Benzion Yehoshua and Ariane Sadjed
“Jerusalem is the synagogue of the world”
(Mullah Yosef Melamed Garji)
Little is known about the organization and intra- as well as extra-communal relations of Jewish communities in Afghanistan. What were their means of communication, education and knowledge transfer? Did they read and produce texts in Hebrew, alongside Aramaic and Judeo-Persian? In this article, we will examine these issues with the example of the Garji family, whose members served as rabbis and educators for Jews in Afghanistan and beyond, throughout the 19th to the mid-20th century.
The data basis are interviews conducted by the authors, with members of the Afghan community in Israel in the 1980s and during a research stay in June and July 2024 (including members of the Garji family); analysis of the publications produced by Mattatya Garji, as well as familiarity with the oral histories, notable figures and publications within the Afghan community in Israel due the one of the author’s lifelong membership in it. The article aims to contribute not only to expanding knowledge about the community of Afghan Jews in general, but in particular to show their literary, educational and publication activities as a means to understand their manifold connections to various homelands. This will shed light on some of the major transformations Afghan Jewish communities experienced from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. At the end of 19th century, rather than being a language of everyday life in Afghanistan, Hebrew was transformed by the local leadership from a liturgical language to a means of establish oneself among the religious elites in Jerusalem. Besides this shift, we aim to show that the forms of knowledge and knowledge transmission might have differed from the ones established among European Jews; that however should not lead to the conclusion that they depended upon European forms of knowledge in order to be acknowledged as learned members of their communities. As we aim to show on the following pages, they fulfilled these positions in their own right.
- Jews in Afghanistan
Although documents testifying to Jewish life in Afghanistan date back to the 8th century, the communities of the 19th century were mainly constituted based on immigration from Iran and Central Asia. Despite these historical connections, contemporary narratives tend to frame Jewish communities in the Muslim world as scattered and cut off from each other (cf. Cooper, 2012, p. 15-32). However, until the establishment of modern nation states and the respective border policies in Afghanistan and its neighboring countries in the early 20th century, there had been a constant moving back and forth among the Jewish communities within the “Jewish Triangle” (Tajjer 1970) namely between Iran, Central Asia and Afghanistan.
Extant literature on the modern history of Jews in Afghanistan is scant: they pop up as a marginal subgroup in treatises on Jews in Muslim societies more generally (e.g. Deshen 1978; Ben Zvi 1968), or in connection with Bukharan and Iranian Jews (Bezalel 1999; Kupovetsky 1992; Netzer 1969). Works specifically about Afghan Jews tend to focus on selected aspects such as folk traditions or their emigration to Israel. In Hebrew, comprehensive writings have been compiled by Ben Zion Yehoshua, who has covered aspects of Afghan Jewish history and culture (1969), life cycle events (1973) and immigration to Israel (1992). As members of the Afghan Jewish communities, Reuven Kashani and Zevulun Kort contributed significantly to expanding the knowledge on Afghan Jewish communities in Afghanistan and Israel, but hardly any of their writings were translated from Hebrew and thus remained largely inaccessible to international academic audiences. In 1942, Erich Brauer published an anthropological article covering their economic status, marriage customs as well as aspects of family and communal life. This focus was somewhat continued in publications by Seroussi and Davidoff (1999) about musical traditions, Bar ‘Am-Ben Yossef’s edited volume on wedding rituals(1998) or Hanegbi and Bracha’s Afghanistan: The Synagogue and the Jewish Home (1991). Selected aspects of Afghan Jewish history were also published in ABA – Journal for the Study of the Jews of Iran, Bukhara and Afghanistan which is published in Israel irregularly since 2007.
Then, characteristic for the historiography of Jews from the Middle East, there is a body of literature from European travelers and missionaries who visited the region throughout the 19th and early 20th century (e.g. Beth Hillel 1832; Neumark 1889; Vambery 1867; Wolff 1860; Fischel 1937). Some of these accounts strongly exoticize (i.e. romanticize and/or look down upon) the regional culture and with it, the Jewish communities they encountered. Even those who do not display such stereotypical descriptions are, as results of the transitory nature of the encounters, limited in their ability to grasp how Afghan Jews saw themselves as a community and as embedded in the social context in which they lived.
Contemporary scholarly work on the modern history of Afghan Jews comprises the book by Sara Koplik on economic and political aspects from the mid- 19th to the mid-20th century, and Sara Aharon’s book (2011), which describes the Jewish communities of Kabul before emigration as well as their lives after settling in the United States. In addition, a number of journal articles was published recently that deal with trade networks and mobility of Jews in Afghanistan, Central Asia and Iran in the late 19th and 20th century (cf. Marsden 2023; Sadjed 2024).
This article builds on these works, but by focusing on one family of religious authorities, educators, and authors – the Garji family – their publication and educational activities, it points out the transregional links and transformation that shaped Afghan Jewish communities between and across different localities. Furthermore we aim to challenge homogenous perceptions of Jewish communities by being sensitive to elite structures vis-a-vis “regular” community members. To achieve this, we will first take a closer look at the role of languages spoken by Jews in Afghanistan.
1.1. Language
Since Herat was home to the largest community of Jews from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, and the Garji family was based in Herat as well, we will mainly focus on this locality. The community in Herat mostly constituted itself from immigrant from Mashhad after 1839. From Herat, they spread to other places such as Kabul, Maimana and Mazar-i Sharif, mainly due to emerging business opportunities, but also to Obeh, Andkhoy, Ghazni, Yolotan, Marv, Serakhs, Qala-i Naw, Kunduz, Shibarghan, Tasgurghan (Yehoshua 2013, pp. 202-237).
