Uzbekistan’s Jewish Community Is in Peril

Re “After Soviets, Silk Road Nations Look to a More Glorious Past,” July 11: While you covered the Muslim community and its resurgence in the article, you overlooked the decimation of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. The Jewish community of Uzbekistan numbered 100,000 in 1980. There were thriving synagogues in Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent as recently as 1990.

My family dates back several hundred years in Uzbekistan. When I visited in 1989, madrasas -- which had been closed for years -- were being reopened by imams sent from Iran. They began teaching an extremist version of Islam and radicalized the local population. By and large, up to that time the Jews and the Muslims got along fairly well.

That all began to change in the late 1980s and early 1990s and accelerated after Uzbekistan became independent and the Soviets left. Cousins told me of incidents in which their children had been beaten up by Muslims who told them to leave the country, that Uzbekistan was a Muslim country and there was no place there for Jews. More and more anti-Jewish incidents occurred, and Jews left the country.

Today this ancient Jewish community numbers well under 10,000, consisting mainly of old people. The Jewish community of Uzbekistan will disappear in 10 to 20 years. This will be a cultural loss for the world, not just for Uzbekistan.

Gary Aminoff

Los Angeles