Re "After Soviets, Silk Road Nations Look to a More Glorious Past," July 11: While you covered the Muslim community and its resurgence in the article, you overlooked the decimation of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. The Jewish community of Uzbekistan numbered 100,000 in 1980. There were thriving synagogues in Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent as recently as 1990.
My family dates back several hundred years in Uzbekistan. When I visited in 1989, madrasas -- which had been closed for years -- were being reopened by imams sent from Iran. They began teaching an extremist version of Islam and radicalized the local population. By and large, up to that time the Jews and the Muslims got along fairly well.
