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in Azerbaijan) became an object of tough rivalry among the great powers. Russia seems to follow the principle “the stronger always blames the weaker.” According to the official statement of Russian President Medvedev, “We will stand firm in the Caucasus.” The threat is very real, which is confirmed by Russia’s aggression against Georgia and the creation of two vassal states on its territory. The West, in turn, is pursuing its interests in the region under the guise of democratization of the Central Caucasian states. This clash is pushing the legal rights and interests of the local states aside. We all hope, however, that the Central Caucasian states will defend their independence against the encroachments of external forces and ensure sustainable development of the local people and states.
Soltan FARZALIEV
Senior lecturer, Chair of Arabic Philology, Baku State University (Baku, Azerbaijan).
JUDAISM IN THE CAUCASUS: HISTORICAL ESSAY
Abstract
The author looks at one of the least studied pages of Caucasian history— Judaism and its spread in the region. He has covered the main versions of
why the Jews arrived in the Caucasus in the first place and describes the stable and largest communities of Caucasian Jews.
I n t r o d u c t i o n. Judaism and its Main Dogmas
Like elsewhere in the world, in the Caucasus Judaism lives alongside Christianity and Islam. In fact, it is a monotheist religion, like its two Caucasian neighbors. Being born in the same region and sharing much in their theology they have many things in common. The Hebrew Bible (The Old Testament, or Tanach) is the most influential book in human history: the Jews and the Christians alike treat it as their most important religious text. It has much in common with the Koran as well. The Old Testament consists of the Torah (The Teaching), Neveim (The Prophets), and Ketubim (The Writings).
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Together with the Old Testament, the Talmud (the code of religious, ethical, ritual, and legal provisions) forms the cornerstone of Judaism. While over time the former became one of the pillars of Christianity, the Talmud was and is limited to Judaism. As the main text of Judaic practice and theology it includes the Mishnah (interpretation of the Torah), Gemara (interpretation of the Mishnah), and legal (Halacha) and folklore (Aggadah) interpretations of the Biblical texts.
Judaism rests on the following dogmas: faith in Yahweh as the One God; faith in the Messiah, the heavenly redeemer, and the holiness of the Old Testament and the Talmud, as well as the faith that those who obey all the testaments will enjoy eternal bliss in Heaven. Prayers, fasting, and circumcision are very important to the Jews. The same can be said of the numerous Jewish holydays: Passover (Pesah), the Pentecost (Shabouth), the Day of Wrath (Yom Kippur), the Feast of the Dedication (Hanukah), the Feast of Lots (Purim), the New Year (Rosh Hashanah), and others. Saturday (Shabbat) is the day of rest.
The laws of Kashruth ban pork and the meat of perissodactyl animals (horses and donkeys), animals that have no hooves (rabbits and hares), birds of prey, and fish without scales.
The synagogue is the center of Jewish religious and public life; the Menorah (copies of a seven-branched candelabrum used in the Temple in Jerusalem) is the most typical attribute of all synagogues. In Judaism God has no image, which explains the Judaic ban on any representations of God and people. Services include individual and collective prayers, reading of the Torah and singing; Saturday and holyday services include a sermon.
Judaism is commonly accepted as the religion of the Jews, which explains why many historians of Judaism in the Caucasus associate it with the history of Semitic Jews who allegedly came to the Caucasus from ancient Israel.
How Judaism Came to the Caucasus: Versions
There is a wide range of opinions about the ancestry of the Caucasian Mountain Jews who practice Judaism. One of the versions traces their ancestry to the prisoners Assyrians herded out of Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, in 696 B.C. or in 586 B.C. when the First Temple was destroyed. It is believed that later they were moved to the Median Mountains frequently associated with the Caucasus.1
Prince Vakhushti’s History of Georgia2 tells a different story. When Nebuchadrezzar destroyed Jerusalem some of the refugees went to Georgia to ask the viceroy of Mtskheta for a place to settle. They were offered the lands along the Zanav River which, because of the tribute the Jews paid to the king, became known as the Kerk (tribute).
Another version supplied by the same History of Georgia says that the Jews appeared in the Caucasus later (during the period of the Second Temple) at more or less the same time as the emergence of the Jewish diaspora in the Crimea. The Jewish refugees driven out of their homeland when the Second Temple was destroyed allegedly settled there alongside the Jews who had come much earlier.
