Introduction

Chapter 1 Introduction The modern Jewish history of Afghanistan is surprisingly brief. While the ancient community flourished from the eighth to the beginning of the thir- teenth centuries, after the devastation wrought by Mongol invaders in 1220, little remains extant for the next six hundred years. Evidence of a larger community reemerges in 1839, when those who were able to flee forcible conver- sion in Mashhad arrived in Herat. This work explores the role of the Jewish community that lived in a mountainous land wedged between the Soviet Union, British India, China, and Iran. Its modern experience was moulded by the cataclysmic first half of the twentieth century. Within Afghanistan, the Jews faced the impact of full political independence from Britain and attempts at modernization. Yet soon, the proverbial wolf was at the door, as larger forces intervened. The foundation of the Soviet Union and Stalin’s purges led to an influx of Bukharan Jewish refugees, which worsened the fragile position of the native community. Concurrently, the rise of Nazi Germany brought a new kind of anti-Semitism to Afghanistan, while in the 1940s, World War II and India’s partition caused further peril. When the modern state of Israel emerged, the promises of messianic Zionism were too much to resist, and almost all of the Jewish community in Afghanistan emigrated. General works on Afghanistan normally only provide several sentences on the Jewish community. Meanwhile, Afghanistani Jewish history is often included within the scholarship of the larger Persian or Central Asian Jewish sphere.1 Unfortunately, historians examining the Jewish experience frequently 1 Indeed, the concept of an Afghan Jew could be somewhat of a misnomer, as all members of the Pashtun ethnicity are Muslim. While living in Afghanistan, the Jewish community never called themselves Afghan. Ironically, individuals began to use the term only after leaving the country. This change is striking as it occurred not only upon arrival in Israel, but also during the journey, while waiting as close as in Iran or India. Through the action of crossing the bor- der, the terms changed. (See Central Zionist Archives [hereafter: CZA] S6/6787, communal letter from ‘Afghani refugees’ (Teheran) to the Director of the Office of Immigration, Jewish Agency (Jerusalem) 30 January 1952.) A similar process may have occurred among Hazara Shiites who fled to Iran after the Soviet invasion in 1979. In Iran, they were viewed as Afghan because they came from the country of Afghanistan, although clearly they were not Pashtun. Despite this variation, I have chosen to use the term ‘Afghanistani’ because ‘Afghan’ is often synonymous with ‘Pashtun’. As half of Afghanistan’s population is non-Pashtun, ‘Afghanistani’ seems to be a more inclusive usage. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�9�383_00� 2 Chapter 1 overlook vital events occurring in Muslim society, and the impact of larger social forces on the minority Jewish community. Sometimes their marginal status provided a buffer, as the Jews were never a part of Pashtun blood feuds. More frequently, however, their vulnerable position as ‘ahl al-dhimma (pro- tected, yet second-class citizens) meant that they were at greater risk of vio- lence. This work places Mizrahi Jewish history in a wider context, emphasizing local and national processes in the state of Afghanistan.2 For the most part, the modern history of Afghanistan has been written as the history of the dominant Pashtun ethnicity. Far less emphasis is placed upon other groups, such as the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Nuristanis, Baluchis, Turkmens, and Farsiwans. In many ways, just as the Hazaras were ‘pacified,’3 their voices were also silenced.4 This work focuses on the experiences of a non-Muslim, non-Pashtun minority using records outside of Afghanistan. Because many Jews were literate and had international contacts, documentation about their experiences survives all over the world. They were preserved, while many other crucial sources on Afghanistan’s history were never recorded or were lost in the Soviet invasion and its aftermath. This work draws from archival material in Britain, Israel, France, Germany, and the United States.5 Much of Afghanistan’s Jewish community left for Israel thirty to forty years before the more recent waves of Muslim Afghanistanis fled their homeland, settling in Pakistan and Iran. While this thesis contributes to Afghanistani history, it is also rooted in Jewish studies. As Hannah Arendt said in 1943: “For the first time Jewish history is not separate but tied up with that of all other nations.”6 Within this context, it may seem like an aside to the far larger events that occurred in the middle of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, this history reflects a distinct experience. 2 Mizrahi literally means ‘eastern’ in Hebrew, and refers to Jews from places like: Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and India. They are distinguished from those who originated in Eastern Europe (Ashkenazi) or those who lived in Spain before the Inquisition (Sephardi). 3 See Hasan K. Kakar, The Pacification of the Hazaras of Afghanistan (New York: The Afghanistan Council, Asia Society, 1973). Note that later his name is spelled Kaker. 4 See Sayed Askar Mousavi, The Hazaras of Afghanistan: An Historical, Cultural, Economic and Political Study (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1998), 5–10. While Mousavi does not say that the voices of the Hazaras were silenced, it does appear to be a core theme within his work, and surfaces directly in a discussion of Afghan nationalism. 5 Similar files exist in India as well. See for example, Eunan O’Halpin, “The Fate of Indigenous and Soviet Central Asian Jews in Afghanistan, 1933–1951,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies (forthcoming). I am grateful to the author for sharing his unpublished manuscript with me. 6 Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” Menorah Journal (January 1943): 69–77; reprinted in ed. Ron Feldman, Hannah Arendt The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age (New York: Grove Press, 1978), 66..

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