For 25 years, Itzhak Yehoshua has been the spiritual face of
Bukharian Jewry, fêted by politicians and foreign dignitaries as the
Bukharian chief rabbi. Yehoshua continues to receive greetings and awards from elected
officials. But among Bukharians today, in their diaspora capital of
Queens in New York City, he is better known as an embarrassment — a
great man felled by allegations of lax conversion and kashrut standards,
bribery and forgery, and of making false claims in the name of Shlomo
Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel.
Rabbi Itzhak Yehoshua in his Queens sukkah, 2012
The Forward reports:
For 25 years, Itzhak Yehoshua has been the spiritual face of Bukharian Jewry, fêted by politicians and foreign dignitaries as the Bukharian chief rabbi.
Yehoshua continues to receive greetings and awards from elected officials. But among Bukharians today, in their diaspora capital of Queens in New York City, he is better known as an embarrassment — a great man felled by allegations of lax conversion and kashrut standards, bribery and forgery, and of making false claims in the name of Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel.
Last April, the community’s Bet Efraim Central Synagogue informed Yehoshua his contract would not be renewed and he was subsequently ousted from the Bukharian Jewish Congress.
A ruling by five Ashkenazi rabbis of the Queens Beit Din, or rabbinical court, a few months earlier found that Yehoshua had violated laws related to conversions. This July, the same beit din issued a second ruling, distributed among the Bukharian community in a 12-page booklet printed in English and in Russian, cataloging the “tremendous lies and fabrications” Yehoshua is alleged to have committed in what the rabbis portrayed as an elaborate and “cunning” attempt to clear his name.The second ruling, which took up six pages in the July 27 edition of The Bukharian Times, a community newspaper, included allegations that Yehoshua’s accomplices forged a letter from leading Bukharian rabbis to discredit the Queens Beit Din. The beit din also said that Yehoshua falsely claimed the support of Amar, and to prove it, the beit din printed an excerpt of a letter from Amar, calling Yehoshua’s actions “extremely unfortunate.”
The beit din rabbis concluded by warning that if Yehoshua does not cease practicing as a rabbi in Queens, it will “pronounce an official cherem,” excommunicating him from the very community that he helped build.…
Yehoshua trained Bukharian popular singers to become hazanim, cantors, and he trained Bukharian butchers to become shochtim, ritual slaughterers. But neither group may have measured up to the strict American Orthodox-haredi norms, Yehoshua says, but they have “sincerity” and a “certain fear of God.”
“These were the seeds of a future political power struggle which we are facing today,” he told the Forward.
Yehoshua says the attacks on him are from rabbis who want the Bukharian community to become haredi in outlook, and who want the community's kashrut and conversions to be, in essence, haredi.
Yehoshua is wholeheartedly supported by former Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi former Sephardic chief rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron – who is not haredi:
…After I heard all of the opinions, from the right and from the left, regarding the honorary rabbi Itzhak Yehoshua Shlit”a I declare with urgency and firmness that the majority of all of the rabbis against him, or even said any bad about him has a personal agenda against him. The few rabbis who are thinking Leshem Shamayim believe that there are a few things to fix.Nonetheless, there is no validity to the Ashkenazi Bet Din’s approach, and there are no facts behind their reasoning whatsoever.…
Here's the Bukharian Times attack on Yehoshua:
Here's the Bukharian Times excerpt as a downloadable PDF document:
Download Bukharian-Times-Extract