page_title: Bukharan Jews
section_title: Rabbi Yosef Maimon
hierarchical_section_title: Bukharan Jews / History / 16th to 18th centuries / Rabbi Yosef Maimon
caption_attribution_description: English: Jewish Children with their Teacher in Samarkand. Early color photograph from Russia, created by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii as part of his work to document the Russian Empire from 1909 to 1915. Français&#160;: Enfants juifs avec leur professeur à Samarkand.
context_page_description: Bukharan Jews, also Bukharian Jews or Bukhari Jews, are a Jewish ethno-religious group of Central Asia which historically spoke Bukhori, a Tajik dialect of the Persian language. Their name comes from the former Central Asian Emirate of Bukhara, which once had a sizable Jewish community. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the great majority have immigrated to Israel or to the United States, while others have immigrated to Europe or Australia.
context_section_description: In 1793, Rabbi Yosef Maimon, a Sephardic Jew from Tetuan, Morocco and prominent kabbalist in Safed, 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 former First Lady of Iceland Dorrit Moussaieff.
caption: Jewish students with their teacher in Samarkand, c. 1910
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