Chala (Jews)

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See disambiguation page Challa for more meanings of the word.

Chala (

Marranos
of Spain.

Chala Jews were unable to return to their true Jewish faith due to the fatal consequences associated with leaving the Islamic faith. The Islamic rulership during this period imposed a death penalty against those renouncing their Islamic faith. Therefore, it was not until the emergence of Imperial Russia, and Soviet rule that Chala Jews were able to revert to their original faith.

By the 19th century, Chala communities had emerged in the cities of: Samarkand, Khiva, Kokand, Margilan, and Shahrisabz. Often, it was not until two to three generations that Chala Jews would begin to intermarry with the local Muslim population and shed any remaining Jewish traditions.

The return of the Chala to Judaism began with the

Bukhara Khanate remained autonomous and continued to enforce the death penalty against those who abandoned Islam. As a result, many Chala Jews illegally immigrated into Russian-controlled areas, to escape the certain threat of death. Although Russian law required that these newcomers be deported back to Bukhara and face an imminent death, the deportation orders were continuously delayed, and thus many had remained as permanent non-citizens of the Russian Turkestan region. Some Chala Jews also joined merchant guilds in order to prove their economic use to the empire. Because Muslim law was retained in Bukhara for a longer period than in surrounding cities, by the time communist Soviet rule arrived in Bukhara, many members of the local Chala no longer self-identified as Jewish, having by then become fully assimilated into the Muslim population.[3]

Following the

Tajiks
, rather than Jews.

In 2000, author Mansur Surosh published a novel Chala ("The Outcasts"), which describes the experiences of the chala.[4][5]

See also

References

  1. ^ Mirovalev, Mansur "Uzbekistan's long-persecuted Bukhara Jews" Al Jazeera May 5, 2015 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/04/uzbekistan-long-persecuted-bukhara-jews-150428083657675.html
  2. ISBN 0-7103-0188-X
    .
  3. ^ Kaganovich, Albert "The Muslim Jews - Chala in Central Asia" https://www.academia.edu/4749714/The_Muslim_Jews_Chala_in_Central_Asia
  4. ^ Review of Mansur Surosh's novel Chala on tajnet.com Archived 2009-06-11 at the Wayback Machine (in Russian)
  5. ^ "Bukharan Jews: "The Outsiders," A review by Najam Abbas". Archived from the original on 2011-07-27. Retrieved 2016-06-17.
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