The first Caucasian Judaists may have been Semitic Jews who came as traders, usurers, merchants, and missionaries. Georgian sources3 in particular speak of the Jews who lived in
1 See: Gorskie evrei: Istoriia, etnografiia, kultura, DAAT/Znanie, Moscow, 1999.
2 See: D. Bakradze, Drevniaia istoriia Gruzii, Tiflis, 1860.
3 See: N. Eliashvili, Istoria gruzinskikh evreev, Tiflis, 1926.
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Mtskheta (the ancient capital of Kartli, Eastern Georgian state) in the first centuries of our era. The same sources describe Jew Eviatar (Abiatar) from Urbnisi and his sister Sidonia (canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church), as well as Jewess Salome who left us the life history of Nina of Cappadocia, the Enlightener of Georgia, as the first Christian missionaries in Georgia of the early 4 th century.
Today there are several equally popular versions of how Judaism came to the Caucasus. It was brought by Judaic communities that had nothing to do with the Semitic Jews who came from Israel. They belonged to peoples of non-Jewish origin who adopted Judaism for various historical reasons.
This puts the theory about the first Mountain Jewish communities in the Caucasus in the lime-light.4 They stand apart from other Jewish communities because they combined Judaism with various ethnic and cultural elements of their Caucasian neighbors.
Historians have offered several hypotheses about their origins; according to one of them5 the first Jewish community in the Caucasus made up of refugees from the southwestern area of Sassa-nian Iran appeared in the 6th century. This obviously rules out the Semitic roots of the Mountain Jews; it postulates instead their ethnic and genetic kinship with the Iranian Tats who embraced Judaism and who were moved to the Caucasus by Sassanian King Chosroes I Anushirva (531-579 A.D.). According to another version,6 the Mountain Jews descended from the Persians who, after moving to the Caucasus, adopted Judaism under the Khazars’ influence. Both versions were probably suggested by the linguistic kinship between the Tat language and the languages of the Mountain Jews.
Those who support the third version7 insist that despite the linguistic evidence the Tats and the Mountain Jews are ethnically unrelated; they were merely driven to the Caucasus at the same time by Chosroes I Anushirva who, in the 6th century, suppressed the movement of the Mazdakids in Iran. Indeed, according to Seder Olam Zutta, a Jewish document of the 9th century, the Jews of Babylonia rebelled together with the Persians. The king treated the Mazdakid leaders cruelly and deported rank-and-file Persians and Jews to the Caucasus (200 thousand people in all).8 This information comes from Mediaeval Arab sources according to which the Chosroes settled the Mazdakid Persians and Jews in many places in the Caucasus. The Caucasian Tats of today descended from the former, the Mountain Jews from the latter. This is confirmed by legends of the Mountain Jews. In his article “Skazanie o khazarskoi dani” (A Tale about the Khazar Tribute), Lev Gumilev wrote: “Those Mazdakids who managed to avoid the Sassanian wrath fled to the Caucasus; a group of Jews who observed Shabbat and circumcision but forgot all the other laws settled in the wide valley between the Sulak and Terek. They lived peacefully alongside the Khazars and took part in their inroads.”9
The Caucasian context of the Tats and the Mountain Jews added Caucasian specifics to their Judaism. It is thought that the Mazdakid Jews belonged to groups whose religious ideas contained elements of demonology of their Semitic- and Persian-speaking neighbors: ideas about Dedei-Ol, Neneh-Ol, Ser-Ov, and others.
Having lived alongside autochthonous Caucasian mountain peoples, the Tats and the Mountain Jews borrowed most of the local religious faiths and traditions; they observed many of the mountain rites, rituals, and holidays. Historians who studied the Mountain Jews of the villages of Majalis,
4 See: Gorskie evrei: Istoriia, etnografiia, kultura.
5 See: I. Berlin, Ocherki po etnografii evreiskogo narodonaseleniia v Rossii, Moscow, 1861.
6 See: Voprosy istorii, No. 11, 1986.
7 See: Gorskie evrei: Istoriia, etnografiia, kultura.
8 See: Iu.A. Solodukho, “Dvizhenie Mazdaka i vosstanie evreiskogo naseleniia,” Vestnik drevnei istorii, No. 3-4, 1940, pp. 131-145.
