Afghanistan once sheltered Jews, says local author
Friday, October 26, 2001 | byALEZA GOLDSMITH
While most Taliban extremists have never even seen a Jew, Afghanistan was, not so long ago, home to a thriving Jewish community.
As recently as the beginning of the 20th century, more than 40,000 Jews actually lived there quite peacefully, says Ken Blady, a Jewish educator, writer and lecturer on the subject of Jews in remote areas of the world.
Yet today, says the Berkeley resident and author of "Jewish Communities in Exotic Places," there is "not a single Jewish person left there that we know of." By the time the Taliban rose to power in the mid 1990s, the land of Afghanistan—which once provided immunity for Jews from the Shiite Muslims of Persia—was pretty much devoid of Jews.
Blady will lead a lecture series on Afghan Jews, as well as those from other unexpected places, over the next month and a half at Congregation Sherith Israel, 2266 California St., S.F.
His first lecture, at 8 p.m. tonight, will focus on the Jews' integration into the Afghan culture and how the Taliban traces its mythological origins to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The lecture is free and will include a slide presentation.
"Jews could be found in Afghanistan as far back as early biblical times," says Blady, a history buff who conducted much of his research in Israel through interviews with scholars. Visiting Afghanistan under the extremist Taliban rule would do little to shed any light, he adds.
"They may very possibly have gone there with the dispersion of the Ten Tribes of Israel in 722 BCE. Many ended up there after the destruction of the first Temple."
Also, oftentimes, the rabbis of the talmudic era would banish nonconforming Jews to Afghanistan.
"It was like the Tasmania of the Jewish people. Those who rejected the Talmud or were considered misfits were sent there by the rabbinate and the Exilarch in Babylonia."
When Genghis Khan invaded Afghanistan in the early 1200s and "totally demolished what was an advanced country with prestigious and liberal universities," he also wiped out a large percentage of the Jewish people there.
But they later began trickling back in, especially in the 1800s when the Shiites began to forcibly convert them.
"In Persia they had a choice between the sword or conversion to Islam," says Blady. "Afghanistan was not quite as intolerant. Jews…were not allowed to be forcibly converted."
Jews, along with Christians and Zoroastrians, however, were to be constantly reminded of their inferiority. They were not allowed to build a synagogue that was higher than a mosque and they could not ride on horses, "which were reserved for higher castes."
Most Jews worked in crafts, dyeing carpets, or as peddlers, importers and exporters.
"They had a rigid place in society and were generally protected by the law. Just as you wouldn't kick your dog, you wouldn't kick a Jew."
With the Jews' early and long connection to Afghanistan, it is not wholly surprising that British colonists once pointed out "something unusually Jewish about Afghans," says Blady. "They wore earlocks and shawls, and it is even claimed that they lit candles on Friday nights."
But despite this amalgamation of Jewish tradition, Blady says the claim of some Muslim Afghan tribes that they are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes is a false one.
The Pashtun people, of which the Taliban are a part, for instance, claim they were Jews who converted to Islam under the advice of another Jewish convert to Islam, a disciple of Muhammad, during the eighth century, he says. They claim that the city of Kabul "stands for Cain and Abel" and that the name Afghanistan is derived from the grandson of King Saul of the tribe of Benjamin, Afghana.
Blady calls this mythology. "They are Aryan, Kurdish, Iranian people, not Semitic at all," he says. They created this mythology about themselves in order to lord it over people—to say, when all else was primitive and barbaric, they were already monotheistic."
Blady says this Aryan descent is partly why the Nazis tried to establish solidarity with the Afghans during World War II.
"They began dropping leaflets from the skies to establish hatred and tension towards the Jews." Many were killed in massacres. Others fled to Bombay, pre-state Israel, Italy, England and America with the help of various Jewish organizations.
The few hundreds of Jews remaining in Afghanistan after the war left when the Soviets invaded in 1979.
"By the time the Taliban came to power there was only one Jewish family left. Then, about two years ago, they also managed to leave."
Five lectures, at 6:45 p.m. Tuesdays, continue at Sherith Israel; Oct. 30, the Jews of Ethiopia: Nov. 6, the Jews of Iran; Nov. 13, the Jews of China; Nov. 20, the Jews of India; Nov.27, the Jews of Yemen. Cost: $35 to $50 for the series, $10 to $15 per lecture. Information: (415) 346-1720 or http://www.sherithisrael.org