July 2: Rapenburgerstraat, Amsterdam, Netherlands:
The muscular, mechanical remains of the Soviet Union. The magical dust left by the Bukharian Jews. Is it a lost world or a world intact? Where is the Bukharian Jewish diaspora? Who is left in the motherland? Why did they stay? Did they have a choice? I begin this journey with these naïve questions. But the questions will change. Maybe some answers will appear.
I’m at home gearing up for my first encounter with Uzbekistan. My camera and microphones will be my research tools. I’ll gather material: stories, impressions, architectures, and people connected to my inherited story. In the 19th Century the Jews in Mashhad, Iran were forced to convert to Islam. Secretly they practiced Judaism and came to be known as the Crypto-Jews of Mashhad. My great-grandparents, Ebrahim and Leah Ebrahimoff, were part of this community. They prayed in underground synagogues. Leah hid kosher meat under her black chador (Muslim head covering, veil, and shawl for women). Ebrahim made the pilgrimage to Mecca to perform Hajj and came to be known as Haji. They led a double life. They were part of trade networks across Iran and beyond. They imported Karakul fur from Bukhara and traded Persian skins and textiles in return. In the 1920s, Haji and Leah migrated to Jerusalem, joining the Zionist wave to Palestine. They moved to the Bukharan Quarter, setting up a halfway house for other Persian Jews to migrate to Jerusalem. I consider the Bukharian Jews trade partners, cousins, and diasporic kin. They were our hosts in times of trouble. We are links in a chain.
July 7: Chopin Airport, Warsaw, Poland
I’m dressed like a war correspondent: beige cargo pants, white oxford shirt, black fishing vest. An elderly Uzbek grandmother, wearing a sparkly striped-yellow headdress, walks around terminal N, waiting for this delayed flight to Tashkent. Hobbling from side to side while carrying her neon-purple sports bag, she’s searching for something. Meanwhile, her grandsons are hooked to their iPhones. In Uzbekistan, my job should be to host the people that make guest appearances in my film. It is in awe of their charisma that I position my camera in proximity to their body.
In Chris Marker’s travel film Sans Soleil (1983), he patiently observes spectacles, capturing them in grainy 16mm, weaving a web of relations through a fictive letter read by the voiceover. The first scene after the opening titles is of sleeping travelers on a ferry to Tokyo. Later in the film, passengers on a metro in Tokyo are dipping in and out of sleep, seeing flashes of imagery from Japanese TV. The images entered their collective consciousness. Marker was able to weave his narrative threads thanks to his genuine spirit. He emptied himself when he hit record. Simply to be, to witness, to observe with an acute eye. To let reality gift cinematic time.
The Uzbek grandmother walks past me again. Is this her journey of a thousand steps? This interminable wait.
July 13: Ravshan Guest House, Bukhara, Uzbekistan
Why am I here? If I were born into an authoritarian regime, I would run in the opposite direction – just like my grandparents. They packed up and left for Jerusalem, London, Los Angeles, and Ireland. I am here to find answers and questions, and to learn about the myriad cultures that compose this geography and my being. This is an auto-ethnographic process: learning about other cultures through my own narrative.
Can I simply make beautiful images when there is so much wrong with this place?
The remaining Jews in Bukhara stuck to this desert city with the rise and fall of emirs, dynasties, empires, and governments. The Bukharian Jewish diaspora consists of those who had the tenacity and motivation to migrate – or had no other choice. Those who remain have had to find a purpose.
I am here to document a Jewish world that has faded because of the Soviet Union and the promise of a better life elsewhere. Last night on Shabbat, I visited the synagogue in the old Jewish Quarter in Bukhara. I encountered Ilana and her daughter, Israelis who had been trekking in Tajikistan. Ilana had Polish parents who survived the Shoah and migrated to Israel. This was her first time in Uzbekistan. The Friday night prayers were led by Ariel Elnatanov, a fresh-faced fifteen-year-old whose family are leaders of the Jewish community in Bukhara. Michael Vis, a young Dutch politician visiting from Amsterdam, also joined us. I was impressed by Ariel’s determination to read the prayers word for word. In Uzbekistan, you are not allowed to teach religion in school. An in-depth Jewish education must come from within the family.
Ariel’s father Rafael Elnatanov arrives. He invites us all to his home. I expect nothing. We walk through the concrete maze of the mahalla to arrive in the Elnatanov’s courtyard. It is bursting with light. A long table is covered with delicacies: caramelized eggplant, smoked fish, salty pickles, creamy potato salad, mounds of herbs, and eventually Oshi Sabor, a slow-cooked lamb rice porridge dripping with fat and flavor. Rafael stands up to give speeches. Ilana asked for a blessing which she gladly received. The Elnatanov daughters, with long black hair and colorful silk gowns, bring drinks and tea. Rafael thanks us for our company as surrogates for his sons and wife who are in Israel. Rafael made us feel like we were feeding the Elnatanovs. But the Elnatanovs fed us. Only in Bukhara could this occur.
