As the sun set over Bukhara, Uzbekistan on a recent Friday evening, I joined the local community in welcoming the Sabbath. This was my first time back to the historic spot on the Silk Road since I first visited in the 1990s. At that time, Uzbekistan had just gained independence in the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, and the country’s 35,000 local Jews were migrating en masse to the United States and Israel. I was a doctoral student in cultural anthropology, witnessing the end of one of the world’s longest chapters in Diaspora history.
Today, 15 years since my last visit, an estimated 70 Jews remain in Bukhara. The city’s synagogue is still able to draw a minyan on Friday evenings, but just barely. Listening to the worshippers’ soulful prayers drift across the synagogue courtyard, I wondered who would come to occupy this space in the future.
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