History of the Jews in Afghanistan

Jewish cemetery in Herat, Afghanistan.

Jews are said to have resided in Afghanistan for nearly 1,500 years, but the community has been reduced greatly because of emigration.^{[citation needed]} Afghan Jewish communities now exist mostly in Israel, and the United States.

It was Afghanistan to which Jews turned to when escaping religious persecution in Iran and central Asia. It was in the ancient cities of Herat to the west and Kabul to the east of Afghanistan that they found refuge.^{[citation needed]} The Jews had formed a community of leather and karakul merchants, poor people and money lenders alike.^{[citation needed]} The large Jewish families mostly lived in the border city of Herat, while the families' patriarchs traveled back and forth on trading trips across the majestic mountains of Afghanistan on whose rocks their prayers were carved in Hebrew and sometimes even Aramaic, moving between Iran, Afghanistan, India and central Asia on the ancient silk road.^{[citation needed]}

Today, only one Jew, Zablon Simintov, remains residing in Afghanistan. He cares for a synagogue in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, and receives aid from sympathetic Muslims, and also from Jews around the world.

History

Afghan Jews

Records of a Jewish population in Afghanistan go back to the 7th century, with the Tabqat-i-Nasiri^{[citation needed]} mentioning a people called Bani Israel settling in Ghor.^{[citation needed]} Among the Pashtun people some believe in a legend that they descended from one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. DNA evidence, however, excludes this possibility.

It is claimed that the name Kabul is derived from Cain and Abel, and the name Afghanistan from Afghana, a grandson of King Saul. According to historians V. Minorsky, W.K. Frazier Tyler and M.C. Gillet, the name "Afghan" appears in a 982 CE book called Hudud-al-Alam, where a reference is made to:

Saul, a pleasant village on a mountain. In it lives Afghans.

The village of Saul probably was located somewhere near Gardez, which is just east of Ghazni in Afghanistan. The book also tells about a village near modern Jalalabad where the local king used to have many Hindu, Muslim and Afghan wives.

In 1080, Moses ibn Ezra mentions 40,000 Jews paying tribute to Ghazni,^{[citation needed]} and Benjamin of Tudela in the 12th century counts 80,000 Jews.^{[citation needed]}

In the course of Genghis Khan's 1222 invasion, the Jewish communities were reduced to isolated pockets. Only in 1839, the population increased again, swelled by refugees from Persia, reaching some 40,000.^{[citation needed]}

The similarities between Muslim and Jewish Afghans were striking. The rabbis' beards, turbans and gowns made them almost indistinguishable from their Muslim scholars, while both were referred to by the title of mullah.^{[citation needed]} The community shared with the rest of society a profound mistrust of state interference in family affairs, rejecting secular education and military service. In the 1920s, Jewish rabbis famously protested against Kabul's attempt to enlist Jewish children to state school.^{[citation needed]} Much like the rest of society, the family structure was patriarchal. Jewish women married young, were deprived of education and led domestic lives away from the public eye. When leaving home, they covered themselves just like their Muslim counterparts. Such resistance to change meant that the community remained conspicuously traditional and closely knit together, marrying only among themselves.

Like the rest of the population, the Jews of Afghanistan were simultaneously local and transnational, rooted to the Afghan soil by birth and burial but connected to a global faith through religion. Like Afghan Hindus and Muslims, their sacred sites, too, were located in faraway, hard-to-reach places while their holy language was not the official language of the nation. Such similarities were ultimately why a peaceful coexistence was possible between Jewish and Muslim Afghans.^{[citation needed]} The Jewish community being cut off from global political trends meant that ordinary Afghans were untouched by the raging, European-led, antisemitism of the early 20th century. Even at the height of the Nazi influence in Kabul of the 1930s.^{[citation needed]}

By 1948, over 5,000 Jews existed in Afghanistan, and after they were allowed to emigrate in 1951, most of them moved to Israel and the United States. Afghanistan was the only Muslim country that allowed Jewish families to immigrate without revoking their citizenship first. Afghan Jews left the country en masse in the 1960s, their exile to New York and Tel Aviv was motivated by a search for a better life but not because of religious persecution. By 1969, some 300 remained, and most of these left after the Soviet invasion of 1979, leaving 10 Afghan Jews in 1996, most of them in Kabul. During and after the rise of the Taliban, hundreds of Jewish afghans had either converted to Islam or disguised themselves as Muslims, the converts to Islam still practised Judaism secretly and adopted Muslim names. Due to the high number of fake conversions the actual number of Jews in Afghanistan is much greater than the recorded amount. It is thought that there are still 500-1000 secret Jews in Afghanistan. More than 10,000 Jews of Afghan descent presently live in Israel. Over 200 families of Afghan Jews live in New York City in USA. Over 100 Jews of Afghan decent live in London.

