Chabad Rabbi Killed By Anti-Semitic Foreigners in United Arab Emirates

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

We 14 million Jews are still spread throughout the world;  a few living here and there for simple reasons.  The Israeli government said the death of Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan, who has been missing in the Gulf state of United Arab Emirates since Thursday, was a "criminal anti-semitic terrorist event."  Kogan, an Israeli-Moldovan dual citizen who lived in the UAE, had been missing since Thursday, the 21st of November.

Kogan's disappearance quickly sparked suspicions that he had been kidnapped. He was the representative in Abu Dhabi for Chabad Lubavitch, an influential Orthodox Jewish Hasidic organization based in New York.

“With great pain we share that Rabbi Zvi Kogan, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Abu Dhabi, UAE, was murdered by terrorists after being abducted on Thursday, ” Chabad posted on X.                                

     3 killers suspected to be from Uzbekistan, formerly part of Russia;   Islam is the predominant religion, and most Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims.

Kogan's vehicle was discovered in a city about an hour and a half from Dubai, Ynet reported. Authorities suspect that he was abducted by three Uzbek nationals who subsequently fled to Turkey.  Uzbekistan is a Central Asian nation and former Soviet republic. It's known for its mosques, mausoleums and other sites linked to the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean. Samarkand, a major city on the route, contains a landmark of Islamic architecture: the Registan, a plaza bordered by 3 ornate, mosaic-covered religious schools dating to the 15th and 17th centuries. ―

Information in Israel’s possession indicated that Kogan may have been under Iranian surveillance, reports said.  In other words, he could have been targeted, a Jewish escapee from USSR's clutches of Uzbekistan.  

There is a small Jewish community in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As of 2019, according to Rabbi Marc Schneier, it is estimated that there are about 150 families to 3,000 Jews who live and worship freely in the UAE. As of 2022, Judaism is experiencing a revival in the Emirates, most likely because of the Abraham Accords that have brought peaceful relations to be a reality today.  There are three synagogues across the UAE. Since the Abraham Accords were signed in 2020, which normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, the first officially-licensed synagogue in the country was opened in Abu Dhabi, the nation's capital.

     Chabad Jews somewhere  on a special day

The lone rabbi would have been easy to identify to an anti-Semite, and obviously one was on the prowl for a Jew, found one and killed him.  Those living in UAE would have had special jobs relating to making visitations between the countries easier, safer, one would think.  

Kogan's family was originally from Moldavia.  The former Bessarabia is now the Moldavian Republic (formerly in the USSR) with a Jewish population of 80,127 in 1989.   Moldova is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The Nistru and Prut rivers run through Moldova, with the Nistru forming part of the border with Ukraine and the Prut forming the border with Romania. The Danube also touches Moldova's southern border.

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates#:~:text=There%20is%20a%20small%20Jewish,a%20revival%20in%20the%20Emirates.

https://x.com/Chabad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbekistan

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-830438

Miracles in Israel: 6: Central Asia's Bukhara, Uzbekistan Jews in Return of Lost 10 Tribes of Israel:

Deportation of Jews by Assyrians in 721 BCE to 715 BCE

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                          

Jewish students and their teacher in Samarkand, Uzbekistan 1910
Land in Central Asia.  Bukhara is a province there, which used to
be a part of the USSR.  

The tribes of Naphtali and Issachar were exiled from Israel and in captivity by the Assyrians in 721 BCE.  This is where 

these Jews came from.  

 In Central Asia and in the 16th century, people found their Jewish descendants living under the emirate of Bukhara who called themselves the Isro'il (Israelites).  As far as we had known, they didn't arrive there till the 13th century coming from Persia (Iran). However, this is their legend of how they had arrived in Uzbekistan.

 In the 17th and 18th centuries they had a independent cultural life.  Joseph Maaravi went to the from Palestine in 1793 to revive their Jewish life.
 Refugees from Meshed, Persia also arrived in 1839.  Traders and craftsmen mostly made up the
community and they had a monopoly on the silk trade that was ramified in the 19th century.  The 1st aliyah of Jews back to Palestine included some of these Jews in the 1880s.  In 1970 the Jewish population here was 12,000.

                                                                             

Uzbekistan is the red area on the map. Tajikistan is the orange
where Bukhari Jews also live.  Former Soviet Union Armenia Azerbaijan Belarus Estonia Georgia Kazakhstan Latvia Lithuania Moldova Russia Ukraine Uzbekistan
Below Turkey lies Israel on the Mediterranean Sea
Our lost 10 tribes have traveled throughout this whole map-even found in China. 

