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Image by Dorothee Hübner

New York

​​Throughout the 20th century, New York has seen several waves of migration from the cities explored in this project – with the arrivals often active in commerce and the preservation of heritage connected to these cities. From 1890, Aleppine Jews arrived, alongside Christians, seeking economic betterment as peddlers and small retailers of textile goods supplied by compatriots in Manchester, Kobe, Shanghai and Manila. Wealthier Jewish emigres leaving Aleppo after 1947 sojourned in commercial nodes in Milan and Latin America before arriving in New York. Many established firms in Manhattan’s garment district (and some in the ‘diamond district’) and entered real estate investment. Many settled in Flatbush, Brooklyn, maintaining vibrant Syrian/Sephardic community, heritage and religious institutions.
 

Bukharan Jews settled in New York from at least the 1930s, often moving to the city from London, Leipzig and Jerusalem, as merchant families dispersed members to the city’s ‘fur district’ to trade in Karakul furs. From the 1960s, approximately 200 Afghan Jewish families originally from Herat and Kabul arrived from London and Israel, establishing firms that traded with Afghanistan and provided commercial services to visiting Muslim Afghans. By the 1970s, most Afghan Jews in New York had entered the gemstone trade in the ‘diamond district’. Most settled in Forest Hills, Queens, before moving to nearby Jamaica Heights, establishing a synagogue which still plays a major role in preserving Afghan Jewish heritage in the US and elsewhere. The families of Muslims from central Asia who fled their homes after 1917 and had initially settled in Turkey, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia also increasingly moved to New York from the 1950s. They established the American Turkestanian Association, an organisation active in the ‘Freedom for Captive Nations’ movement during the Cold War, and, after 1991, in building relations between this community and the government of Uzbekistan.

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Bukharan Jews leaving (post-) Soviet Central Asia en masse from the 1970s settled in Queens and Brooklyn, opening synagogues, up-market kosher restaurants, the multi-lingual transnational “Bukharian Times” newspaper, and businesses in the ‘diamond district’. They have strengthened transnational diasporic ties in North America as well as maintained ties to Central Asia through the Congress of the Bukharan Jews of the USA and Canada (est. 1999). The Cultural and Religious Centre of Bukharan Jews in Forest Hill, besides providing a range of services to the NY community, hosts official delegations from Central Asian states and undertakes people’s diplomacy initiatives.

