From JIMENA: Bukharian Jews are a Mizrahi community that adopted Sephardic customs in 1795, when Moroccan Rabbi Joseph Maman Maghribi settled there. The Bukharan Emirate was under the jurisdiction of the Umar caliphate & its laws that granted Jews limited religious liberty only in exchange for payment of a jizya tax. Devastated, community members searched for a rabbi, and Rabbi Maghribi accepted their invitation with the understanding that since his practice was rooted in Sephardic tradition, the community would need to follow.

The Umar caliphate’s laws stayed in effect through 1865, when Tsarist Russia began to conquer the land, although remnants of those laws persisted as late as 1920.

Under the rule of Russia, Bukharian Jews were granted more rights, which benefited their trading businesses. That golden age ended abruptly, when the Soviet Union took hold in Central Asia in 1924.

Read the article: https://www.distinctionsjournal.org/resilience-on-campus/

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