on why and how.
@@SamAronow what about the conversation of Central Asians to Judaism during the silk trade ? There were never a diaspora . The original Hebrew people are where their ancestors were .
Hi. True and honest, thank you. Could you at some point discover the history of Caucasian Jews, who are related to both Iranian and Bukharian Jews but distinct and did not lose their residence in the region?
Thanks for such an amazing video on the often unheard Jewish diaspora of Central Asia. P.S. - At 3:42, the image of Shaybani Khan is actually directly taken from a recent Indian Web Series - The Empire, where Shaybani Khan is played by the Indian actor Dino Morea( and the looks of the character somehow inspired from Khal Drogo of GoT, in case anyone noticed it. )
I grew up with Bukharians, and have always wanted to know more. And I've been repeating that story about Yosef Maimoon bringing sefardic customs to Bukharians like it was true, for a long time. Thank you.
About a month, working full-time. I’ll be working on one video while researching for the next one. These specials take a bit longer though, which is why I don’t do them very often.
I'm 100% bukharian, and have heard from my grandparents that we were Jews who were expelled in the first (Babylonian) exile and fled to morroco. The Persian language we adopted only was picked up those same Jews reach Central Asia and picked up the local language Edit: my family goes back to samarkand for at least 170 years. I believe even longer than that
Exacly,your grandfather was telling the right history ob Buharian jews!!!The Buharian jews are the most ancient community of jews from the tribe of Yosef
