Dahlia Abraham-Klein’s grandfather Haim Abraham lived to 102. She was fortunate to have gotten to know him when she was younger, but it wasn’t until Haim passed away in 1999 that Abraham-Klein learned more about his life thanks to a journal he had left behind. This journal chronicled not just Haim’s life but that of the former Jewish merchant class in Central Asia. Haim wrote his journal entries in Judeo-Farsi, written in a unique cursive Hebrew script from Jews of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Judeo-Farsi is almost extinct now, so it took Abraham-Klein a decade to find someone who could translate and decipher the journal entries into Hebrew. She has taken many of these journal entries and has woven in her own narration in her new book, The Stateless Central Asian Merchant: The Life of Haim Aghajan Abraham Based on His Journal 1897-1986, a unique look into a Jewish community that no longer exists.
Haim Abraham was born in 1897 in Merv, then a part of the Russian Empire and now called Mary in Turkmenistan. Before Haim’s family arrived in Merv, they had lived in Herat in Afghanistan. Abraham-Klein writes that these two cities along with a couple of others were the center of Jewish life in Central Asia.
In this region—anchored by Mashhad, Herat, and Bukhara—lay the Jewish Triangle. Merv, where Haim was born, sat at its center. Until the early 20th century, Jews thrived as merchants in this borderland. Russian imperial policies, and later Soviet and Afghan nationalism, shattered these networks.
Even within the Jewish community in Merv, people came from a number of different backgrounds. There were Afghan or Herati Jews; Persian or Mashhadi Jews, many of whom had been crypto-Jews; Bukharan Jews from places like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan; and Ashkenazi Jews from Europe. Haim’s grandfather was the rabbi of the grand Afghan synagogue in Merv.
The Jews of Central Asia were treated as second class citizens and were always prepared to pick up and leave an area if it became too dangerous for them. These Central Asia Jews developed their own language.
For centuries, Central Asian Jews lived under three consecutive Persian empires. As they settled further on the outskirts of the empire, they developed their own unique language, blending Farsi, Hebrew, Aramaic, Russian and Turkic elements. In its written form, this language was known as Judeo-Farsi. In Soviet Central Asia it was called Judeo-Tajik… Haim spoke all these languages, which would help him as a merchant traveling through many different villages and countries. Being multi-lingual was important for a merchant. Haim could be many people because he was a polyglot.
Abraham-Klein writes that her grandfather also moved around a young child. In 1911, Haim’s family was expelled from Merz during the reign of Tsar Nicholas. They had relatives in Samarkand, so they moved there and joined many other new arrivals.
After the Russian conquest, Samarkand became the largest Jewish city in the entire region and boasted a Bukharan Jewish residential quarter called Mahalla-i Sharq. The greatest influx of newcomers to Samarkand, most of them refugees from the Bukharan Emirate that had been annexed by the Russians, came to the town in the early 20th century.
Their move coincided with the golden age for Jews in Samarkand. There were twenty-six synagogues and over a dozen Jewish schools where students learned in Hebrew, Russian, and Judeo-Tajik. But after Haim’s father was arrested and deported for being a foreigner—as Afghan Jews were viewed in Samarkand—the family was able to return to Merv. The Russian Revolution upended many Jewish communities in Central Asia when the state eventually confiscated synagogues and closed Jewish schools all in the name of secularization. Later when Stalin started ruling the Soviet Union, Jews from Turkestan fled for the safety of Afghanistan. Haim and his new wife Rachel were part of this migration. As Abraham-Klein writes:
The Jewish community in Afghanistan was founded and shaped by the exigencies of long-distance trade. Along with their Hindu counterparts, Jewish merchants reached remote regions and sold goods to feuding tribes. Often the Jewish traders would be the only ones allowed into disputed areas, as they were neutral and not attached to any tribal group. Frequently, men spoke many languages, including Dari and Pashtu, to facilitate business transactions, though they also spoke English, Russian, and Hebrew when necessary.
>Life in Kabul was stable until it wasn’t. The new King Muhammad Zahir Shah rescinded citizenship from all Jews in Afghanistan in the early 1930 and only allowed them to live in a few areas: Herat, Mazar-e Sharif and Kabul. By the mid-1940s, many Persian and Bukharan Jews in Afghanistan crossed the border into British India. Others, including Haim’s relatives, bought land in Tel Aviv and would settle there. After World War II, Haim and his family moved to New York, where he remained involved in trade around the world, including tea from Taiwan and turquoise from Iran.
Haim ended his journal in his early 90s, but would live another decade. If Abraham-Klein hadn’t found a translator for her grandfather’s journal, most of this history would have been all but forgotten. Her book is short, but substantial with her grandfather’s engaging journal entries and her own commentary, along with timelines, maps, and old family photos. While Afghanistan no longer has any Jews, the largest group of their descendants now lives in Israel. Haim and his wife Rachel are buried in Israel.