9 L.N. Gumilev, “Skazanie o khazarskoi dani,” Russkaia literatura, No. 3, 1974, pp. 160-174.
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Yangikent, Tarki, Durgeli, Erpeli, Arage, Zharage, and Bildakhi 100 years ago discovered this fact and pointed out that the rituals associated with the fire deity and the faith of its purifying force, as well as the Shagme vesal (Spring Fire) holiday that marked the beginning of spring, were the most interesting from the point of view of religious syncretism.
The information about the mutual influence of Judaism and the Khazar cults is just as interesting. According to Khazar King Joseph, Jewish scholars were invited to Khazaria to interpret the Torah, Mishnah, and Talmud for the Khazar rulers; the Khazars borrowed many of the Jewish tradi-tions—circumcision and the Shabbat as well as holidays—Sukkoth, Pesah, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Simhath Torah, Hanukah, Purim, and Lag b’Omer. There is information that Khazar Prince Bulan bought Jewish cultic objects and started building a temple.
It should be said that some authors side with the Khazar version of the spread of Judaism in the Caucasus. Our knowledge of the Khazars is very limited yet Arab travelers and Byzantine historians as well as written sources of the Khazars’ neighbors supplied us with bit and pieces about these people.
Many of those who studied the history of the Khazar Kaganate refer to the well-known “Khazar Correspondence” between famous Vizier of the Cordova Caliphs Hasdai ibn-Shaprut (915-970), who encouraged Jewish culture in Spain under Arab rule, with Judaic King of the Khazar Kaganate Joseph. The latter wrote that he descended from the clan of Togarmah, son of Japheth and grandson of Noah (ancient Jewish literature described Togarmah or Togar as the father of all Turks). Togarmah had ten sons; one of them called Khazar is believed to be the forefather of the Khazars. Joseph answered that his people did not descend from the ancient Israelis (as Hasdai believed) but were a Turkic people that had adopted Judaism.10
The earliest information about the Khazars appeared in the 6th century A.D.11 It is believed that the Khazars came to the territory now occupied by the North Caucasian republics of Russia together with Turkic nomads; when the Western Turkic Kaganate (kingdom) fell apart they created a powerful state of their own—the Khazar Kaganate (650-965)—that stretched from the steppes of Eastern Europe to the Volga and Don interfluve. We do not know which language they used. The surviving personal names and toponyms are similar to Turkic dialects and the Chuvash and Mongolian tongues. Most of the inscriptions found in Khazaria belong to the Turkic types of runes.12
The Khazar ethnonym was applied to tribes of various origins and to what remained of the nomads and semi-nomadic, predominantly Turkic, peoples who crossed the South Russian steppes. According to Svetlana Pletneva, Khazaria was “a Khazar-headed federative union of tribes.”13 Lev Gumilev, an expert in the problem, likewise interpreted “Khazars” as a group of tribes and peoples: “As early as the 7th century the term ‘Khazar’ was used in a geographical-political sense; later it was applied to all subjects of the king of the Khazars who belonged to the Khazar tribal union. At different periods it included the Azov and Volga Bulgars, Caucasian and Don Alans, the trans-Volga Guzes, the Magyar-Hungarians, Slavs and Ruses, and many others united under the blanket term of Khazars.”14
It should be said that the Khazar version of the spread of Judaism in the Caucasus is not convincing enough since before the Khazars embraced Judaism in the late 8th century “a large number of Jewish communities that professed Judaism had already been living in Khazar-controlled territory.”15 It seems that the Khazars adopted Judaism under the influence of these communities,
10 See: P.K. Kokovtsev, Evreisko-khazarskaia perepiska v X veke, Leningrad, 1932.
11 See: M.I. Artamonov, Istoria khazar, Leningrad, 1962.
12 See: Ibidem.
13 S.A. Pletneva, Khazary, Nauka Publishers, Moscow, 1976.
14 Kratkaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia, Jerusalem, 1982.
15 [http://www.eleven.co.il].
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which by that time had already spread across the Crimea, Daghestan, and the other North Caucasian republics. This was a long process. According to historical sources it was the Khazar nobility and the king who became Judaists. There is any number of legends about this. The academic community agrees that the Khazars adopted Judaism under the pressure of the political developments around their country.