Throughout the modern history of Jews in Afghanistan, the spoken language for both men and women was Persian. The Persian spoken by Jews in Afghanistan contained a few Hebrew words. However, it is not known that a distinct local dialect developed as it was the case with other Persian speaking Jewish communities such as in Samarkand or the various Iranian cities. But since most Jews came to Afghanistan from Iran and Central Asia, they did speak different dialects. Jews in Balkh, for example would speak a Bukharan dialect of Persian (Bukhori or Judeo-Tajik), because the city was ruled by the Khanate of Bukhara and later Maimana until 1751. The two dialects of Judeo-Persian that prevailed in Afghanistan were (a) Herati or Yazdi, a dialect from Mashhad, Iran, to where many Jews originally from Yazd in Central Iran had moved in the 19th century. While Mashhad Jews and Jews from Yazd originally spoke different dialects, they seemed to have merged in Herat into “Herati or “Yazdi”. This was in distinction from (b) Gilaki, which was also used by Jews from Mashhad, but by those who had come to Mashhad in the 18th century from Gilan, a province in Iran at the Caspian Sea. The Mashhadis from Gilan distinguished themselves from those who had come to Mashhad from Yazd later, mostly in terms of social status (Dilmanian 1999). While the Jews from Gilan had previously already been merchants, the Jews from Yazd came to Mashhad in order to escape famine. These linguistic differences reflect that the Herati community mostly constituted itself from Mashhad.
In addition, as it was common for the many tribal or minority groups in the region, Jews also had a “secret language” called Lo Torai (literally: not of the Torah) – a combination of Hebrew and Persian that non-Jews would not understand (cf. Paul 1999). This language was based on Biblical Hebrew, but the word structure and intonation was based on Persian syntax and grammar. It sounded Persian, but non-Jews would not understand what was being said. A few examples are: Kasher kardan (making kosher); Berakha kardan (blessing the food); Vayivrah kon! (Leave immediately!)
Aramaic was used to a limited degree: only a few besides the rabbis studied the Talmud in Aramaic, but on Fridays before the beginning of Shabbat the men used to read the verses of the weekly Torah portion twice in Hebrew and once in the Aramaic Onkelos translation. It was a halachic rule that they made sure to follow (Kort 1977). On Shabbat, the father of the family would tell Torah stories in Persian. Jews had almost no knowledge of Pashto, one of the official languages of Afghanistan since 1936.
In the 19th century, only a few could read and write in Persian. Those who were literate used the Hebrew alphabet for writing Persian, which came to be known as Judeo-Persian. The use of Hebrew can be divided into two periods:
Biblical Hebrew, called Leshon Ha-Kodesh (the sacred language), was mainly used for religious worship. It was taken from the Torah, Mishna, the Sages and midrashic literature and mainly used in prayer books, during holidays and fasting days. Children learned this liturgical language in order to read prayers and the Torah in the synagogue. Women and girls, who were exempt from these religious duties, did not study in an educational setting and many of them could not read and write.
Modern Hebrew was introduced to the Jewish communities from 1928-1930 by the teacher Naftali Abrahamoff, following the reforms of King Amanullah Khan (r. 1919-1929). We will discuss his role in the reform of the educational system in more detail in section 3.1.
From a pamphlet published in the memory of Aghajan Reuven Cohen, who was the representative of the Jews before the authorities in Herat, we learn about the educational system, which according to him, was introduced to Herat from Mashhad in the 19th century. Before Abrahamoff’s arrival, children studied in the midrash, a school dedicated to the study of the Torah. They studied religious laws and had to be able to read Hebrew from the prayer book or the Pentateuch, even if they did not understand the meaning of the words.
This traditional form of teaching was based on the perception that uttering the holy language was a sacred act, it was not about the individual understanding it or endowing it with meaning. Regarding the publication of books and their circulation, there is evidence for a robust interconnection between Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia in the 18th century, exemplified by the teacher and author Siman Tov Melamed. Melamed was born in the middle of the eighteenth century in the city of Yazd in central Persia, lived in Herat and later was the spiritual leader in Mashhad with intense connections to Bukhara. Ben Zvi (1969) indicates that it was common for rabbis from Yazd to teach in Mashhad and Bukhara. When Siman-Tov moved to Herat, he became a teacher and dayan (religious judge). In Mashhad he served as religious leader as well (cf. Ya’ari, 1972, p. 134-35 and 282 ff.).
His literary work was copied and distributed across all Persian speaking Jews of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. He composed Piyyutim (sacred songs) in Judeo-Persian and Hebrew, which were sung in synagogues and in private homes at family events such as weddings and circumcisions. Hayat al-Ruh (Life of the Soul), Siman-Tov’s most important work, was completed before 1778, while he was still in Herat (Netzer 1999, p. 56-95). The book was printed in Jerusalem in 1898 by the Gol-Shauloff brothers (see more on printing houses on p. 13-14 below).
Ḥayat al-Ruḥ is a compilation of ethical speeches, Jewish and Sufi philosophical and mystical sources and poetry in the style of Iranian literary masters like Saadi and Hafez. Besides a verse from the Koran in Arabic (Netzer 1969), the book contains “numerous biblical and postbiblical sources, such as Targum Onqelos, the Babylonian Talmud, Midrash Rabba, and the Alphabet of Ben-Sira, as well as to the works of Jewish philosophers, such as Saʿadya Gaon (d. 942), Ḥasdai Crescas (d. 1410/11), and Joseph Albo (d. 1444), and to ancient Greek philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, and Galen, whose teachings he did not know firsthand but derived primarily from Jewish philosophers. Melammed also quotes from the works of classical Persian poets, especially Saʿdī’s (d. 1292) Gulistān (Pers.: Rose Garden).” Of the 180 Judeo-Persian and Hebrew poems in Hayat al-Ruh, approximately 150 were written by Siman-Tov himself while 30 are from Persian poets whose names he did not mention. Some poems have alternate verses in two languages, Hebrew and Persian or Aramaic and Persian.
