AFGHANISTAN  -  KAZAKHSTAN

Relics of old Afghanistan reveal Jewish past...

Ynet, June 25 - Architect Jolyon Leslie is leading efforts to preserve and restore old synagogues in west Afghanistan, where only one Jew remains today - 'It's important that locals understand that this was a very rich society in the sense of its religious diversity and pluralism,' he explains.

Behind a parade of old mud brick shops, through narrow winding alleys, a tiny door opens onto a sundrenched courtyard, where school children giggle and play alongside the ghosts of Afghanistan's Jewish past.
 
The Yu Aw is one of four synagogues in the old quarter of Herat city in west Afghanistan, which after decades of abandonment and neglect, has been restored to provide desperately-needed space for an infant school.
 
When Israel was founded in 1948, the estimated 280 Jewish families that lived in Herat began leaving. Today, there are no Jews left in the city and only one left in the entire country, the last remnant of a community that dates back some 2,500 years.
 
The Herat synagogue, over a century old, is comprised of a modest stone courtyard framed by a series of small rooms including a main prayer room which still has a raised platform where the Torah would have been read.
 
Parts of the prayer room's high ceilings are decorated in painted Persian-style floral patterns and motifs.
The "mikvah," an underground chamber underneath the courtyard, has also been restored. Decades of rubbish was gutted from its cavity to reveal a natural pool of water which is thought to have been used for bathing rituals.

Synagogue turned into a school
 
"Wherever possible we try and put back the elements. We can't put back what we don't find, some of the buildings have been stripped," said Jolyon Leslie, a South African architect who leads restoration projects in Herat's old city on behalf of the Agha Khan Trust for Culture.
 
"What we're trying to do is protect as many old historical monuments as possible. Whether it's a mosque whether it's an ex-synagogue like this or whether it's a hamam, to try and put them in public use," Leslie said.
 
"It's important that Heratis understand for future generations that this was a very rich society in the sense of its religious diversity and its pluralism," he added.
 
Three other synagogues in the same neighborhood are being renovated. Two will also be used as schools for children living in the neighborhood. The third is now a mosque for the residents who live in a cluster of simple, centuries-old abodes.
 
Long gone

Afghanistan's once thriving community is believed to trace its roots to the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests in 720 B.C. and 560 B.C. when exiled Jews moved to what is now Iraq, Iran and neighboring countries such as Afghanistan.
 
By 1992, when the Soviet-backed communist leadership in Kabul collapsed, the community disappeared from Herat. A few have since returned to re-visit the refurbished relics of their past.
 
"Jewish visitors from abroad, even Herat Jews from abroad, have come back to visit these places and there's a sense of them re-owning these properties and being very proud to see them restored," Leslie said.
 
He recalled a recent visit by a Herati Jewish family who had traveled from Canada to visit Yu Aw. They sobbed when they saw the restored synagogue.
 
Jewish cemetery still intact

A few kilometers away from the old quarter, an Afghan boy unlocks a heavy wrought-iron door to an open field where overgrown thorn bushes and weeds breed unchecked around craggy and windswept white marble tombs inscribed with Hebrew.
 
The family which has taken care of the cemetery for the past 150 years continue to do their best to protect it, but since Herat's Jews left, they are no longer paid for the work. The cemetery contained about 1,000 graves.
 
Through three decades of conflict and the rule of the austere Islamist Taliban, Abdelaziz's family guarded the site, which is off a dirt track lined with Muslim cemeteries.
 
The Taliban, though responsible for harassing the family at times, resisted damaging the graves.
 
"The Taliban were not the worst of our problems. We had neighbors who would try and desecrate the graves or steal the stones, they were the worst, but we would tell them to stop and tell them what they were doing was unislamic," Abdelaziz said.
 
Ynet, June 25 - Jewish and proud in provincial Kazakhstan

Jerusalem Post, July 5 - Living on the far edge of the Jewish world can be difficult - Small communities eke out a barebones existence consisting of little more than a Friday night service or a club of Jewish friends. Without education, synagogues, kosher food or a connection with the huge Jewish civilizations in Israel and the US, there is little future in these shattered bits and pieces of a long-gone Jewish civilization.

