Bukharian Jewish - Emigrant Populations - United States

United States

Currently, Bukharan Jews are mostly concentrated in the U.S. in New York, Arizona, Atlanta, Denver, South Florida, Los Angeles, San Diego. New York City's 108th Street in the borough of Queens, is often referred to as "Bukharan Broadway" or "Bukharian Broadway" in Forest Hills, Queens, is filled with Bukharan restaurants and gift shops. They have formed a tight-knit enclave in this area that was once primarily inhabited by Ashkenazi Jews (many of the Ashkenazi Jews have assimilated to wider American and American Jewish culture with each successive generation). Congregation Tifereth Israel in Corona, Queens, a synagogue founded in the early 1900s by Ashkenazi Jews, became Bukharan in the 1990s. Kew Gardens, Queens, also has a very large population of Bukharan Jews. Author Janet Malcolm has taken an interest in Bukharan Jews in the U.S., writing at length about Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and, in Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial, about the 2007 contract murder of Daniel Malakov organized by his ex-wife Mazoltuv Borukhova.

In December 1999, the First Congress of the Bukharian Jews of the United States and Canada, led by Boris Kandov convened in Queens, New York City, USA. At the start of the Jewish New Year 5765 (2005), the Bukharan Jewish community of Queens (mainly Rego Park and Forest Hills) celebrated the opening of the Bukharian Jewish Community Center. This establishment further reflects the growing Bukharan community in Queens and their desire to preserve their identity in an ever-changing world.

In 2007, Bukharan-American Jews initiated lobbying efforts on behalf of their community. Zoya Maksumova, president of the Bukharan women’s organization "Esther Hamalka" said "This event represents a huge leap forward for our community. I am so grateful to God that we are here, that I was able to witness this. Now, for the first time, Americans will know who we are." Senator Joseph Lieberman intoned, "God said to Abraham, 'You'll be an eternal people'… and now we see that the State of Israel lives, and this historic community, which was cut off from the Jewish world for centuries in Central Asia and suffered oppression during the Soviet Union, is alive and well in America. God has kept his promise to the Jewish people."

Read more about this topic:  Bukharian Jewish, Emigrant Populations

Famous quotes related to united states:

    The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—’indoctrination’ we might say—exercised through the mass media.
    Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)

    I incline to think that the people will not now sustain the policy of upholding a State Government against a rival government, by the use of the forces of the United States. If this leads to the overthrow of the de jure government in a State, the de facto government must be recognized.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    As a Tax-Paying Citizen of the United States I am entitled to a voice in Governmental affairs.... Having paid this unlawful Tax under written Protest for forty years, I am entitled to receive from the Treasury of ‘Uncle Sam’ the full amount of both Principal and Interest.
    Susan Pecker Fowler (1823–1911)

    ... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)