Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism (Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies)

This volume combines ethnography, history, and memoir to document the complex past and present of the Bukharan Jewish community, an ancient Mizrahi group. Though deeply rooted in Central Asia, Bukharan Jews have maintained significant ties to the broader Jewish world. Following the community's dispersal after the Soviet Union's collapse, Cooper conducted ethnographic research in Uzbekistan to record Jewish life there, as well as among immigrants to the US and Israel. Drawing on this fieldwork and historical research about encounters between Bukharan Jews and Jewish communities elsewhere, Cooper presents an intimate account of Bukharan Jewish identity. The narrative explores the tensions involved in sustaining Judaism as a unified global religion across its long and diverse diaspora history.