Les Juifs des routes de la soie : une culture bimillénaire en Aise centrale

For 23 years, MIZVADA (formerly Valiske), a French company specialising in organising tourist stays devoted to Jewish cultures around the world, has been passionately exploring the little-known heritages of world Judaism. Among these traditions, that of the Bukharan Jews in Uzbekistan holds a very special place.

Our new exhibition, on show at the Musée Judéo-Alsacien in Bouxwiller, north of Strasbourg, invites visitors to discover one of the oldest and most fascinating Jewish cultures.

Heirs to a two-thousand-year history, the Bukharan Jews have developed a distinctive identity at the crossroads of the Persian, Sephardic and Muslim worlds.

A journey into the heart of a unique Jewish civilisation

The exhibition offers a rich itinerary, covering many aspects of Jewish life in Uzbekistan:

• History of the communities of Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent
• Welcome extended to several waves of Jewish refugees, and even to children, during the Great Patriotic War
• Relations with the Sephardic world, notably through the influence of rabbis who came from Morocco
• Coexistence with Muslim populations, marked by profound cultural exchanges
• The Soviet period, between upheavals, migrations and resistance to identity loss
• Traditional cuisine, scents of spices and recipes handed down from generation to generation
• Dance and music, including the famous shashmaqam
• Family customs, festivals, clothing and rites
• Crafts and trade, fields in which the Bukharan Jews long excelled
• Tshalas, or Muslims of Jewish origin, witnesses to complex and often little-known histories

Through objects, photographs, testimonies, historical documents and handcrafted works, the exhibition offers a sensitive immersion into a world where spirituality, traditions and multiple influences blend together.