Ten Lost Tribes of Israel

Main article: Theory of Pashtun descent from Israelites

The theory that Pashtuns are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel is mentioned in Nimat Allah al-Harawi's The History of the Afghans written in 1612. The account from 1612 cites oral history and the names of various clans, which are claimed to resemble the names of the tribes that were exiled by the Assyrian Empire 2,700 years ago, as evidence for this claim. The claims were conclusively refuted by a recent genetics test that was focused on a small non-nondescript group of Pashtuns which found no substantial connection between Jewish populations and the Pashtuns.^{[citation needed]}

Moreover, the Eastern Iranian language of the Pashtuns has not been taken into account when examining the claims of Hebrew ancestry, either. It may be that these claims emerged among the Pashtuns following the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan, as it is conceivable that many tribes have created elaborate ancestral lineages to link themselves to prominent peoples mentioned in the Qur'an such as Jews, Greeks (see Alexander in the Qur'an), and Arabs, all of whom have come to the region.^{[citation needed]} Medieval accounts of the Israelite origin of the Pashtuns are contradicted by ancient sources, which from the Vedas and Herodotus (c. 450 BCE) onward refer to Paktia (the Pashtun), the "Aparitai" (Afridis) as well as other Pashtun sub-tribes and also by the Iranian language linguistic affiliations of the Pashto language.

Further information: History of Arabs in Afghanistan

Genetics

The haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA) is found at a frequency of 51.02% among the Pashtun people. Paragroup Q-M242 (xMEH2,xM378) (of Haplogroup Q (Y-DNA)) was found at 16.3% in Pashtuns. Haplogroup Q is also found at a frequency of more than 50% in the Pashtuns in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

According to a 2012 study:

“

MDS and Barrier analysis have identified a significant affinity between Pashtun, Tajik, North Indian, and West Indian populations, creating an Afghan-Indian population structure that excludes the Hazaras, Uzbeks, and the South Indian Dravidian speakers. In addition, gene flow to Afghanistan from India marked by Indian lineages, L-M20, H-M69, and R2a-M124, also seems to mostly involve Pashtuns and Tajiks. This genetic affinity and gene flow suggests interactions that could have existed since at least the establishment of the region's first civilizations at the Indus Valley and the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex.

”

The abstract states: "our results that all current Afghans largely share a heritage derived from a common unstructured ancestral population that could have emerged during the Neolithic revolution and the formation of the first farming communities. Our results also indicate that inter-Afghan differentiation started during the Bronze Age, probably driven by the formation of the first civilizations in the region."

Current population

By the end of 2004, only two Jews were left in Afghanistan, Zablon Simintov and Isaac Levy. Levy relied on charity, while Simentov ran a store selling carpets and jewelry until 2001. They lived at separate ends of the dilapidated Kabul synagogue. Both claimed to be in charge of the synagogue, and the owner of its Torah, accusing the other of theft and imposture. They kept denouncing each other to the authorities, and both spent time in Taliban jails, and the Taliban also confiscated the Torah. Recently, one of Simentov's acquaintances stated that if you had brought (him) a bottle of whiskey, he (Simentov) would be in "heaven."

The contentious relationship between Simentov and Levy was dramatized in a play inspired by news reports of the two that appeared in international news media following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan overthrowing the Taliban regime. The play, entitled "The Last Two Jews of Kabul," was written by playwright Josh Greenfeld and was staged in New York City in 2002.

In January 2005, Levy died of natural causes. Simentov is now the last remaining Jew in Afghanistan, and with a total Afghan population of 30 million, the lowest worldwide. Simentov is trying to recover the confiscated Torah. Simentov, who does not speak Hebrew, claims that the man who stole his Torah is now in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay. Simentov has a wife and two daughters who live in Israel, and he said he was considering joining them. However, when asked during a recent interview whether he would go to Israel, Simentov retorted, "Go to Israel? What business do I have there? Why should I leave?"

There is also a disused Synagogue in Herat, in western Afghanistan, which contains most of its original characteristics although in a state of disrepair.

More than 10,000 Jews of Afghan descent now live in Israel. The second largest population of Afghan Jews is in New York City, with 200 families living mostly in the neighborhoods of Flushing, Forest Hills and Jamaica, in the borough of Queens. Many speak neither Pashto nor Dari Persian, Rabbi Jacob Nasirov leads the Orthodox congregation of Anshei Shalom, the only Afghan synagogue in the United States. There is also a small Afghan Jewish community in southern California. There is also a small Afghan Jewish community in London, numbering to just over 100. There is a Persian synagogue in London in which the members of the congregation are of mostly Iranian and Afghan origin.

See also

• Afghan Geniza

External links

• The "Other" in "Afghan" Identity: Medieval Jewish community of Afghanistan
• Old pictures of the Jews of Afghanistan
• THE LAST JEW IN AFGHANISTAN