Most research studies associate the Khazar statehood and the political order of the Khazar Ka-ganate with the period of Turkish domination. There is an opinion that the Khazar nobles needed Judaism to remain independent both from Muslim Persia in the south and Christian Byzantium in the east. Others (Artamonov, Sakhorder, Novoseltsev, Pletneva, and others) believe that Judaism was limited to the nobles; the middle and lower classes professed Islam and Christianity or were pagans (the traditional belief of the Mongol and Turkic nomads). All religions were equal; the country reached a high economic level, it was involved in trade since the major international trade routes crossed Khazaria and brought considerable profits.
For this reason, by the end of the 9th century, the number of Jews in Khazaria swelled with refugees from Byzantium and Persia who had fled persecution. “Many Jews from different Muslim countries and from Rum (Byzantium) moved to join the Khazars because the king of Rum persecuted the Jews in his empire to convert them to Christianity.”16 Al-Masudi, an Arab traveler who visited Khazaria in 854, wrote: “The Khazar capital is settled by Judaists, Muslims, Christians, and pagans”; Arabian historian al-Istakhri wrote in his Book of Countries: “.. Jews are in the minority while Muslims and Christians are in the majority.”17 There were newly converted Judaists from among the Khazars in Khazaria as well as a considerable number of Jews who moved there from the Crimea, Byzantium, and probably other places; their total numerical strength, however, was much lower than that of the followers of other religions. A vast part of the Khazar population—nomadic cattle-breeders or settled land tillers—were pagans. Those Khazars who embraced Judaism did not follow all Judaic rules and customs: the Jews looked at them as friends rather than people of the same faith; at no time were they regarded as kindred people.
When the Khazar Kaganate (968-995) was routed by the concerted efforts of Kievan Rus and Byzantium, the Khazars spread across southern Russia and eventually blended with other peoples. “Those Judaic Khazars that stayed behind in the Crimea gradually mixed with the Jews and Karaites who moved there from Constantinople.”18 The Khazars of the eastern part of their former country adopted Islam and accepted the patronage of Khorezm. Some of the Judaic Khazars might have found refuge in the mountains of the Southern Caucasus among the local Jews, the ancestors of the Mountain Jews of today. The sources contain no reliable information about this; according to the available historical materials, in 965 a large part of the Khazars adopted Islam.19 One can surmise that it was a small group of Judaic Khazars that joined the Jewish communities of the Caucasus without in any way influencing the already existing culture of the Mountain Jews.
Waves of Jewish Migration to the Caucasus
We know about several waves of Jewish migration to the Caucasus, the largest, of Iranian Jews, was organized by Chosroes I Anushirva in 520-530. Georgian sources speak about a mas-
16 T.M. Kalinina, “Al-Masudi o bulgarakh,” in: Mezhdunarodnye sviazi, torgovye puti i goroda Srednego Pov-olzhia IX-X vv. Materialy mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma. Kazan, 8-10 sentiabria 1998 g., Kazan, 1999, pp. 13-20.
17 I.A. Karaulov, “Svedeniia arabskikh geografov IX i X vv. po R.Kh. o Kavkaze, Armenii i Azerbaidzhane,” in: Sbornik materialov dlia izucheniia mestnostei i piemen Kavkaza, Issue 38, Tiflis, 1908, pp. 29-78.
18 S.M. Dubnov, Kratkaia istoriia evreev, Rostov-on-Don, 1997.
19 See: Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, Vols. 9 and 10, Jerusalem, 1976.
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sive resettlement of Byzantine Jews in Western Georgia in the 6th century and of the later migration of 3 thousand Jews from Western to Eastern Georgia. This was probably caused by the fact that Western Georgia was part of Byzantium, the country in which Jews were relentlessly persecuted. In Georgia the Jews preferred to move to the southeast to live under the tolerant power of the Persians.
