US embassy cable - 05DUSHANBE1737

UNCLAS  DUSHANBE 001737 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR EUR/CACEN, SA, DRL 
NSC FOR MERKEL 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, SOCI, KIRF, TI 
SUBJECT: DUSHANBE SYNAGOGUE RELOCATION STILL UNRESOLVED, BUT COMING 
TO A HEAD 
 
1.  (U) Sentitive but unclassified.  Please handle accordingly. 
Not for public Internet. 
 
2.  (U) The Ambassador called on Rabbi Mikhail Abdurahmonov on 
October 26.  Koen Davydov, the newly-elected Tajik chairman of 
the community who has business interests in Israel, also sat in. 
 On October 21, a young member of the congregation warned the 
Ambassador the Rabbi was about to leave Dushanbe unless he got a 
new synagogue and community center building immediately. 
 
3.  (U) The vast majority of Dushanbe's Bokharan Jews emigrated 
in the early 1990s, mostly to Israel and New York, leaving a 
remnant community in Dushanbe of about 200, mostly elderly.  The 
Dushanbe synagogue and community center, which follows the 
Orthodox tradition, and which serves hot meals to the indigent 
elderly, is in the center of the city within the territory that 
has, since the 1980s Soviet urban renewal plan, been slated for 
clearance for a vast "national park" (urban green space) to 
surround the Palace of Nations, which is now the nearly 
completed Presidential Palace.  During the past year, the circa 
1940s shabby single-story dwellings in the area, like the 
synagogue, have been mostly cleared away.  Among the razed 
buildings was a neighborhood mosque. 
 
4.  (U) We are absolutely certain that issues of anti-Semitism 
are not part of this saga.  In fact, the notoriously difficult 
Dushanbe city government has tried to be helpful, within the 
limits of secular law. 
 
5.  (U) NOTE:  Some Jewish news services describe the Dushanbe 
synagogue as a 103-year-old World Heritage Site.  It is no such 
thing.  Dushanbe, an 80-year-old New Soviet City, did not exist 
in 1902 except for a small number of mud-brick houses in a 
market village on the bluff above the river.  The synagogue was 
originally built in the Soviet-Central-Asian residential style 
as a private compound in the 1940s when the population surged as 
a number of Russian research institutes moved to Dushanbe to 
escape the destruction of World War II.  One city archive 
document lists the synagogue's construction date as 1941.  END 
NOTE. 
 
6.  (SBU) Abdurahmonov's title, "rabbi," is a courtesy because 
he is not fully qualified to be a rabbi by academic or 
theological standards.  Since his first meeting with the 
Ambassador in November 2003, Abdurahmonov has insisted he wants 
to keep his current building and the city can just make a park 
around it.  Or, if push came to shove, he would be willing to 
accept from the government another downtown villa of equal size. 
 He has consistently argued that the synagogue cannot locate to 
a distant site because community members live in the vicinity of 
the current building.  Being elderly, they cannot travel far, 
and being Orthodox, they cannot use public transportation on the 
Sabbath. 
 
7.  (SBU) Boris Kandov, President of the Bokharan Jewish 
Community of the United States and Canada, was in Dushanbe in 
November 2004 as part of the Bokharan delegation of former 
Dushanbe citizens now in the United States who were invited as 
honored guests to participate in the 80th anniversary 
festivities of the founding of Dushanbe.  The Ambassador asked 
Kandov and his colleagues to work with Rabbi Abdurahmonov to 
assist in finding a solution.  Kandov and another wealthy 
emigre, Yagdarov, offered the community one of Yagdarov's 
residential properties in downtown Dushanbe.  But it turned out 
there was a complication - it was occupied by relatives of 
General Saidamir Zuhurov, former Minister of Security and 
 
 
current Chairman of the Tajik Border Guard.  And they had no 
desire to move.  Kandov reportedly worked closely with Mayor 
Obaidulloyev, who was quite willing to allocate a new plot of 
land for the community. 
 
8.  (SBU) Abdurahmonov told the Ambassador he had told the city, 
after Kandov returned to New York, to stop the transfer of the 
land to the community because the synagogue wouldn't own the 
land, and therefore would be in danger of losing any new 
building on it.  The Ambassador pointed out that no one owns 
land in Tajikistan, but they do gain long-term rights to it and 
do own buildings they construct on it.  Abdurahmonov then 
adjusted his story and said he didn't want new land because he 
didn't have any money for a new building. 
 
9.  (SBU) As a temporary measure, until the community receives 
money for a new building, the city offered three rooms in an old 
building in town that currently houses other associations. 
Abdurahmonov sniffed that would be inappropriate. 
 
10.  (U) When the Ambassador asked Davydov why businessmen in 
Israel haven't helped the Dushanbe community financially, 
Davydov blandly answered, "Because no one asked." 
 
11.  (SBU) Abdurahmonov has told us before that he is bitter he 
was not able to take advantage of emigration to the United 
States when it was available to him because he was the family 
member forced to stay behind to care for an elderly relative. 
Recently, he has been quoted in the international Jewish press 
as stridently vowing to leave for Israel unless the City of 
Dushanbe gives him a new synagogue. 
 
12.  (U) Earlier this year, Abdurahmonov received a notice from 
the city to vacate the site by the end of July.  The area around 
the synagogue is now mostly rubble, with only a few other 
residences and shops still standing.  A new boulevard is already 
encroaching on the veranda of one of the synagogue compound's 
buildings.  Soon the city will lose patience, which most cities 
would have done long ago, and bring the issue to a head. 
 
13.  (SBU) The real issue here is the elderly folks in the 
community.  They are being held captive to brittle egos and what 
seems to be, as opaque as it is to us, internecine posturing, 
bickering, and buck-passing. 
 
14.  (SBU) The U.S. and other Western Embassies continue to 
monitor the synagogue and remnant-community situation closely. 
Oddly, the former Israeli Ambassador in Tashkent told us he had 
no interest in this affair.  The elderly Tashkent-based, 
self-styled Orthodox "Rabbi of Central Asia," David Gurevich, 
occasionally comes to Dushanbe on this issue, but invariably 
muddies the waters and leaves hard feelings among government 
officials. 
 
15.  (SBU) COMMENT:  We advocated to Kandov in 2004, and to the 
Bokharan community in New York in early 2003, as well as to 
NCSJ's Mark Levin, that the best solution would be for a young 
Jewish seminarian to come to Dushanbe for a year or so to give 
leadership to the remnant community and to sort out the location 
problem.  We would think it would not be too difficult to raise 
money in the international Jewish community to build a modest 
but appropriate new community center and prayer hall in 
Dushanbe.  What is required is a bit a leadership, which 
Abdurahmonov does not, and apparently will not, provide.  END 
COMMENT. 
 
 
HOAGLAND 
 
 
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