Image 1: Judeo-Persian and Hebrew piyyut in Hayat al-Ruh. Photo: Yehoshua. (Images will be available after publication in journal)
Rather than being isolated and ignorant of religious traditions, Persian speaking Jews across a wide region encompassing today’s Afghanistan, Central Asia and Iran were connected through a shared language, culture and religious tradition that was nurtured both from Jewish and Persian sources. Melamed had a lasting influence, as he is also referenced in the work of Mattatya Garji (1913), a member of the prominent Garji family, to which we will turn now.
- A lineage of teaching the Hebrew language
From the 19th century onward, the Garji family brought forth several generations of religious educators and community leaders, spanning from Herat to Marv to Jerusalem. The surname Garji indicates the family’s origin from Georgia. The Garjis might have been exiled in 1610, along with Sunni Kurds and Christian Armenians, to Iran, in particular to Qazvin, Gilan and other places along the Caspian Sea. From there, Nadir Shah resettled some families in 1746 to the northeastern province of Khorasan in Iran, where the Jewish community of Mashhad was established, in order to strengthen trade and to religiously diversify the population. While emigration from Mashhad to cities in Afghanistan and Central Asia had already taken place before the forced conversion of the Jews in 1839, after this event about 1,500 Jews, including members of the Garji family, left Mashhad to Herat. There they became leaders of the community. They spoke Gilaki, the dialect spoken in Gilan and Mazanderan (Yehoshua 2013, p. 132).
The education of the rabbis of the Garji dynasty was quite different from the education of other community members. In addition to Torah education they had access to the rich library in the rabbi’s house, which held books that through booksellers were imported from Jerusalem and European countries, where Hebrew printing existed. Intense study of these books qualified them to be spiritual leaders of the community. Members of the Garji dynasty served in all the key positions among the Jews in Herat: spiritual leadership, management of the traditional Jewish education system and Kalontar (lay head of the community and its representative before the Muslim authorities). They also served as cantors, performed circumcisions and slaughtered the meat according to Jewish law for members of the community. Local rabbis in northern Afghanistan did not compete with the Garji family.
The Garjis were community rabbis in a traditional sense, accompanying their community members from birth to the grave. After they moved to Jerusalem, three generations of the Garji family taught for about eighty years in the Talmud Torah Bnei Zion and yeshiva in the Bukharan neighborhood (Shkhunat ha-Bukharim) which was established in the late 19th century in Jerusalem.
The Talmud Torah school Bnei Zion was established in 1894 by rabbi Avraham Aminoff Talmudi, one of the leaders of the Bukharan community in Jerusalem. In 1919, following the First World War, the school had financial difficulties and was facing closure. The institution turned to the organization Agudath Israel for financial help and patronage, after which the management came under an Ashkenazi organization, but most teachers and pupils were Jews from Muslim countries. Some of the teachers were of Afghan and Persian origin. Some of the great rabbis from the Muslim world, for example Ovadia Yosef, who would become Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, studied at Bnei Zion.
In the following, we will introduce five consecutive generations of prominent educators and rabbis from the Garji family, geographically starting out from Mashhad, to Herat, Marv and Jerusalem. The rabbis inherited their roles as religious authorities from their fathers, generation after generation.
| Roles | Location | Generation | Name |
| Founder of and teacher in Herat’s midrash | Mashhad – Herat (1840) | 1th | Mullah Abraham |
| Taught in Herat’s midrash | Mashhad – Herat (1840) | 2th | Mullah Mordechai |
| Chief rabbi and teacher in Herat’s midrash. Author | Herat – Jerusalem | 3th | Mullah Mattatya 1844-1917 |
| Rabbi, teacher, mohel (circumciser), ritual slaughterer and author | Herat – Marv – Jerusalem | 4th | Mullah Yosef Melamed 1869-1936 |
| Rabbi, teacher and author | Herat | 4th | Mullah Yehezkel 1875-1953 |
| Chief rabbi, mohel, ritual slaughterer, cantor and teacher | Herat – Jerusalem | 4th | Mullah Asher (1882-1955) |
| Rabbi, writer and bookseller | Herat – Marv | 4th | Mullah Shmuel ben Shlomo (no date of birth and death available) Cousin of Mattatya |
| Rabbi, teacher | Jerusalem | 5th | Mullah Binyamin (1902-1974) Son of Mullah Yosef |
2.1. Mullah Mattatya Garji (1844-1917)
The traveler Ephraim Neumark (1947) wrote about Mullah Mattatya:
“…a teacher and ashochet (in Herat) whose name is Mullah Mattatya. He does not benefit from the public purse because he takes and gives a little to revive the souls of his household (he sold spices during some hours of the day) and they call him by the name ‘Hasid’ [Pious]”.
