Two of the major cities in Uzbekistan are Bukhara and Samarkand. This is a song about a trans-city wedding.
"Anybody doesnt like these pitchers dont like potry, see?
Anybody dont like potry go home see Television shots of
big hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses."
-Jack Kerouac (into to The Americans by Robert Frank)
Anybody dont like potry go home see Television shots of
big hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses."
-Jack Kerouac (into to The Americans by Robert Frank)
January 25, 2012
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
January 25, 2012
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
The sound of a tradition Bukharian wedding song.
January 25, 2012
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Sunrise Video offers movies, books and other cultural objects for Bukharian Jews that are helping the community acknowledge their heritage.
January 25, 2012
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Before Rubinov moved from Uzbekistan when he was 13-years-old he did not know he was a Bukharian Jew.
January 25, 2012
A Bukharian Jew finds his identity in Queens
Bukharan Jews (before 1899). Creative Commons image.
Rego Park and Forest Hills in Queens holds the largest population of Bukharian Jews in the United States. Approximately 50,000 of the 116,000 residents are Bukharian, a distinct ethnic population from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan who left in mass exodus after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
After centuries of religious and financial oppression under Soviet rule in a Muslim country, Bukharian Jews are able to acknowledge their culture and heritage in New York. In Rego Park and Forest Hills, a significant number of restaurants, retail and grocery stores serve the Bukharian population.
Michael Robert Rubinov is the owner of Sunrise Video on Queens Blvd and 64th Ave. Along with offering movies in Russian (primary language of Bukharian Jews along with the Bukharian dialect), the store also carries books, ceramic objects, textiles, and religious items that were imported from Uzbekistan or cater to the Bukharian population.
Rubinov said, “It is actually helping the community because honestly to say when I can to the United States, I did not know that I was a Bukharian Jew.”
The following four clips come from an interview with Michael Robert Rubinov at his store.
January 17, 2012
A journey down the Silk Road to Rego Park, Queens
Cheburechnaya, located on 63rd Rd in Rego Park, Queens is a restaurant that serves Bukharian Jewish food. It is open Sunday to Thursday from 10am to midnight. Along with a majority of the stores in Rego Park, this restaurant closes on the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
For many New Yorkers, venturing to outer Queens is equivalent to a journey down the Silk Road - long and arduous but filled with myriad cultures, spices and sites to be seen.
Eight to fifteen stops on the train (express or local - camel cart or horseback) from midtown Manhattan lies Rego Park, home to the largest population of Bukharian Jews outside of Isarel. Bukharian Jews are a distinct ethnic group from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, predominantly Muslim countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. After decades of having their religion repressed from both powers, in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell, the majority of Bukharian Jews immigrated to the United States and Israel.
The mass numbers of retail stores, grocery stores, and restaurants in Rego Park that cater to the population dominates Queens Blvd. Visiting these establishments, and especially the restaurants, gives a strong sense of the multifarious influences on the Bukharian culture.
Geographically, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are surrounded by China, Russia, Afghanistan and Iran. Elements of all of these countries and cultures, as well as a sense of Jewishness, are evident in the food.
Cheburechnaya Restaurant on 63rd Dr. in Rego Park, is owned by Tajikistan-born Simon Sionov and is a testament to the history, geography and culture of the Bukharian Jews.
Large parties come to eat at Cheburechnaya on a nightly bases. The customers are primarily Bukharian Jews. The waitresses are from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia. The main language of communication is Russian, but many of them speak the Bukharian dialect that has elements of Tajik, Farsi, Russian, Hebrew, and Uzbek.
Rabbi Israel Steinberg visits the restaurant every week to make sure that the preparation and cooking of the food follows Jewish Kosher law.
The influences in Bukharian food spans religion and geographic location. One can expect to find these type of items on the menu: Islamic kebabs, Chinese dumplings and Russian dough pastries, all spiced with key South Asian flavors.
One of the specialty dishes at the restaurant is the Chebureki - a dough pastry filled with spiced meat or vegetables and fried until crispy.
The production line for the Pelmeni, a boiled bite size dumpling with ground beef that is served in a spiced broth.
Nadia Sionov, the mother of the restaurant owner takes a phone call break while she sits in the kitchen and prepares food. Like many Jewish mothers, Bukharian Jewish mothers like to cook in mass quantity.
Staff meal remains half eaten while the waitresses run the front of the house to serve the many customers. The soup, Lagman, contains a hand-pulled dough noodle and various spices, to be accompanied with a piece of traditional circular bread and pilov, spiced rice.
