For Bukharians, A Split In The Family

Mazoltuv Borukhova, left, was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of her husband, Daniel Malakov, shown with the estranged couple’s daughter, Michelle.

Mazoltuv Borukhova, left, was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of her husband, Daniel Malakov, shown with the estranged couple’s daughter, Michelle.

by Walter Ruby
Special To The Jewish Week

The scene last weekend at the Second Annual Bukharian Jewish Community Legislative Breakfast was indicative of a community that has — in a staggeringly short period of time — come of age. It was held in the lavish reception hall of the Bukharian Jewish Community Center in the heart of Forest Hills, home to some 50,000 Jews who moved en masse less than 20 years ago from the storied ancient cities of Samarkand, Tashkent and Bukhara in Uzbekistan to the more prosaic Queens neighborhoods of Forest Hills, Kew Gardens and Rego Park.

Seated at a long dais beneath gold-trimmed mahogany carvings with biblical themes were the top leaders of the Bukharian Jewish community. They were beaming and holding up plaques as they received the plaudits

of a procession of local political figures, including State Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall.

Yet despite the palpable sense conveyed at the breakfast of a community that is prosperous and self-assured, a dark cloud hovered over the event.

Only five days earlier, a 35-year-old Bukharian doctor, Mazoltuv Borukhova, and her cousin, Mikhail Mallayev, 51, were found guilty in a Queens courtroom of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the 2007 death of Borukhova’s estranged husband, 34-year-old orthodontist Daniel Malakov. While pushing forward with long-planned initiatives like the legislative breakfast, Bukharian community leaders made clear in their comments that they remain shell-shocked by the conviction of a Bukharian woman for the murder of her own husband.

And the community as a whole is now engaged in serious soul searching, about the larger implications of a shattering event that has ripped a hole in the heart of the community and exposed deep fault lines between traditionalists and modernists.

“We are ashamed of what happened and simply don’t know what to make of it,” said Rabbi Shlomo Nisanov, the spiritual leader of Kehilat Sephardim of Ahavat Achim and former president of the Vaad Harabanim of Queens. “You can’t blame the actions of one person on the community as a whole, but the fact that one of us could go to such depths shows that there has been a breakdown in our value system.”

The willingness of Bukharian rabbis and communal leaders to publicly grapple with the meaning of the Borukhova case is in sharp contrast with the tight-lipped demeanor some of the same Bukharian leaders have exhibited in the past about anything that might reflect poorly on their community. Yet while Bukharian leaders agreed that the Borukhova case is symptomatic of very real tensions in their community, especially between husbands and wives, opinion is split about the causes of the problem and how to address it.

Traditionalists, who include the community’s top rabbinic and organizational leaders, contend that exposure to American concepts of sexual equality — and a legal system in which divorce courts tend to favor female claimants over males — has led some unscrupulous Bukharian women to try to fleece their ex-husbands by making exaggerated or false charges against them, including physical abuse and even pedophilia.

These leaders would like to see a return to conditions under which the community lived in Uzbekistan before emigrating to New York and to Israel en masse after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It was a time and place where husbands were unquestioned masters of their households and community members usually took inter-family disputes to their rabbis for arbitration and resolution, while shunning the secular courts of the Soviet state.

Yet other community members dispute the widespread inclination to blame women for the community’s malaise. Some argue instead that what they characterize as a backward-looking community leadership is woefully out of touch with the sometimes-harsh realities of the fast-paced American society in which their children and grandchildren are growing up.

Malakov, an orthodontist was shot dead on Oct. 28, 2007 at a Forest Hills playground a block from the medical office he shared with his brother Gavriel, a physical therapist. Malakov had gone to the playground to deliver his daughter to his ex-wife for a supervised visit less than a month after a Queens judge had switched temporary custody of the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, Michelle, from Borukhova, an internist, to Malakov.

Witnesses to the crime testified that Malakov was shot twice at close range in front of his estranged wife and child by a bearded man later identified as Mallayev, a resident of Atlanta whose fingerprints were found on a silencer discarded near the scene of the crime. The two defendants, who face 20 years to life in prison, are to be sentenced next month.

The trial was attended by members of both the Malakov and Borukhova extended families, who frequently shouted insults at each other during the proceedings. Sentiment among Bukharians interviewed along the busy commercial strip of 108th Street was heavily in favor of the Malakov side, with some saying that they routinely shun members of the Borukhova clan when they pass them on the street.

Stephen Scaring, Borukhova’s lawyer, said that the case against his client had been tainted by “hysteria and hostility” against his client.

Interviews with community leaders carried out after Borukhova and Mallayev were found guilty, showed an almost universal sense of bewilderment in this deeply traditional and religiously devout population that any Bukharian woman, let alone a highly educated and successful young doctor who also purported to be a deeply observant Jew, could have plotted the murder of her own estranged husband.