Mullah Mattatya Garji’s best known book is the chronicle Korot Zmanim. It contains episodes from public and private life, using Oriental Hebrew letters (image 2). The language is rich and studded with fragments of verses from the Bible, Talmud and Mishnah. Among other events, he describes the deportation of members of his congregation from Herat to a caravanserai near Mashhad, of which he was part. In 1856, Nasr ad-Din Shah, King of Persia, launched an attack on Herat. Following the British threat of an invasion to Bushehr, the Persians retreated from Herat, taking prisoners with them to Iran. One of these groups were the Herati Jews – claiming they were Persian subjects. Many died on the way to Mashhad, where they were held outside of the city for two years until they were freed after paying a ransom (Levy 1983, p. 85-89; Sahim 2014; Yehoshua 1997 p. 101-111 and 157-160). Mattatya was only 13 or 14 years old at the time, and although the event must have made a lasting impression on him, he only devoted one page to the event when writing Korot Zmanim in 1896.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (born Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman; 7 January 1858 – 16 December 1922) was a Russian-Jewish linguist and journalist who was awarded the title of “Revitalizer of the Hebrew Language”. BenYehuda is renowned as the lexicographer of the first Hebrew dictionary and was the editor of the Newspaper Ha-Zvi, one of the first Hebrew newspapers published in Jerusalem. He was a driving force behind changing Hebrew from a liturgical to a literary language. However, as most of his European contemporaries, Ben-Yehuda ignored the use of Hebrew among Oriental Jews that had existed for many years even before he was born.
Reuven Kashani, a member of the Afghan community, found the manuscript of the chronicle in the Genizah of the Afghan synagogue in Jerusalem Yeshu’a ve-Rahamim. Kashani deciphered the manuscript and published it in 1971.
Image 2: Original cover of Korot Zmanim (“Events of our time”). Photo: Kashani (1971).
In 1895 and in 1898, Mullah Mattatya went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Korot Zmanim entails descriptions of these travels, for example when an epidemic broke out on his way to Jerusalem:
ובימים אלו היה חולי באלכסנדריה של מצרים וסביבותיו ולכן כל ספינה הבאה מאותם המקומות [שבהם היה החולי] אינם מניחים אותם לבא וחוששים שמא יתפשט החולי בר מינן גם במדינות אחרות ולכן מנהגם להוציא כל אנשי הספינה ממקומה אל מקום אחד ביבשה עם ממונם וכל אשר להם ומעמידים אותם בשמש ותחת האור כדי שיסור רוח החולי מהם. יש ספינות שמעכבים אותם ה’ ימים ויש ו’ ימים ויש ט”ו ימים כפי כובד החולי כן גוזרים רבוי הימים ולזה קוראים קראנטינא ולסיבה זו אותם ספינות שלא הלכו במקום החולי שכר הספינה כפלים, לפי שלא יש לו קראנטינא. ואנחנו בחרנו בספינה הזאת ביוקר בלא קראנטין ויום ד’ בשבת ערב ראש חודש תמוז תרנ”ו באה הספינה לכפר א'[אחד] הנקרא שאקיץ והיא רחוקה מאיזמיר כמו ו’ שעות…
ובתחילת ליל ד’ בשבת [רביעי] , ז’ לחודש ניסן [התרס”ח – 8 באפריל 1908] נסעה הספינה [מביירות] וביום ה’ בבוקר היגיע(ה) הספינה ליפו ונכנסנו ליפו בשמחה ואחר ד’ שעות ישבנו למסילת הברזל [=רכבת] ולעת ערב באנו לרחובות [הבוכרים] גבול ירושלים תוב”ב [תיבנה ותיכונן במהרה בימינו] ועגלה [=רכבת] זו דהיינו מסילת הברזל כולנו ישראלים אנשים [=גברים], נשים וטף בשירה ובזמרה ובהגיענו לרחובות [הבוכרים] יצאו ובאו לקראתנו כמה אנשים [=גברים], נשים וטף מיושבי ירושלים תוב”ב וישבנו בעגלה פאיתון [דיליז’נְס[ ובאנו בביתם של האחים מ’ ישראל גול.
Translation:
“In those days there was a disease in Alexandria, Egypt and its surroundings, therefore every ship that came from those places was not allowed to enter due to the fear that the disease will spread to other countries as well. All passengers were transferred to one place on land with their money and everything they have and put in the sun and under the light so that the spirit of the sick will be removed from them.
There are ships that are delayed for 5, 6 and 15 days, according to the severity of the illness and this is called quarantine. For those ships that did not go to the place where the sick are, the fare is doubled, because it does not have a quarantine. We chose this ship at a high price without quarantine on Wednesday, 29 Sivan 5656 [June 10, 1896]. It came to a village called Sakiz, which is about six hours away from Izmir.
At the eve of Wednesday, 7 Nisan 5668 [April 8, 1908] the ship left [Beirut] and on Thursday morning the ship arrived in Jaffa port and we entered Jaffa happily and after 4 hours we set on the railroad [train] and in the evening [we arrived at the train station in Jerusalem]. We sat in a diligent (faytun) wagon and came to the house of the brothers M. Israel Gol at the Rehovot ha-Bukhrim, a quarter near Jerusalem.”
Garji describes the many synagogues and tombs he visited in Jerusalem and is full of praise for the Bukharan Torahs that were “adorned with pomegranates”. He also met with both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic chief rabbis. Written in between his two trips to Jerusalem, the chronicle can be seen as an attempt to establish himself among the communities in Jerusalem, to which he would emigrate a few years later, rather than targeting the audience in Herat.
Another of Mattatya Garji’s books, Ong le-Shabbat, contains three parts: first, “beautiful requirements and precious hints” regarding the Torah and Haftarot. The chapters of the book are arranged according to the order of the Sabbaths of the year. In the second part, The Psalms of David, he added sermons to the book of Psalms, which the members of his congregation knew by heart. The third part is called The Book of the Temple, in which he wrote interpretations and requirements regarding the Talmud. The book ends by praising the study of Kabbalah based on Rabbi Yitzhak Luria (1534-1572).