We have practically no information about other similar waves. We know, however, about two recently late waves dating to the early 16th and the 18th-19th centuries. Adam Olearius, SchleswigHolstein ambassador to Persia, who in 1637 was en route to his country from Persia, mentioned that there were Jews in Derbent.20 Later, in 1670, another traveler Dutch Jan Struys also mentioned the Derbent Jews.21 It seems that this community dated to the first third of the 17th century; the following facts support this conjecture:
(1) there was a legend among the Mountain Jews of Rukel village, 155 km to the south from Derbent, that their Jewish Quarter had been founded by Iranian Jews moved there by Persian Shah Abbas I (1587-1629);
(2) the etymology of the ethnonym Abasava (a settlement of Mountain Jews 4 km to the south of Derbent)—the Abbas settlement—supports this hypothesis, while the earliest monuments found in the same village date to the latter half of the 17th century.
This suggests that Abasava was founded under Shah Abbas I and named after him. Another suggestion is likewise logical: the first settlers of Abasava and of the Jewish Quarter of the village of Rukel were Jews whom Abbas I moved there from Iran. This means that the Jews of Derbent could have appeared there in connection with the Iranian shah’s intention to set up new Iranian colonies in the Caucasus. There is any number of facts in favor of the above. It has been established that Abbas I moved a considerable number of people from Iran to Derbent and the settlements to the south of it (most of the settlers belonged to the Turkic Oguz tribes of Padar and Bayat). The shah intended to boost Derbent’s importance as an ideological and economic center of the Eastern Caucasus; finally, there is information that Abbas I set up a Jewish colony called Farahabad in Eastern Georgia: the Chronicle of Arakel of Tabriz22 said that in 1613 a Jewish military detachment, which had fought with honor in Iran’s war against Georgia, was stationed in this city.
What remained of Abasava can be seen to the south of Derbent in a small gorge which the people of the nearest Tat village of Jalgan call the “Jewish Gorge.” In 1800, during the Pesah, the village was attacked by Khan Surhai II of Kazikumukh; many were killed or taken prisoner while the survivors, on the orders of Khan of Derbent Shihali, were moved to Derbent to be protected in the future by its walls. This was how the Jewish community in Derbent started. Today the Judaists of the RF Republic of Daghestan are represented by a small, mainly elderly, group of faithful Mountain Jews and Tats; there are three synagogues and a Sunday school in the republic. According to I. Cherny, in 1869 there were 1,493 Judaic families of Southern Daghestan and the Terek region, 30 synagogues, and 39 synagogical colleges served by 30 rabbis.23 Today Judaists live mainly in the large cities: Makhachkala, Buinaksk, Derbent, and Khasaviurt; there are centers that offer rituals, make matzoth, and perform burial rites in Dagestan set up to attract the believing Jews to the synagogues; they closely cooperate with the centers of Jewish culture; there are informal religious groups that shoulder some of the functions of official religious structures. The CIS Federation of Jewish Com-
20 See: A. Olearius, Opisanie puteshestviia v Moskoviiu i cherez Moskoviiu v Persiiu i obratno, St. Petersburg,
1906.
21 See: J. Struys, Tri puteshestviia, OGIZ-Sotsegiz, Moscow, 1935; G. Kotoshikhin, P. Gordon, J. Struys, “Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich,” in: Moskoviia i Evropa, Sergei Dubov Fund Press, Moscow, 2000.
22 See: A. Davrizhetsi, Knigi istorii, Main Editorial Board for Eastern Literature, Nauka Publishers, Moscow,
1978.
23 See: I. Cherny, “Gorskie evrei,” in: Sbornik svedenii o kavkazskikh gortsakh, Issue 3, Tiflis, 1870, p. 9.
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munities helps the local Jewish community and the Jewish religious organizations as much as it can. The steadily diminishing number of local Mountain Jews and Tats (many of whom are driven to Israel by the economic crisis, political instability, far from simple national relations, Islamic extremism, fighting in Chechnia, high level of crime, and mounting unemployment) undermines the traditions of Judaism in Daghestan.
The third, and fairly large, migration wave of Iranian Jews to the Eastern Caucasus came from Gilan, an Iranian region that forms the southwestern Caspian coast. For unknown reasons (probably driven away by a military adventure of Iranian military commander Nadir Shah) in the 18th century the Gilan Jews left their homes for the Eastern Caucasian khanates.
