Rabbi Itzhak Yehoshua, Chief Rabbi of the Bukharian Jewish community, made his first appearance on Kaykov TV, sitting down last week with host Roman Kaykov for an 80-minute conversation that premiered on November 9. They discussed faith, suffering, marriage, parenting and happiness. Kaykov said the rabbi was meant to be his very first guest when he started this series three years ago, but he waited until he felt confident enough as an interviewer to do the conversation justice.
Rabbi Yehoshua’s family fled Samarkand in 1933 and settled in Tel Aviv, where he grew up in a rabbinical home. When he came to America 40 years ago, he set out to build a Bukharian community in Queens. “I believe we are now the largest Sephardic community in the United States,” he said, “and I think the future is only going to be even better.”
KINDNESS: THE ESSENCE OF JUDAISM
Asked about the greatest gift Judaism offers, he pointed to Hillel’s famous summary of the Torah: what hurts you, do not do to your neighbor. “Being kind is not just an addition to keeping the rituals,” he said. “It is the essence. The rituals come later. You have to be good and make people around you feel good.”
THE ILLUSION OF PERMANENCE
When Kaykov asked, “It’s easy to believe when things are going well, but how do you maintain faith when life doesn’t make sense?” the rabbi said he was “very impressed” with the question. He turned to the story of Abraham, who was given a son in old age and later commanded to sacrifice him. Abraham rose early and set out without argument. The lesson, Yehoshua explained, is that our sense of permanence is an illusion. We cannot understand everything, and nothing we have is ours forever. “Everything that I have is a gift,” he said. “God gave us this life as a gift.”
He also questioned how quickly people label events “good” or “bad.” He told the story of a group of boys who survived the Holocaust and were given chocolate by a German soldier. One boy’s bar was snatched away, and he wept. The next day the other boys fell gravely ill, because the chocolate had been poisoned. “God, thank you for not giving it to me,” the boy said.
MARRIAGE: “MEDICATION FOR SELF-CENTERED PEOPLE”
On marriage, he called married life “the medication for… self-centered people.” The biggest challenge today is the attitude of “I deserve this.” “Married life is not a honeymoon,” he said. “Married life is the real thing, where you learn to share, that you don’t make a decision alone, you have to walk together.” He also warned that “love, control and obsession are the same behavior, but from different sources.”
He also recalled the night the White House called and invited him to meet the president at JFK aboard Air Force One, where leaders were asked for their views on Israel. But his most important day, he said, was when someone came to his office for help and he was able to help them, with “no titles, no pictures.”
The full conversation is available on Kaykov TV’s YouTube channel and as a podcast. It is wide-ranging and warm, and well worth the listen.
Credit: KAYKOV MEDIA
By Erin Levi
The Bukharian Times English Editor