2.2. Publishing
In Jerusalem, Mullah Mattatya Garji’s books were printed at Raphael Haim Ha-Cohen’s printing press. Ha-Cohen (1884-1955) was one of the first printers in Jerusalem and a community activist. He was born in Shiraz, Iran, was educated by his father and later by private tutors and came to Jerusalem in 1890. There he learned the profession of printing and became one of the founders of the Association of Book Printers. In 1913, he founded a private printing house.
Afghan Jews engaged in publishing were Israel Gol-Shauloff, who published Siman-Tov Melamed’s aforementioned book Hayat al-Ruh, and the brothers Israel, Netanel and Binyamin Gol, who were born in Herat. They were among the founders of the Bukharan Giv’at Shaul neighborhood in North Jerusalem, where new settlers from Bukhara, Mashhad and Afghanistan arrived and they vigorously engaged in the publishing of Judeo-Persian books. They published the first manuscripts of Judeo-Persian writers, initiated translations of sermons and religious stories from Hebrew into Judeo-Persian. The main translator was Mullah Shim’on Hakham from Bukhara.
Image 3: Mullah Israel Gol-Shauloff (Herat 1859 – Jerusalem 1929). Photo: private.
The publisher Yedidia ben Yosef Herati asked Mullah Shim’on Hakham to translate Love of Zion by Avraham Mapu to Judeo-Persian. The book’s imaginative descriptions of the Biblical period inspired the readers to immigrate to the Holy Land and Bukharan Jews named their children Amnon and Tamar after the heroes of the novel. The translator added his own poetry to the book that were not in the Hebrew original. It was very successful among the Judeo-Persian speaking communities and had the status of a holy book. In the conclusion, Shim’on Hakham wrote:
Whoever reads this book of stories once will certainly not smell its fragrance; whoever reads it twice will smell a little of it; whoever reads it three times will understand the truth and will penetrate to the depth of all its words; but whoever has read the book a hundred times, until he remembers its words by heart, will read it a hundred and one times”.
2.3. The next generations
2.3.1 Mullah Yosef Melamed Garji
Mullah Mattatya’s son Yosef Melamed was a successful merchant. On his way to Jerusalem he stayed in Marv, in today’s Turkmenistan, for seven years (1903-1910), where he worked as rabbi, taught Torah and religious laws, educated pupils, and served as ritual slaughterer and circumciser. His son, Mullah Binyamin writes that the Bukharan (i.e. Central Asian) community in Marv begged his father to stay in the city and serve as a chief rabbi and spiritual leader. In the preface to the second edition of Edut bi-Yehosef by Mullah Yosef Melamed Garji, his son Binyamin describes his father’s path as an educator: “As a teacher and as an educator, father loved his pupils very much… how much trouble he invested until the child understood the basics of reading and writing. His hands would hold the hands of the young pupils and he would ennoble his great personality in the minds of the children.”
When Rabbi Nachman Betito (1845-1915), one of the leaders of the North African community in Jerusalem and Chief Rabbi Raphael Meir ben Yehuda Panigel (1804–1893) the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem arrived in Marv to collect donations for the benefit of the many poor people in Jerusalem, Mullah Yosef served as their translator from Hebrew to Persian. After immigrating to the Land of Israel, Mullah Yosef, following in his father’s footsteps, served for 25 years as teacher in the Talmud Torah Bnei Zion in the Bukharan neighborhood in Jerusalem.
In his commentary on the book of Psalms Edut bi-Yehosef, Yosef Melamed Garji also presents autobiographical elements and anecdotes from the community’s history. For example, in the interpretation for “Thy servants take her stones and the dust therefore” (Psalms 102, 14), he explains that it was customary among Afghani Jews to place a bag of dust from the Mount of Olives in the grave under the head of the deceased. In his commentary to “O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple, they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble” (Psalms 79, 1) he recounts the events in Hebron in 1929. In the second edition of this book, he mentions the Jaffa riots of 1936.
Mullah Yosef’s saying “Jerusalem is the world’s synagogue,” suggests an inextricable link between the Torah and Jerusalem. He did not idealize Jerusalem, however, for he added that it also harbors enemies of the soul and enemies of the body. He believed that evil inclinations were stronger in Eretz Israel than in the diaspora, but that the struggle with these inclinations was a virtue, since “the land of Israel is acquired through suffering” and abstinence refines the soul. In accordance to the Torah, Mullah Yosef saw settlement in the Land of Israel as tied to physical suffering, including in regard to the soil: Even when it would not rain for a year, this would cause a softening of the soul and people’s attention would be tuned to redemption. Mullah Yosef outlines an ideological subtext for the “Love for Zion” as an expression for the aspirations of the Afghan Jews. He contrasts the virtues of Jerusalem with the disadvantages of Afghanistan. In chapter 87 of the Psalms, he presents 15 virtues unique to Jerusalem, based on religious-mystical motives that place Jerusalem as the spiritual center of Judaism. He harshly criticizes those among his fellow men who are eager for money and whose hearts are not devoted to the city.
Images 4 and 5: Mullah Yosef Melamed Garji (1869-1936) and his ‘Edut bi-Yehosef, commentary of Psalms(Jerusalem 1926). Picture: private.
2.3.2. Asher, Samuel and Yehezkel Garji
Mullah Asher, son of Mattatiya Garji, was born in Herat in January 1882. He made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his father and helped him publish the Azharot of Siman-Tov Melamed. He married at the age of 17. At the age of 26, after his father immigrated to Jerusalem, he was appointed as head and rabbi of the community and held this position in Herat’s synagogue for 40 years until his immigration to the Land of Israel. Like his ancestors before him, he served as a teacher and educator and spiritual leader, ritual slaughterer, circumciser and a cantor. His rulings in the law of appointees were accepted without appeal.