July 14: Usto Guest House, Bukhara, Uzbekistan
Elena Korovai, the 20th Century Fauvist painter who lived in Samarkand, was fascinated by Bukharian Jews. The Fauvists were a group of modern artists who worked with strong colors and abstraction while depicting subjects. Tomorrow I will visit the Savitsky Museum, home to the second-largest collection of Russian avant-garde art in the world, with art critic and artist Alexey Ulko. How did Korovai (1901-1974) depict the Bukharian Jews? Why was she so fascinated? Perhaps it was more accessible to depict Jews than Muslims especially for a female artist. Or perhaps the Jews offered an alternative perspective on life. The simple answer is that she was magnetically drawn to them as every artist is to their subject. Is anyone depicting Jews today?
This afternoon I visited Zippy and her daughter in the mahalla in Bukhara. Zippy’s father was a Muslim and her mother a Jew. Accordingly, she’s a Jewish-Muslim. When people ask her if she’s Jewish or Muslim she says both. This is an in-between category that doesn’t exist in the Netherlands. This is syncretism alive and well in Bukhara.
Korovai was drawn to Jewish subjects. I find myself drawn to Muslim subjects, in search of points of slippage and understanding. I’m Jewish, but come from Iran, an Islamic world. Jews and Muslims are old neighbors just like in the mahalla.
July 18: Karakalpark Lake, Nukus, Uzbekistan
My research is becoming about the intersection of Jewish-Muslim identity. This uncertain place where one defies category. Why is that interesting? The demand of modern political structures in the 20th Century was for the separation of peoples. In the case of Central Asia, the Soviet Union mapped the terrain into distinct ethno-nationalist countries demarcating the Uzbeks from the Kazakhs, Afghans, Tajiks, and so on. When societies are more mixed, the State struggles to align multiple religious identities with a single political aim.
In late capitalism, religious devotion has been replaced with capital devotion. Consumption and production are the practiced ideology, faith, and mythos, occupying our souls and dreams. Performing rituals, practicing religion, reading philosophical literary texts is an act of refusal. Making of oneself a religious patchwork is an act of refusal. Acknowledging the cultures and places that composite oneself is a refusal to succumb to ideologies that seek to exploit, optimize, pillage, and plunder. It is by observing and practicing with others that we can find communion, points of slippage, fusion, and even celebration.
In Bukhara, after spending Shabbat with the Elnatanovs, I visited an Iranian Shia Mosque during Ashura, the day of commemoration for the death of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammed. I drank several cups of sweet yellow saffron tea before entering the mosque. People were wary of my camera but willing to let me record shortly. I entered the main prayer room. Men slapped their chests in repetitive motions creating a percussive rhythm. They sang in harmony, echoing the song of the Imam. The women prayed outside under a cloud of mist. The songs were familiar and foreign. Perhaps these were prayers sung by Haji, my great-grandfather, to convince his neighbors that he too was a Muslim. Perhaps the musical system is similar to Judeo-Persian songs. These cultures are close, yet they’ve become strangers.
My film is becoming a tapestry. Making connections through narrative threads. Linkages in a chain. My film is becoming a mahalla, a maze through different cultural phenomena. Every mahalla needs its Jews.
July 21: Hotel Rahmon, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Documentary is hard work. People are not models. They are unhinged, pedantic, cagey, shy, anxious, vulnerable, ashamed to reveal their souls. Today I encountered Yosef and Hussein – two old friends from the Jewish mahalla in Samarkand. Yosef takes care of Gumbaz Synagogue with its blue dome ceiling. Yosef took me to visit Hussein, the hamam master at Hamomi Davoudi, the Jewish hamam built in the 18th Century in Samarkand. Yosef and Hussein have been friends for years. Together we descended into the hamam, with its dome ceilings. Yosef and I sang and stretched in the depths of the furnace. Hussein appeared once our bodies were hot. He began to bend and stretch me in all sorts of contortions. He then proceeded to scrape my dead skin cells, to scrub me with soap, and to slap me on the back.
I drank tea with Yosef and Hussein. My friend and colleague Madina Gazieva joined us to translate from Russian, Uzbek, and Tajik. Yosef and Hussein were alarmed by my camera. They could sense its extractive potential. They shared their stories, concerns, political views orally but not for my lens. I was disappointed. These men owe me nothing. Can I retell their story? It would have been great on film. My luck ran out. Who can I find as subjects? Jewish life is dead in Bukhara, Samarkand, Kokand. The Bukharian Jews are in Tashkent, New York, Jerusalem, the diaspora. Israeli rescue missions exported them to Israel. Any Jew can claim citizenship there. A new life. Yosef is stuck behind. His children are in Israel while he remains taking care of the domes with Hussein.