 

 There were from 180,000 to 250,000 Jewish Bukharis in the city of Bukhara in Uzbekistan.  In today's count, 100,00 to 120,000 have already moved to Israel. " Starting in 1972, one of the largest Bukharan Jewish emigrations in history occurred as the Jews of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan immigrated to Israel and the United States, due to looser restrictions on immigration.   In the late 1980s to the early 1990s, almost all of the remaining Bukharan Jews left Central Asia for the United States, Israel, Europe, or Australia in the last mass emigration of Bukharan Jews from their resident lands.  "Today, there are about 150,000 Bukharan Jews in Israel and 60,000 in the United States. Only a few thousand still remain in Uzbekistan. About 500 live in Canada. Almost no Bukharan Jews remain in Tajikistan (compared to the 1989 Jewish population of 15,000 in Tajikistan) according to Geni.com ."
                                                                       

Rabbi Yosef or Moses Ben Maimon
"Maimonides"

Maimonides in lobby of Capitol in Wash. DC

 They were Mizrachim Jews but now have joined up with the Sephardim and practice Judaism in their manner.   "In 1793, Rabbi Yosef Maimon (better known as Maimonides  or the Rambam (1135-1204), a Sephardic Jew born in Cordova, Spain from Tetuan, Morocco and prominent kabbalist in Safed, Palestine, traveled to Bukhara and found the local Jews in a very bad state. He decided to settle there. Maimon was disappointed to see so many Jews lacking knowledge and observance of their religious customs and Jewish law. He became a spiritual leader, aiming to educate and revive the Jewish community's observance and faith in Judaism. He changed their Persian religious tradition to Sephardic Jewish tradition. Maimon is an ancestor of Shlomo Moussaieff, author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, and the First Lady of Iceland Dorrit Moussaieff." 
                                                                   

     
Like Ashkenazim with Yiddish and Sephardim with Ladino,  Jews who each developed their own type of Jewish language, the  Bukhara or Isro'il spoke Persian to each other and also developed a Persian dialect with traces of Hebrew in it.

They were written about in the Talmud of the 4th century.  Their history is that they are descendants of traders to Central Asia from King David's day (1010 BCE-970 BCE).  The Persian King Cyrus had conquered Babylon and wanted Jews to live in his vast empire,  A legend exists that he was Queen Esther's son.  The largest city  that they lived in was Bukhara.  Throughout the years, Jews from other Eastern countries such as Iraq, Iran, Yemen,Syria, and Morocco migrated into Central Asia (usually by taking the Silk Road).

Isakharov is a common surname among these Jews.
                                                             

In searching for the Cohen line in these isolated Bukhara Jews, it is found that "In Jewish populations, Haplogroup J1 (defined by the 267 marker) constitutes 30% of the Yemenite Jews, 20.0% to (35%)  of the Ashkenazim results and 12% of the Sephardic results.   
     In Arabs,however, J1 is most frequent in Yemen (76%), Saudi (64%), and Qatar (58%).   J1 is generally frequent amongst Negev Bedouins (62%). It is also very common among other Arabs such as those of the Levant, i.e. Palestinian(38.4%), Syria (30%), Lebanon (25%). 
     In Europe, higher frequencies have been reported in the central Adriatic regions of Italy: Gargano (17.2%), Pescara(15%), in the Mediterranean Paola (11.1%)^] and in South Sicilian Ragusa (10.7%).  
Fairly high frequencies have also been reported in other nearby Mediterranean areas: Crete (8.3%),
 Malta (7.8%), Cyprus (6.2%),
 Greece (5.3%).

Haplogroup J2 which is found in the Sephardic Jews (29%)^] and Ashkenazi Jews (23%), or (19%)  is found mainly in the Fertile Crescent, the Caucasus, Anatolia, the Balkans, Italy, the Mediterranean littoral, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, and South Asia.  More specifically, it is found in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon,Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Greece, Italy and the eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, and more frequently in Iraqis 29.7%, Lebanese 25%, Palestinians 16.8%, Syrians 22.5%,

 Kurds 28.4%, Saudi Arabia 15.92%,

^] Jordan 14.3%, Oman 10–15%,   UAE 10.4%, Yemen 9.7%,

 in Israel,

 in Palestine,and in Turkey.

I do not think they have raised much attention to the fact that they feel they are part of the lost tribes.  I cannot find any DNA studies specifically on them as yet.   They have simply been part of the Russian Empire's Jews making aliyah.  

Resource: DNA & Tradition, the genetic link to the Ancient Hebrew by Rabbi  Yaakov Kleiman
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukharan_Jews
https://www.google.com/#q=map+of+Bukhara
https://www.geni.com/projects/Bukharan-Jews-of-Central-Asia/15684
http://jewishpeople2.blogspot.com/  full of information of DNA
The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/genewatch/GeneWatchPage.aspx?pageId=503