Aghajan Cohen (1934) studied in the beit midrash of Mullah Asher Garji in Herat. The studies took place in the hall in the courtyard of the Garji Synagogue. The midrashim in Afghanistan taught Hebrew for religious purposes, i.e. observing Jewish mitzvot (commands) and worship. Hebrew was studied by memorizing it. The studies were conducted in a hall where about 200 boys were sitting on carpets in groups of ten. Despite the intense cold there was usually no heating. The boys who showed proficiency were transferred to a more advanced group regardless of age. There they additionally had lessons in Bible interpretation. The teaching method resulted in the Afghan child knowing passages from the Torah and especially the Book of Psalms by heart. Most of the pupils studied until the age of 13. Afterwards they were sent to the trading cities as merchant apprentices. Outstanding pupils of wealthy parents continued to study until the age of eighteen and by then they served as ritual slaughterers, circumcisers and cantors in the trading cities where merchants from the community operated. According to the interviews Benzion Yehoshua conducted with members of the community in Israel, the chief rabbinate in Herat was a privilege of the Garji family.
Cohen (1934) and Gul (1984) describe the school as follows: “When a child reached the age of three, he was brought to the beit midrash. To calm the new child, sweets were distributed. As a virtue for success, the Mullah wrote on a hard-boiled egg verses from the Torah related to learning. The boy ate the egg and hoped to succeed in his studies. After the morning prayer they ate breakfast which included a slice of bread and a cup of tea. After that the studies started. At noon, the municipal cannon fired to announce lunch time and everybody went out. When the shadow moved to a certain line, classes resumed until four o’clock. The pupils went to the synagogue for the evening prayers and then went home. At the end of each stage of the studies, the parents brought a gift for the teacher and sweets to the children of the group” (Cohen 1934).
Aharon Bezalel, who was born in Herat 1926, describes in his book Lehaniyach Beracha (To Leave a Blessing), memories of his family and the Jewish community in Herat and his early years in Jerusalem. He recalls that there were groups that learn the letters of the Alef-Beit (alphabet in Hebrew), others studied the Torah or Tafsir (translation and commentaries in Judeo-Persian). The books of prophets and scriptures we studied in Judeo-Persian only.
Mullah Asher had a variety of punishments: tchub (Pers. wood or stick), to hit the palm of the hand; falak for blows on the feet. The children brought the sticks to carry out the punishments from the thatch covering the sukkah (interview with Naamat, 1974)
Another interviewee recalls that, “after we learned to write letters and words, we learned to write a letter to father [the men often engaged in trade in distant cities]. The letter was in Hebrew starting with: ‘My father, my lord, crown of my head’. Later we switched to Persian in Hebrew script and we would ask father for various requests. All the letters were in the same wording.” (cited in Yehoshua 1992, p. 48).
Advanced pupils were required to read a Hebrew text and simultaneously translate it to Persian. The pupils also knew passages from the Zohar by heart. A boy who read the prayers well became entitled to learn to write and copy the Hebrew Oriental script and eloquent letters in Judeo-Persian.
At a higher level, students learned the Onkelos in Aramaic. A gifted child studied the commentary of Rashiand the Mishnah. When Passover approached, they studied the Song of Songs; for Shavuot the Book of Ruth; for Sukkot, the Book of Ecclesiastes and for Purim, the Book of Esther.
In the absence of Hebrew printing in Afghanistan, a tradition of copying prevailed. From the moment a boy learned to read and write, his masters trained him in calligraphic writing and the tradition of copying poems, from the Torah and from translations. In the midrash, they learned calligraphic copying in a personal, illustrated notebook known as dastak – into which the students copied holy songs, stories of philosophers such Ibn Gavirol’s Azharot (Warnings), sermons, tales and poems in Judeo-Persian and Hebrew. The dastak passed from father to son. Boys would sing these poems them in the midrash, at the synagogue, at public and family events and at home.
For weddings (i.e. during the week of the canopy), the groom was accompanied by groomsmen (sakdush) who sang songs from the dastak in honor of the bride and groom and in honor of the crowd. One of the popular songs is “El Ram Hasin Yah”, which is sung to this day. Some songs were composed by the members of the community and accompanied by musicians, most of whom were Muslims. According to Yehoshua’s interviews, most men carried the dastak from childhood to old age.
Mullah Shmuel, a cousin of Mullah Mattatya, worked as shochet and teacher for young children in the city of Marv. To earn a living, he sold books that he imported from Jerusalem and from Jewish communities in Europe.
Yehezkel, another son of Mattatiya Garji, was born in Herat in 1875. He received his rabbinic education from his father and immigrated to Jerusalem around 1914. Upon his arrival, he published the book Hanukat Zion (Zion’s Chanukah). Besides matters of the law, ethics and liturgical poetry, the book supplements the chronicles Korot Zemanim of his father, including the story of the conquest of the city of Maymana by Na’ib ‘Alam Khan and the ensuing pillaging and killing of over 10.000 people, including thirteen Jews on the 14th of March 1876. Mullah Yehezkel died in Jerusalem in January 1953.
2.3.3. The last generation
Binyamin Garji, son of Mullah Yosef, was born in Herat in 1902 and immigrated to Jerusalem at the age of 11. He taught at the Talmud Torah Bnei Zion for fifty years, where his father and grandfather had taught before him. Besides being a gifted educator, he also served as rabbi for the Afghani, Mashhadi and Bukharan Jews in Jerusalem and accompanied their families through the life cycle from birth to death. Mullah Binyamin was known among the community for his kindness and for being a captivating sermonizer.
Image 6: Mullah Binyamin Garji. Picture: Garji family.