When mother of the restaurant owner, Nadia Sionov is not preparing food in the back, she occupies a table on the floor to make sure everything is running smoothly.
Decorations at Cheburechnaya consist of Muslim style ceramics, Jewish religious items, Middle Eastern “evil-eye” talismans, and several large screen TVs that blast pop music from the region.
January 16, 2012
Rego Park, Queens - Where I spent most of my time last semester
I am dusting off the cobwebs from my personal blog and sharing some of the work that I did during my first semester at journalism graduate school.
The back story goes like this - for my intensive writing and reporting class, all of the students picked by lottery number a neighborhood within the five boroughs of New York to write stories about. My number was 88 out of 95. I knew I had to pick somewhere obscure.
When I first moved to New York, I was lead on a food adventure by my personal food guru to eat Central Asia Jewish food in the outer reaches of Queens. Consisting of mainly spiced lamb, pickles and hand-pulled noodles, I was quickly hooked. Using this singular culinary criteria, I picked Rego Park, Queens as my beat to write stories about.
January 13, 2012
Stonecutter Journal Issue 2 - Jan. 19th
Stonecutter issue 2 is launching Thursday, January 19th!
Preorder your copies here.
Take a sneak peak of the art that is inside.
August 18, 2011
Newsha Tavakolian: Listen
Notes on Listen, works by Newsha Tavakolian (As seen on the Stonecutter Blog)
Imaging A Dream - Eyes closed, mouths open, as if in a dream. Standing facing us with their backs to the darkness, they sing, soundless. They have been standing here, singing for themselves for a long time, imagining us, hearing. Standing; facing days of tedium, facing a world that has adorned them with a false crown. Standing, waiting.
Abbas Kowsari – Autumn 2010
——-
With deep roots in photojournalism, Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian seamlessly presents a conceptual body of work that reinforces her watchful eye on the theme of women in her society. Her newest portfolio, Listen, is featured in a six-page spread in Issue One of Stonecutter Journal. In her artist statement, Tavakolian alludes to her feelings about living in an Islamic society as she creates images of women who struggle to produce music in Iran.* Upon further discussion with Tavakolian in May of this year, I learned the true depth of her angst, which is illuminated in the complexity of her three-part portfolio.
The first component of Listen consists of exquisitely lit formal portraits of professional women singers. As written in her artist statement, the women in these images are “not allowed to sing solo, perform in public or produce CDs in Iran because of Islamic tenents.” With eyes closed, the women sing to Tavakolian’s camera lens, which she records in the acknowledged silent statement of the medium of photography. The expression on each woman’s face evokes intense sadness, pain, and spirituality, as these women must battle the tension between expressing their passion and adhering to the law.
Reiterating the silenced voices of these women in a medium that connotes audibility, Tavakolian also filmed the women singing and created a six-paneled video installation. The heads fade in and out, the mouths open and close, the backdrop continues to sparkle, but what should be a cacophonous sound of many voices, remains on mute.
The final component of Listen are images of a young girl dressed in black, staged as imaginary CD covers. Tavakolian filled CD cases with the images to create the illusion of a produced CD. Void of actual compact disk, Tavakolian offered the CD case to all who visited her first solo exhibition at Aaran Art Gallery in Tehran, in late 2010. Ultimately, when part of a home music collection, Tavakolian intended the empty case to signify the restrictions, and once again the silence, of women singers as performers in the public sphere. Her choice of the title Listen drives her point home as we strain our ears to hear voices that cannot be heard.
More of Newsha Tavakolian’s work can be viewed at www.newshatavakolian.com.
*Note: Tavakolian’s artist statement for Listen can be found in the “image info” link at the bottom of each photograph in the portfolio.
July 28, 2011
Stonecutter Journal: An amazing literary and art journal that I am working on and think you should check out and purchase.
Although you may be under the impression that this is a food blog due the the succession of posts of that nature, it is actually not. Food and photography, if you will, and it is about time to get back to the photography part.
For a year now, from my satellite location in Oakland, I have been working with a brilliant team of women based in Brooklyn, to produce a literary and art journal. Headed by my friend, Katie Raissian, Stonecutter Journal just made its debut in the world and needs your eyes all over it.
I have been working as the art editor to select the artists and curate their work in the journal. For Issue I, we received amazing contributions from photographer Newsha Tavakolian, collage artist Travis Jackson, and mixed media artist Orion Martin. In my next posts I will highlight each of these artist and show you some of their incredible work that appears in the journal.
Copies of Stonecutter Journal can be purchased on our website or by clicking here to go directly to paypal. We need your support as we are already working on Issue II due out this winter. I look forward to hearing your feedback.
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