July 24: From Kokand to Tashkent, Uzbekistan
The fatigue is setting in. I’m becoming disillusioned with filming. Trying to be the parasite at the dinner table without singing for my supper. «Let me film you. Let me archive. Let me capture.» What to capture when your subject looks the other way?
This is not a linear narrative. It is an interconnected root system of phenomena – people, trade, song, food, textiles, architectures, histories. The mahalla sometimes leads you through and other times leads to dead ends. The paths are the embroidery, the stitching one travels along. The old mahalla in Samarkand has property that was in fact owned by Jews. In Bukhara the Jews could only rent from landlords and were subject to economic uncertainty. My camera is an archive for this research. The camera frames and creates a space-time that can be transported into the future.
July 25: From Samarkand to Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Exhausted. It’s so cold and humid at the same time. Today I was filming with Shlomo Babaev, the last shochet in Uzbekistan. We were in a slaughterhouse. I smell of blood, shit, and death. Once you know the true origins of a thing it’s hard to forget. Chris Marker’s handheld cinematography had a purpose: to look like a travelogue. What purpose do my images have? Get me out of here! This train stinks! No, I stink.
July 29: Tafakkur Street, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
I am trying to consolidate my thoughts. My thoughts are scattered and not in a good way anymore. I am processing a lot of memories especially the slaughter of a cow. I think I will struggle to eat meat for a long time. I have fetishized my own people, the Jews. I have fetishized Muslims in the hopes of reconnecting with my chala ancestors who were forced to convert to Islam. Most of the Jews left here in the latter part of the 20th Century. There is hardly anyone left. They are mostly elderly people. But they have thick skin and are extremely hospitable. Bukharian Jewish life exists in the diaspora: Israel, the United States, even Austria. Ari Babakhanov, the legendary Shashmaqam composer and musician, is in Germany still singing and playing his rubab. I exoticized the Bukharian Jews, naively hoping to find a magical version of Jewish life. The Jewish mahalla has spread across the world. I have come to understand that Jews are people who care about other Jews. In Uzbekistan I was taken care of.
August 11: Rapenburgerstraat, Amsterdam, Netherlands
So many answers yet still more questions. By the end of the trip, I found my questions: Can you describe how Bukharian Jews have lived in symbiosis with other religions and peoples in Uzbekistan? What language did Bukharian Jews speak in the mahallas? What trades were they involved in? How much autonomy did Bukharian Jews experience in the mahallas before the Russian Revolution? Can you speak about the relationship between Bukharian Jews and their Islamic counterparts? Were there ever tensions between Ashkenazim and Bukharian Jews? How did the Russian Revolution immediately impact Bukharian Jewish communities? Why were the Jews stigmatized by the Soviets? What was the relationship between Communism and Zionism? Could you be a Communist Zionist? Can you speak about the Prisoners of Zion? Were there any Jewish communist political leaders in Uzbekistan? When and why did the majority of Jews emigrate from Uzbekistan? How did they travel? To what extent is Israel responsible for the mass emigration of Bukharian Jews? Can you speak about the Jewish Bukharian diaspora in the present day? What sort of cultural and trade networks exist between Bukharian Jews in different geographies? Are Jews stigmatized in Uzbekistan in 2024?
Let people tell their story. Let people contradict themselves. Let the audience arrive at their own interpretation. In any case, you can’t force it. You can only present the material.
Acknowledgements: A special thanks to the people and institutions that made this research possible: Eljohn Abasov, Shlomo Babaev, Sabina Burkhanova, Alexandra Dennett, Rafael and the Elnatanovs, Madina Gazieva, Erin Levi, Timur Ivanov, Timur Karpov, Valeria Kraeva, Rafael Nektalov, Rouslan Nimetoullaev, Hussein, Zilola Saidova, Shahnoza Sharipova, Akbar Sultanov, Yosef Tillyaev, Halim Tukhtaev, Alexey Ulko, Zukhriddin Uzokov, and Zippy. Gumbaz Synagogue, Hamomi Davoudi, Kalantarov House, Mondriaan Fonds, Samarkand Jewish Cemetery, Savitsky Museum, USTO Art Guest House.
Author Bio: Aitan Ebrahimoff (1991, UK) is an artist and researcher based in the Netherlands. His films and video installations combine documentary and speculation. His ongoing research project explores his Jewish-Iranian diasporic identity. Through an auto ethnographic methodology he uses his inherited narrative to access other peoples’ cultures and histories in their situated context. As a former anthropologist he is interested in the exchange made between himself and his subjects. Actors and interlocutors become collaborators. He uses writing to structure associative narrative elements and experiment with modes of cinematic storytelling. Whether factual or fantasy, his films blend genres and incorporate cultural observations which are rooted in his subjective experience. www.aitantv.xyz
Aitan Ebrahimoff. Photography: Film stills courtesy of Aitan Ebrahimoff