After this overview of some of the most important figures in the realms of education and publication, we now return to Afghanistan and discuss the major transformations of the educational system from the 19th to the early 20th century.
- Attempts to reform Jewish education
In the late 1920s, an educational institution was opened, which broke the monopoly of the Garji family. It was the midrash of Mullah Yehoshua Amram, where in addition to religious studies, children also studied arithmetic, painting as well as music under the guidance of the blind Mullah Yosef Bakhchi who accompanied himself with an Indian harmonium. The establishment of this institution caused conflicts in the community after parents moved their children from Mullah Garji’s to Yehoshua Amram’s classroom.
Image 7: Mullah Yosef Bakhchi with an Indian harmonium. Picture: private.
Image 8: Herat: The midrash of Mullah Yehoshua Amram (seated on the right). Standing on the left: junor teachers (Khalifeh). Picture: Kashani (1975).
Avraham Emmanueli Filosof (1895-1945) described how from the late 1950s Afghan Jews who were prosperous, would send their children to study abroad. With the rise of Amanullah Khan (1892-1960) to power, relations with the Soviet Union became closer, a handful of young Jews went to the Soviet Union for university studies. The Afghan government was ready to establish modern schools for Jews, but the devout among the community opposed this, fearing assimilation, recruitment into the Afghan army and the undermining of the social structure of the community (Kort 1978; Dadash 1976).
Reuven Kashani (1975, p. 64) describes the attempts of the Alliance Israelite Universelle school to introduce French-Jewish education in Afghanistan, but there was strong opposition to this both from the authorities who feared Western intrusion into Afghanistan and from the community. However, a letter Benzion Yehoshua received from Mr. Y. Weil of the Alliance in Paris, said that they were not aware of such an attempt (letter dated 15th December 1976). The initiative might have emanated from the Alliance branch in Iran.
Two interviewees discuss an attempt from the officials of the Afghan Ministry of Education to win the Jews of Herat over for public schools in 1927. Mr. Sarjuki, director of the Ministry of Education, asked to register the Jewish children that were gathered in the synagogue where Mr. Sarjuki had told them about the importance of public education and school books provided by the government. On that day, the pupils were released from their studies and the Rabbis Yaakov Garji and Yaakov Siman-Tov argued with Mr. Sarjuki. The Jewish women demonstrated near the synagogue, dressed in black with a black rope around their necks. Only three parents were willing to enroll their children in the state school. A commotion arose and the crowd attacked the three, who were seen as damaging the solidarity of the community (Naamat, 1974; Kort, 1987).
Due to the reaction of the community, the Afghan Ministry of Education left, understanding that the Jews were not yet ready to send their children to state school.
A second attempt to impose secular state education on Jewish children was made in early 1936. The newspaper Davar (March 20, 1936) reported from a special informant that the authorities were trying to persuade the Jews in Kabul to send their children to government schools, where they would learn the native and foreign languages as well as various subjects. This time, too, the Jews repeated their protest and announced a public fast, in order to pass the evil decree. It seems that as a result of pressure exerted by European Jewish organizations on the Afghan government, the latter stopped pressuring the Jews in this matter.
At the eve of the establishment of the state of Israel, there were approximately 4,000 Jews in Afghanistan and more than a thousand members of the community lived in the Land of Israel. In the 1970s and until the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (December 27, 1979) Jewish children in Kabul attended a non-Jewish state school, where studies were conducted in French.
3.1. Naftali Abrahamoff
Abrahamoff was born in 1905 in Herat. As a child, his family immigrated to Marv (now Turkmenistan) after which they immigrated to Palestine in 1913. Naftali was educated in Jerusalem and qualified as a teacher at the David Yelin Seminary.
Abrahamoff kept a diary, which was published in a series of articles in the newspaper Ha Yarden. Yehoshua received the original diary from Liora Bernstein, Abrahamoff’s daughter, and published it with notes and an introduction (Yehoshua 2013, p. 238-270). The diary is an important document of an eyewitness in which Abrahamoff describes not only important events, but also customs, traditions, daily life, beliefs and Jewish-Muslim relations. Due to Abrahamoff’s criticism of the British, they forbade the publication of his diary, after which he stopped writing.
As part of the reforms of King Amanullah Khan, Naftali Abrahamoff arrived in Afghanistan in 1928. Amanullah Khan had invited teachers around the world to come to Afghanistan to promote the level of education and Abrahamoff was destined to change Jewish education. Despite the relatively short time he was in Afghanistan, his influence was great. He taught the children of the community from 1928-1930, for the first time with textbooks in modern Hebrew, after which the Jewish Agency continued to supply the communities with them until the last days of active Jewish communities in that country. According to his pupils in Herat, he succeeded in changing the idea of “Jerusalem”, by which Afghan Jews referred to the Holy Land, as a heavenly place to a wasteland that awaited Jewish pioneers to build on it. In addition to modern Hebrew, Abrahamoff taught Jewish children in Afghanistan Zionism and national songs of Eretz Israel.
Abba Na’amat speaks admiringly of the teacher Abrahamoff who introduced the slogan: “We are Hebrew, we will speak Hebrew and we will learn Hebrew” (interview, 1975). They studied religious studies, prayers in the poetic style of the Sephardim in Jerusalem, and additionally to Hebrew as a spoken language, learned arithmetic, English and songs like the Hatikvah, which would become the national anthem of the state of Israel. They had exercise classes and breaks between classes, which was a novelty in Afghanistan. His innovations upset many parents.
Image 9: Naftali Abrahamoff (1905-1968). Photo: Liora Bernstein-Abrahamoff.