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  • What challenges and opportunities did these communities face when establishing their businesses and places of worship in a new country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: On the one hand, these communities have been able to use the skills and aptitudes they learned as traders to establish various commercial activities in one of the world’s ‘global cities’. Afghanistan’s Jews used their knowledge of the fur trade to broker relations between the great fur companies of the 1920s with Afghanistan, for example. On the other hand, they have had to struggle to gain citizenship, faced racism and connected forms of exclusion, and suffered due to a lack of wider public awareness about their distinctive pasts.
  • Sikh and Hindu faiths are mainly associated with India, so Afghan Sikh and Hindu communities often come as a surprise. Could you explain their distinctions and why they are often overlooked in portrayals of the country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan have lived in the country for centuries. They were fully integrated in rural and urban life in the country and thus followed practices and spoke languages that reflect that wider cultural milieu. At the same time, however, both communities were well-connected to their co-religionists in India and their religious lives have closely reflected religious change and transformation in that country. Moska Najib, Principal Photographer: I feel their existence is often overlooked because Afghanistan’s story is usually told through the lens of Islam and conflict. The presence of Sikh and Hindu communities complicates that dominant narrative, pushing them into the background. But their resilience and struggles, especially in recent decades, are crucial to understanding Afghanistan’s broader diversity.
  • What challenges and opportunities did these communities face when establishing their businesses and places of worship in a new country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: On the one hand, these communities have been able to use the skills and aptitudes they learned as traders to establish various commercial activities in one of the world’s ‘global cities’. Afghanistan’s Jews used their knowledge of the fur trade to broker relations between the great fur companies of the 1920s with Afghanistan, for example. On the other hand, they have had to struggle to gain citizenship, faced racism and connected forms of exclusion, and suffered due to a lack of wider public awareness about their distinctive pasts.
  • Sikh and Hindu faiths are mainly associated with India, so Afghan Sikh and Hindu communities often come as a surprise. Could you explain their distinctions and why they are often overlooked in portrayals of the country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan have lived in the country for centuries. They were fully integrated in rural and urban life in the country and thus followed practices and spoke languages that reflect that wider cultural milieu. At the same time, however, both communities were well-connected to their co-religionists in India and their religious lives have closely reflected religious change and transformation in that country. Moska Najib, Principal Photographer: I feel their existence is often overlooked because Afghanistan’s story is usually told through the lens of Islam and conflict. The presence of Sikh and Hindu communities complicates that dominant narrative, pushing them into the background. But their resilience and struggles, especially in recent decades, are crucial to understanding Afghanistan’s broader diversity.
  • What challenges and opportunities did these communities face when establishing their businesses and places of worship in a new country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: On the one hand, these communities have been able to use the skills and aptitudes they learned as traders to establish various commercial activities in one of the world’s ‘global cities’. Afghanistan’s Jews used their knowledge of the fur trade to broker relations between the great fur companies of the 1920s with Afghanistan, for example. On the other hand, they have had to struggle to gain citizenship, faced racism and connected forms of exclusion, and suffered due to a lack of wider public awareness about their distinctive pasts.
  • Sikh and Hindu faiths are mainly associated with India, so Afghan Sikh and Hindu communities often come as a surprise. Could you explain their distinctions and why they are often overlooked in portrayals of the country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan have lived in the country for centuries. They were fully integrated in rural and urban life in the country and thus followed practices and spoke languages that reflect that wider cultural milieu. At the same time, however, both communities were well-connected to their co-religionists in India and their religious lives have closely reflected religious change and transformation in that country. Moska Najib, Principal Photographer: I feel their existence is often overlooked because Afghanistan’s story is usually told through the lens of Islam and conflict. The presence of Sikh and Hindu communities complicates that dominant narrative, pushing them into the background. But their resilience and struggles, especially in recent decades, are crucial to understanding Afghanistan’s broader diversity.
  • What challenges and opportunities did these communities face when establishing their businesses and places of worship in a new country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: On the one hand, these communities have been able to use the skills and aptitudes they learned as traders to establish various commercial activities in one of the world’s ‘global cities’. Afghanistan’s Jews used their knowledge of the fur trade to broker relations between the great fur companies of the 1920s with Afghanistan, for example. On the other hand, they have had to struggle to gain citizenship, faced racism and connected forms of exclusion, and suffered due to a lack of wider public awareness about their distinctive pasts.
  • Sikh and Hindu faiths are mainly associated with India, so Afghan Sikh and Hindu communities often come as a surprise. Could you explain their distinctions and why they are often overlooked in portrayals of the country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan have lived in the country for centuries. They were fully integrated in rural and urban life in the country and thus followed practices and spoke languages that reflect that wider cultural milieu. At the same time, however, both communities were well-connected to their co-religionists in India and their religious lives have closely reflected religious change and transformation in that country. Moska Najib, Principal Photographer: I feel their existence is often overlooked because Afghanistan’s story is usually told through the lens of Islam and conflict. The presence of Sikh and Hindu communities complicates that dominant narrative, pushing them into the background. But their resilience and struggles, especially in recent decades, are crucial to understanding Afghanistan’s broader diversity.
  • What challenges and opportunities did these communities face when establishing their businesses and places of worship in a new country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: On the one hand, these communities have been able to use the skills and aptitudes they learned as traders to establish various commercial activities in one of the world’s ‘global cities’. Afghanistan’s Jews used their knowledge of the fur trade to broker relations between the great fur companies of the 1920s with Afghanistan, for example. On the other hand, they have had to struggle to gain citizenship, faced racism and connected forms of exclusion, and suffered due to a lack of wider public awareness about their distinctive pasts.
  • Sikh and Hindu faiths are mainly associated with India, so Afghan Sikh and Hindu communities often come as a surprise. Could you explain their distinctions and why they are often overlooked in portrayals of the country?
    Magnus Marsden, Principal Investigator: Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan have lived in the country for centuries. They were fully integrated in rural and urban life in the country and thus followed practices and spoke languages that reflect that wider cultural milieu. At the same time, however, both communities were well-connected to their co-religionists in India and their religious lives have closely reflected religious change and transformation in that country. Moska Najib, Principal Photographer: I feel their existence is often overlooked because Afghanistan’s story is usually told through the lens of Islam and conflict. The presence of Sikh and Hindu communities complicates that dominant narrative, pushing them into the background. But their resilience and struggles, especially in recent decades, are crucial to understanding Afghanistan’s broader diversity.
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