Zoya Borukhova
Continuation From the word "Barukh" - blessed.
We continue our conversation about the traditions of Bukharian Jews.
Thursday, the day before Shabbat, was traditionally a bath day. In the evening after work, parents would take their children to the public bathhouse: mothers with daughters to the women’s section, fathers with sons to the men’s. By the early 1970s, this tradition began to fade – private homes started to have their own baths, and young people living in apartment buildings used bathtubs. On Friday mornings, as challah, they baked nonfragrant flatbreads – and in the tandoor, a clay oven attached to the kitchen wall, they baked meat and onion pies. The house was thoroughly cleaned. The Sabbath table was prepared with several traditional dishes: first, fried fish – carp or common carp – served with a garlic sauce and cilantro, followed by chilled chicken with boiled vegetables. The main dish was the third one – oshi bakhshi haltaqi, a green meat pilaf slowly cooked in broth inside a linen bag.
An essential part of the Sabbath table was Hamim (cholent), which we called oshi Savo – the "dish for Shabbat." This meat dish, made with chicken or beef, rice, prunes, dried apples, potatoes in their skins, and eggs in the shell, would cook slowly over a whole day. Despite a largely secular lifestyle and adaptation to the Russian-Soviet environment, most community members maintained strong ties to Jewish traditions: circumcision on the eighth day, organizing chuppah weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and more.
Who are we, the Jews of Central Asia? Our story begins long ago, connected to the history of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, exiled from Assyria. How do we identify ourselves? We call ourselves Bnei Yisrael – the children of Israel. For thousands of years, living in a Persian-speaking world – starting from the Achaemenid era – we were called Yehudi (Jews).
In the second half of the 19th century, with the Russian Empire’s expansion into Central Asia, local Jews were called “native,” equating us in rights with the indigenous peoples of the region. Only from the 1930s, under Soviet rule, were we called Bukharian Jews – named after the city of Bukhara, capital of the Bukharan Khanate, where one of the largest Jewish communities in the region lived for centuries.
But our history is not limited to Bukhara alone. We lived in key cities along the Great Silk Road – Samarkand, Khorezm, Andijan, Shakhrisabz, and Mary (ancient Merv). Our ancestors adapted the Persian language, forming a unique Judeo-Tajik or Judeo-Persian language, which absorbed Hebrew vocabulary and was written with Hebrew script – reflecting a unique cultural fusion that lasted centuries.
Speaking of medieval literature in this language, one important written monument is the translation of the Pentateuch by Yosef ben Moshe in 1319. Iranian scholar Mikhail Zand calls Shokhin Sherozi the founder of Judeo-Persian poetry. His poetic retellings of biblical texts include Musanoma (Book of Moses, 1326), Ezraname (Book of Ezra, 1328), and Milhamot Adonai (G‑d’s Wars). Shokhin Sherozi also authored a poem about the life of the prophet Moses, spiritually akin to the great Shahnameh (Book of Kings), the epic of Abu-l-Qasim Ferdowsi, founder of Tajik-Persian literature.
On the Judeo-Persian language, important dictionaries were created – The Book of Eloquence by Shlomo ben Shmuel from Gurganj (1339) and Agron by Moses ben Aaron (1445). These works were copied many times and published in Jerusalem thanks to the efforts of Shimon Haham – a scholar and writer from Bukhara and founder of the Bukharian quarter Shkhunat Bukharim in Israel’s capital.
Our ancestors created a unique musical culture – Shashmaqam and Sazanda, actively participated in trade, acting as guides along the Great Silk Road. They worked in silk production (shoi), mastered dyeing and weaving, and made silverware for Passover. The traveler Ármin Vámbéry, who visited Bukhara in the late 19th century, was so impressed by Bukharian Jewish jewelry that in 1878, with his help, their works were presented at the World Exhibition in Vienna – attracting great interest from European audiences.
In 1990, our family emigrated to Israel, where we lived for a year and a half. Then we moved to South Africa and settled in Johannesburg. We arrived in Canada in 1996, settling in North York.
My husband, Valery, is a graduate of the Leningrad Institute of Cinema Engineering (LIKI) and worked as a lead design engineer for automated control systems and later as a developer at the Institute of Geophysical Research in Kalinin. He is the author of several inventions and honored as an “Inventor of the USSR.” In emigration, he continued to work in electronics.
I am a philologist by training. In Tajikistan, I began as a junior researcher in the Department of Fine Arts at the Republican Museum, then worked as an art critic in the Union of Artists of Tajikistan. In emigration, I continued my professional work in galleries, the National Ballet of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and other cultural institutions. My daughters followed my path, choosing art-related professions. For the past decade, I have devoted myself to researching and publishing about the culture and art of Central Asian Jews – my work has appeared in publications in Israel, the USA, and Canada.
What do you do in your free time?
I am inspired by contemporary Israeli art – music, dance, painting. I am especially drawn to works that resonate with themes originating from the Torah and the spirit of the Holy Land.