Although Abrahamoff received the backing of the governor of Herat to take over the entire Jewish education, he preferred to leave the decision with the parents. Abrahamoff aroused the anger of the Jewish Mullahs of the community who saw the young man with his bare head and clean-shaven beard as harming their livelihood, corrupting the youth, desecrating the Sabbath and harming traditional education patterns. The community was divided in two camps: the “conservatives” continued to send their children to the old midrash while the progressives sent their children to the new school.
In his diary, Abrahamoff describes his first meeting with the community:
“The rabbi’s wife thinks I am a goy and is bothering me. She explained to me: ‘Today is the holiday. The rabbi is in the synagogue and it is impossible to see him.’ I was barely able to explain to her that I was Jewish and that I had come to spend the holiday in their place. The rabbi understood the matter and immediately led me to the synagogue with great joy. After a long prayer I went with the rabbi to his house, inside a large and beautiful sukkah decorated with carpets and pictures from the Holy Land. As is the local custom, we sat on the carpets opened with Kiddush. Thesukkahwas full of people who had come to visit the rabbi on the holiday. From the long journey [35 days] I had become extremely weak. I felt exhausted and sick, and the large and strange crowd that was suddenly received in the rabbi’s house asked me endless questions all at once. They annoyed me to death. I was therefore happy to accept the offer of the kalontar and I went with him to his spacious and good home.”
Abrahamoff pledged to work in Afghanistan for five years, but during the revolution against Shah Amanullah Khan in 1930, where he, according to his daughter Liora, started teaching in institutions of the Alliance school in Iran and later started a travel agency.
4. Girls’ education
There were hardly male members in the community who could not read and write. Jewish women however, who were exempt from prayers and most of the duties of religious worship, usually were not taught to read and write Hebrew. King Amanullah did not impose his attempt to reform the status of women on Jewish society. The Jews of Afghanistan adhered by the Talmudic rule: “Whoever teaches his daughter Torah, it is as if he taught her vanity” (Babylonian Talmud, Sota, p. 1 of the Mishnah). An educational institution for girls did not exist and only a few fathers taught their daughters to read and write. Daughters were educated by the grandmother and mother to fulfill their duty as Jewish women and mothers. They were taught marriage laws, purity laws and kosher laws along with managing a household. Upon receiving her first period, a girl was usually married. From the moment of the marriage ceremony she was under the control of her mother-in-law and her husband. The situation of Jewish girls was the same as that of Muslim girls. However, this does not mean that girls or women were not familiar with cultural and religious texts. The transmission rather took place orally, for example when the father read Shahin’s Torahat the Shabbat table. There were also a few Khalifeh who brought their little daughters with them to school from ages 3-11.
In the mid-1950s, about four years after the great emigration, only about 200 Jews remained in Herat. The midrash, which until the mass emigration was intended for boys only, was also opened for girls. According to interviews with Zilpa Cohen and her sister Dina, their father was impressed by the status of women in Russia, sent them to the midrash under the leadership of Khalifeh Binyamin Gol, after which most families sent their daughters to this school.
After most of community had left Afghanistan, among the few that remained were Binyamin Gul and Simcha Garji. Acccording to Dadash (1976), the teaching method remained the same and in the absence of many teachers, the parents hired Muslim teachers to teach the children Dari and Pashto. The vast majority of Jews in Herat left with the Russian invasion in 1979; some immigrated to Israel and others moved to Kabul.
Conclusion
Hebrew accompanied the Jews in Afghanistan in many areas of life. Until the early 20th century, it served as a sacred language for liturgical purposes. Parallel to the development of political Zionist thought and activity, Afghanistan underwent a process of modernization, brought about through a reform of the educational system. While the Jewish authorities of Afghanistan were initially opposed to both public schools and the innovations teachers from Jerusalem introduced among them, the latter eventually were successful in replacing the traditional schools with modern curricula that included secular studies and Zionist thought. In Herat, Naftali Abrahamoff, not only introduced and established modern Hebrew, but also changed the idea of Zion from a sacred concept to a national one. Hebrew acquired a new meaning as the connecting thread between the “diaspora” and the “homeland” of the Jewish people as the language of communication between these different Jewish communities. The Garjis were among the first Jews in Afghanistan to switch from its use as a liturgical language to a mundane one. As an elite, this development was prompted by their objective to expand their leadership and authority from Afghanistan to Jerusalem. After visiting the Holy Land, the patriarch of the family, Mattatya Garji, according to his travelogue, was fascinated by the first groups of Persian speaking Jewish immigrants, mainly from Bukhara, that were constituted primarily by wealthy families. They had bought land and established an upper-scale neighborhood with their own synagogues and books. From Garji’s writings we can gather that the attraction to Jerusalem went beyond the Persian speaking community: he also met with Sephardic and Ashkenazi authorities and sought out their religious writings. Yet, this new orientation did not entail that the ties to Afghanistan and other places in Central Asia, where the Garjis were active, were severed. While they worked as teachers in Jerusalem, at the same time family members continued to fulfill this, and other tasks of communal leadership, in Herat and Marv. Due to the expansion of the railway, from the mid-19th century, Merv (today Mary, Turkmenistan) was a burgeoning town for trade between Iran, Central Asia and Afghanistan, where Jews from these regions came together (Sadjed 2023). Neither the migration to Jerusalem, nor the religious authority claimed for localities in Central Asia were thus static or unilinear. Tsarist and later Soviet border policies, and a few decades later nationalist economic policies in Afghanistan, made livelihood for Jews across these places impossible or at least burdensome, causing Jewish communities to orient themselves towards other places. In the processes of re-orientation, Hebrew was a significant marker that changed from a sacred language to one embodying national belonging.
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Persian Jews 