In that dismal context, it was a moving experience to witness the dedication of Kazakhstan's sixth synagogue last week amid talk of a "rebirth" of Jewish communal life in the vast Central Asian country. Built in Kostanai, a provincial capital with 223,600 people in the country's north, the new synagogue and community center are the gift of the country's energetic Jewish billionaire Alexander Mashkevich, a minerals and mining tycoon and president of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.

"I think a strong Diaspora is important," Mashkevich told The Jerusalem Post last week. "A strong Israel and a strong Diaspora is a perfect combination for the Jewish people. Each one is stronger because it has the other."

Population figures for remnant Jewish communities are often the product of wishful thinking rather than statistical record. Estimates for Kazakhstan range from 10,000 to 40,000 Jews. Yet neither a ceremony in an Astana synagogue attended by President Shimon Peres nor a dedication ceremony in Kostanai visited by Israeli Religious Services Minister Ya'acov Margi and Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger were attended by more than perhaps 80 local Jews. Indeed, the synagogues could not have held larger crowds.

However many Jews there may be in technical terms, the number of those who know or care that they are Jews is far lower.

In Kostanai, which already hosts a mosque, two Orthodox churches and a Catholic church, the synagogue will serve a Jewish community that is clawing its way back from near extinction due to Soviet forced atheism and emigration.

Indeed, the "rebirth" seems to be thanks almost entirely to Mashkevich, who also funded the construction of the large synagogue in the Kazakh capital of Astana.

…People, regular people, are beginning to give to the synagogue and to Jewish culture.

Kazakhstan is a vast, empty, landlocked country. At 2.7 million square kilometers, it is the ninth-largest state in the world, bigger than than Western Europe. But with just 16.4 million residents, it is 222nd in population density. That immense sprawl contains some 150 recognized national minorities. Whereas Islam and Christianity function in the country as religious traditions shared across multiple nationalities, the Jews are an officially-recognized nationality all their own.

And they are fascinating to other Kazakhs. The dedication of Beit Rachel in Kostanai saw Kazakh journalists who trekked from the far reaches of the country filming at the gate and scribbling during the speeches of the local governor and the Israeli guests.

The Jews, too, identify as a nation, and insist to their guests that Mashkevich's optimism about the community's future is well-founded.

At the dedication of Kostanai's Beit Rachel, the crowd was mostly middle-aged men and women who were clearly unused to traditional Jewish head-coverings. But mixed into the crowd were old men who understood Yiddish and a few children and teenagers who seemed excited about being part of a larger Jewish people.

Yaroslava, 17, said she had perhaps 20 local friends her age who identify as Jews. They are proud of being Jewish. "It's cool. Members of my nation are famous in every country and town," she says.
She plans to make aliya when she turns 18, but believes proud Jews will always remain in Kazakhstan.

Igor Fomenko, age two, doesn't yet have plans for the future. But he seemed to have a wonderful time dancing to the songs of the Israeli boys choir flown in for the occasion. His young mother, watching him with delight, plans to return to the synagogue.

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: No. 573   September-October 2009  - Kazakhstan: Israel's Partner in Eurasia  - By Ariel Cohen - Israel and post-communist, resource-rich states have similar geopolitical priorities in opposing terrorism and radical Islam.

By developing closer ties with Kazakhstan - and with Eurasian countries in general - Israel can expand its ties to the secular Muslim Turkic states and its role in the new "great game" of Eurasia: economic development fueled by exports of the region's massive natural resources.

Israel and the countries of Eurasia are economically complimentary: Central Asian countries are rich in natural resources, and can benefit from Israeli solar, irrigation/agricultural, medical and other know-how. Israel can offer high-tech, military, and advanced agricultural technology, cutting-edge medical sciences, and educational opportunities. As always in international relations, common interests define strong ties. …