Astoria Hosts Its First Bukharian Ikat Arts Festival on Sunday, With Robes, Pastries and a Museum Talk

Ashreynu, a Jewish community in Astoria, Queens, will host what organizers call the first-ever Bukharian Ikat Arts Festival on Sunday, Nov. 1, at its space at 31-21 31st Street. The festival runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to the event’s ticket listing, and is hosted by Ashreynu together with Yesodot.

Organizers describe the day as a chance to “discover, taste, try, and explore the creativity of Bukharian culture,” built around ikat, the patterned textile tradition that Bukharian Jews brought with them from Central Asia. The event listing calls Queens “home to one of the largest Bukharian communities in the world.”

The program

According to Ashreynu’s festival page and the Long Island City Partnership events calendar, the program has four parts:

• A pop-up exhibit and talk with Aron Aronov of the Bukharian Museum.
• Savory and sweet Bukharian pastry samples from Mama Lizachka, also listed as Mama Liza, with take-home jars, according to the partnership’s listing.
• Ikat-inspired art workshops led by Studio Shoshan.
• A private collection of Bukharian jomas, the traditional long robes, on display.

Tickets are sold through the Ticket Tailor link on Ashreynu’s festival page. The festival is funded by a UJA-Federation of New York Mesora Bridges grant, which the organizers say brings together Bukharian and other Jewish communities in Queens, with additional funding from the Queens Jewish Community Council and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. The nearest subway stop is 30th Avenue on the N and W lines, New York City Wave reported.

What ikat is

Ikat is a resist-dye technique in which threads are patterned by repeated binding and dyeing before they are woven, according to the Jewish Museum in New York, which held the exhibition “Ikat: Splendid Silks of Central Asia” in 1999. The word comes from a Malay-Indonesian term meaning to tie or to bind. In Central Asia the cloth is also called abr, or “cloud,” a name the museum says is believed to refer to the blurred edges of the patterns, which resemble clouds reflected in still water.

The museum says ikat reached its height in Central Asia in the 19th century, in Bukhara, Samarkand and the towns of the Ferghana Valley, and that making it was a cooperative process involving several communities. Uzbek and Irani artisans were predominantly weavers, Tajiks specialized in hot dyeing with red and yellow, and Jews did the cold dyeing, primarily with indigo, and also controlled the indigo trade with India, according to the museum. It notes that both Muslims and Jews used the textiles at festivals, weddings and funerals, and that ikat was made into clothing and used to decorate homes.

The museum behind the talk

Aronov founded the Bukharian Jewish Museum in Rego Park, Queens. A March 2025 report by the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, whose researchers visited the museum, said Aronov was born in 1938 and emigrated from Tashkent to New York in the early 1990s, and that he trained as an interpreter. The institute reported that the collection covers traditional clothing and textiles, household items, handwritten and printed books, marriage certificates and family photographs, gathered from Bukharian, Mashhadi and Afghan Jewish immigrants in the United States and on Aronov’s annual trips to Central Asia. Visits are by appointment, and Aronov, usually with his daughter Alla, guides visitors personally, the report said. Bukharian Jewish Post has previously reported on the museum and on walking tours of Bukharian Queens.

The hosts

Ashreynu describes itself on its website as “a creative Jewish community in Astoria” that combines a synagogue, a kehilah and an arts and culture studio, with musical Shabbat morning prayer and learning programs. The festival page lists the address as 31-21 31st St., Astoria. The festival is listed on Ashreynu’s site alongside its regular culture and learning programs.

Sources: Ashreynu, Bukharian Ikat Arts Festival page; Ticket Tailor, Bukharian Ikat Arts Festival listing (11 a.m.–3 p.m.); Long Island City Partnership events calendar; New York City Wave, Oct. 26, 2026; The Jewish Museum, “Ikat: Splendid Silks of Central Asia”; Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, “The Bukharan Jewish Museum in Queens,” March 7, 2025; Bukharian Jewish Post, Bukharian Jewish Museum report.