Rabbi Nisanov said, “In the old country this simply couldn’t have taken place because it would have reflected so terribly on the [extended] family that they would have prevented it. But here in America, the families publicly fight with each other in court. There is a total lack of restraint.”

Boris Kandov, president of the Bukharian Jewish Congress of the U.S.A and Canada, the top lay leader in the Bukharian community, remarked, “The entire community is shocked and deeply upset. As far as we are aware, there has never before been a case of a wife killing her husband in the entire history of Bukharian Jews.”

Seated on the dais at the reception hall after the visiting dignitaries left, Kandov, an amiable 60-year-old, who is co-owner of a Queens-based limousine company, remarked sadly, “In the old days before our emigration, family issues, including questions of divorce, were decided quietly within the community. Yet here in America, some of our women have learned how to manipulate the legal system for personal gain. Some want independence and others see the chance for big money. We are very grateful to America for giving us freedom, but some of us clearly haven’t understood the proper meaning of that freedom.”

The community’s chief rabbi, Yitzhak Yehoshua, a friendly and approachable figure with a long gray beard, who was clad in a caftan and traditional Bukharian gold embroidered robe, explained, “Several of our community’s rabbis, including myself, tried to mediate between [Borukhova and Malakov]. But like other young people in our community who have become Americanized and successful, they preferred to hire lawyers and go through the court system.

“Unfortunately,” Rabbi Yehoshua continued, “too many in our community have turned to the American legal system, forgetting that the best way to solve family disputes is through mediation within the community, rather than hiring fancy outside lawyers. The belief in America that everyone should have access to full human rights has led women to grasp the tools that the system offers, but not in the right way.”

Rafael Nektalov, the editor of the Bukharian Times, the community’s Russian-language weekly newspaper, said, “Nowadays, wives in our community are capable of making the most horrific charges against their husbands.”

Noting that Borukhova charged Malakov with beating her and with sexually molesting their then-toddler daughter Michelle — charges that caused him twice to be briefly taken into police custody but which were eventually dismissed as without merit by courts in Queens — Nektalov said, “Unfortunately, this is not the only one case where such charges have been made. A close friend of mine was charged three times by his second wife with physical abuse and each time was taken into custody by police. Eventually he was proven to be innocent of all the charges and divorced the woman, but he suffered greatly in the process.”

Noting that articles in The Jewish Week and New York Times in the early 2000’s highlighted alleged cases of domestic violence in the Bukharian community, Nektalov said, “The American press wants to protect our women against so-called abuse, and some women have taken advantage of that. It is wrong that the women should automatically be believed over men.”

However, Lana Levitin, founder of the World of Women Immigrants, a service organization that counsels Bukharians on legal issues and provides food packages to poor community members, strongly disagrees with the premise that Bukharian women intentionally take advantage of the American legal system in order to extort money from estranged husbands.

“Bukharian women are too caring to risk harming their children just to get back at their husbands,” Levitin said. “The Borukhova case is horrible, but is in no way a reflection on Bukharian women.”

As for the idea favored by community leaders of abandoning the secular court system and returning to the old model of having rabbis mediate between feuding couples, Levitina said emphatically, “Look, this isn’t the 17th century any more. In America, our women are no longer automatically obedient to their husbands. Instead many of them are increasingly educated and fluent in English and full partners in their marriages.”

Boris Pincus, a former Queens resident who serves as Republican District Leader of Assembly District 45 in Brooklyn, has long been known as a gadfly within the Bukharian community who is biting in his criticism of the communal leadership.

“The Malakov murder is a great tragedy, but there are many smaller, less-known, tragedies that are destroying the community,” Pincus said. “Many of our young people are into drugs and quite a few are in jail. To deal with these kinds of problems, we should be turning to the mainstream American Jewish community for help in providing social services and taking advantage of the expertise American-born Jews have built up over many decades.

“Yet our community remains largely isolated from the mainstream Jewish community and mainstream society, and our unelected community leadership does everything to keep it that way,” Pincus continued. “They live in America, but act as though we were still in Central Asia.”

He added, “A well-functioning community is one in which people are united in caring for each other. But among Bukharians today, no one cares. Our leaders like to boast that 300 people attended this wedding or 1,000 attended that funeral. But a community should be about helping single moms or teens in trouble or helping out-of-work people to find jobs. Our community is simply not providing those services.”

Asked about Pincus’ comments, Rabbi Yehoshua responded, “How can anyone say we are isolated from society when so many prominent politicians came to our legislative breakfast? In fact, we are working ever more closely with Jewish organizations like UJA-Federation and the Jewish Community Relations Council.”

The rabbi continued, “We are a young community in America that is going through a difficult process of adaptation. We have problems, as this terrible case shows, but despite all of that, we are on an upward trajectory; getting better adapted to the Jewish community and American society while striving to maintain our own culture and traditions.”

Signup for our weekly email newsletter here.

Check out the Jewish Week's Facebook page and become a fan! And follow the Jewish Week on Twitter: start here.