No anti-Semitism in Jew’s death, Uzbekistan says

The death of a prominent member of Tashkent’s Jewish community last week was strictly accidental and it was “dangerous” to suggest that it was motivated by anti-Semitism, religious authorities said.

“Any attempt to give this tragic accident a political slant is dangerous,” Shoazim Minovarov, chairman of the Uzbek government’s religious affairs committee, told reporters.

His comments came after Avraham Hakohen Yagudayev, 33, died Saturday in hospital of injuries sustained after apparently being hit by a car whose driver fled the scene.


Yagudayev’s death raised alarm among Jews in Uzbekistan and prompted a number of media outlets, including an Israeli daily newspaper, to speculate that anti-Semitism had been a factor.

The chief rabbi for Central Asia, Abe David Gurevitch, supported Minovarov’s assertion and appealed to media not to fan religious tensions in Uzbekistan in reporting on the case.

“In this situation, we ask the media to play a positive role and help us, but not to escalate the situation,” said Gurevitch, who is also a
representative of the World Wide Lubavitch Movement in Uzbekistan.

Gurevitch said that for the past decade he had been one of around 20,000 Jews living in Uzbekistan and the closest thing to anti-Semitism he had experienced in the former Soviet republic was “people looking at my Jewish clothes with curiosity only.”

Gurevitch confirmed that Yagudayev was not a rabbi as had been claimed in several media reports on his death.

Authorities said a criminal case was opened into Yagudayev’s death and an investigation was under way.