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:

    “Vanessa wanted to be a ballerina. Dad had such hopes for her.... Corin was the academically brilliant one, and a fencer of Olympic standard. Everything was expected of them, and they fulfilled all expectations. But I was the one of whom nothing was expected. I remember a game the three of us played. Vanessa was the President of the United States, Corin was the British Prime Minister—and I was the royal dog.”
    —Lynn Redgrave (b. 1943)

    “Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
    —Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    “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)

    “Printer, philosopher, scientist, author and patriot, impeccable husband and citizen, why isn’t he an archetype? Pioneers, Oh Pioneers! Benjamin was one of the greatest pioneers of the United States. Yet we just can’t do with him. What’s wrong with him then? Or what’s wrong with us?”
    —D.H. (David Herbert)