A Bukharian synagogue in Israel today
The former rabbi of my shul, Rabbi Laufer, told a story of his boyhood in Uzbekistan. He teaches a class every week to a Bukharian congregation of orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. (Bukharians speak a dialect of Persian, not Yiddish.) In addition, he makes financial contributions to the upkeep of their synagogue. One day, one of the Bukharian congregants asked Rabbi Laufer as follows.
“You are from Poland. You speak Yiddish. Why do you come here to a congregation of Jews from Uzbekistan? What is your connection to us? Rabbi Laufer told them the following story
At the age of seven in 1939, I was living with my family in Poland. When Germany and the Soviet Union split Poland up( due to the Soviet German friendship treaty of 1939), we were on the German side. To save our lives, we escaped to the Soviet half of Poland. Our entire family was deported to Siberia. As presumed enemies of Germany, which was then a friend of the USSR, we were deported to Siberia. In 1941, when Germany attacked the USSR, we were transferred to Uzbekistan, where food was scarce but the climate far more benign than that of Siberia.
As religious Jews, we immediately started a secret synagogue in a basement. We had no sefer Torah( Torah scroll) and one Jewish book. It was the book of Leviticus, with the weekday prayers bound in together with it. With time, the congregation was able to acquire a few prayer books. Going to synagogue was dangerous. One Rosh HaShanah (Jewish New Year) my father was arrested in front of the entire congregation, taken away in his talis and kittel. (Prayer shawl and white robe) Congregating for prayer was illegal, and there was plenty of room in labour camps for those who didn’t care that it was.
Before Purim, we always tried to read Parshas Zecher, preferrably from a Sefer Torah .(The portion dealing with wiping out Amalek, the sworn enemy of the Jewish people) We had no Torah scroll. A few short years ago, we had been back in Poland, with an openly functioning kheder (Jewish school) and a synagogue full of seforim. (Jewish books) It felt bleak.
We were in Leninsk, a tiny town, but we heard that about 30 miles away was a larger town, Andijan, that had a Bukharian Jewish congregation. Even though we could travel there, the Bukharian congregation was as secretive as we were. Why should they trust us? We could very well have been NKVD agents. (Secret police) Despite this, I set out with two men to travel to Andijan, first to find the Bukharian congregation, and then to see if they would lend us a sefer Torah. Amazingly enough, they decided to trust us, and lent us a precious Sefer Torah.
The next leg of our trip was at least as complicated as finding the Bukarian congregation and securing their trust. We had to get the SeferTorah to Leninsk without getting arrested. Taking a train was out of the question. We would have been arrested within minutes of boarding the train. Hitching a ride with a truck was also not possible. The only people with gasoline powered vehicles worked for the government, or for a state owned business. We found an Uzbek with a two wheeled ox powered cart. He was carrying barrels of merchandise. We disguised our Sefer Torah as another piece of merchandise, in another barrel and casually covered the barrel with rags. I rode with the Uzbek gentleman and with the Sefer Torah, and the two rabbis with whom I was traveling traveled by regular means back to Leninsk.
We were able to read Parshas Zecher with a real Sefer Torah. You can not imagine what this meant to us, or how difficult it was to pull off. Drug dealers in New York City have an easier time than we would have if we had been caught. The fact that the Bukharian congregation trusted us was an additional miracle. The Bukharian Sefer Torah looks different from ours. It is in a different covering, and has other differences. The Bukharians had every reason to fear that their whereabouts could be extracted from us in the course of a harsh interrogation. They were counting on us to make it back to Leninsk safely.
At the end of the war, my family and I were repatriated as Polish nationals to Poland. This was an enviable status. Even though the Soviet Union had saved us from physical death, they did the best they could to wipe out Judaism from our consciousness. But before we left, I knew there was unfinished business. In Leninsk, I found another Uzbek Muslim wagon driver. Yet again, I returned to Andijan with the Sefer Torah. I was then able to leave to Poland in peace, knowing that I had returned the Sefer Torah that had been entrusted to us by the Bukharian congregation.
So if you want to know why I, a Yiddish speaking Jew feels a connection to you, why I come to teach in your synagogue and make regular donations to it, here is your answer, Every Shabbos (Sabbath), every Yom Tov (Jewish holiday) that we were able to recite blessings over a real Sefer Torah was a kindness from the Bukharian Jews of Uzbekistan, during the tender years of my childhood. I have never forgotten that kindness. The education that led to semikha (rabbinic ordination) started in the USSR in secret classes. I was able to have a bar mitzvah celebration over a Sefer Torah because of your kindness, and I have never, ever forgotten it. Those hours spent in a secret shul, over 65 years ago, are as vivid to me today as they were in the days when we davened (prayed) quietly for fear of the NKVD.
So that is why I am here. I am forever in the debt of the Bukharian Jews who risked their own lives and freedom to help fellow Jews who after all were strangers. I am here repaying a debt of gratitude for the loan of that Sefer Torah.
Although the men who asked me about my connection to their congregation were young enough to be my grandchildren, it must have touched the common root of our souls, because there were tears in their eyes as I concluded the story.
When a religious boy from Poland ends two years without a Sefer Torah by finally securing a clandestine Torah, it is a personal Yom Tov. So today, as I come to the same time on the Jewish calendar when I went to Andijan for a Sefer Torah, I am always reminded of that trip in the ox cart, many years ago.”
This story was told to members of the Frankel shul in Crown Heights on 30. Adar I, 5771. March 5, 2011 at a meeting of the Father and Son Program.