The Mountain Jews called the new arrivals the Gileks (people from Gilan); since many of them settled in the Shemakha Khanate (also known as the Shirvan Khanate) the newcomers came to be known as Shirvoni (people from Shirvan). By the early 19th century a large number of them had already been living in the Sheki, Derbent, and other khanates; it was then that they founded the first widely known Jewish community of Baku. Earlier, probably in the mid-18th century, some of the Gilan Jews had already established themselves in the Jewish Quarter (the Red Quarter of our days) of the city of Guba where they founded a quarter now known as Gileki. While the Gilan Jews, who live in the Jewish Quarter alongside Mountain Jews, firmly associate themselves with the Mountain Jewish community, this association is much vaguer among the Shirvani Jews (especially among those who moved to Georgia in the 19th century). It should be added that the dialect of the Shirvani Jews still displays a certain similarity with the other dialects of the Mountain Jews’ language.
This means that the Caucasian Jews, as a very special part of the Jewish world, were the result of several migration waves originating mainly in Iran; the fact that the last two waves date to comparatively recent times is shown by the culture of the Mountain Jews and the list of their names in particular. While lists of any ethnic group contain up to 500 male and about 50 female names, the list of the Mountain Jews contains over 800 male and about 200 female names (information dates to the early 20th century).24 This suggests more than three Jewish migration waves to the Caucasus.
The Jewish Communities in the Caucasus
The Kartlis Tskhovreba chronicle offered the first information about the Jews in Georgia; it associated their appearance with the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.25 The tombstones with ancient Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions on them not far from Mtskheta, the ancient capital of Georgia, dated to the 3rd-4th centuries A.D. are the earliest archaeological evidence of the Jewish presence in Georgia. We know next to nothing about the life of the Georgian Jews in the Middle Ages and precious little about them in the period of Georgia’s independence (1089-1213) under David the Builder.
The Ebraeli Jews are Georgia’s best-known Jewish community; they profess Sephardic Judaism, which was common in the Ottoman Empire and was brought to Georgia late in the 15th century by Sephardim from Spain. Georgian historical writings have described the ethnolinguistic group of Georgian Jews as “GJ” since the 11th century; and the term became habitual in the early 19th century when Georgia became part of the Russian Empire. Czarist decrees allowed the non-Georgian Jews who flocked to Georgia mainly from Russia to settle there. By the early 1830s there were several
24 See: I.Sh. Anisimov, “Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy,” in: Sbornik materialov po etnografii. Dashkovskii et-nograficheskii muzei, Issue 3, Moscow, 1988.
25 See: S.G. Kaukhchishvili, Kartlis Tskhovreba, Tbilisi, 1955; N. Eliashvili, op. cit.
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hundred Russian Ashkenazi Jews. According to the 1897 population census, two thirds (12,540) of the 18,574 Jews who lived in Georgia were Ashkenazim; they were in the majority in the two largest Jewish communities (Tiflis and Batumi); Georgian Jews (Ebraeli) dominated in Kutaisi, the third largest Jewish community. In the Soviet Union the largest group of Georgian Jews outside Georgia was found in Baku. According to the 1959 population census, there were 35,673 Jews in the Soviet Union who claimed Georgian as their native language.26
It should be said that relations between the Ebraeli and Ashkenazim were strained because of different rituals, customs, everyday life, and the absence of a common language. In the 1890s in Tiflis this developed into a crisis: the Georgian Jews refused to accept the Ashkenazi rabbi officially recognized as the chief rabbi of the city.
In the latter half of the 19th century Persian Jews from Meshed came to live in Tiflis where they attended their own synagogue; there were also Subbotniks exiled from Russia to Georgia and Gery Jews in Tiflis with a synagogue of their own.
According to the 1926 population census there were 30,534 Jews in Georgia (20,897 of them being Georgian Jews and 9,637 mainly Ashkenazi Jews). The Persian Jews, who were regarded as foreign subjects, were not counted. The considerably lower number of Ashkenazim among the Georgia’s Jewish population (compared with the 1897 figures) is explained by the considerable Jewish emigrations (mainly to the United Stares) in the first decades of the 20th century, the Georgian Jews essentially not being involved in the process.27 In the 1930s and especially when World War II began, the number of Ashkenazim in Georgia, particularly in large cities, began to grow.
In Soviet times the Ebraeli Jews were considered to be the most religious among all the other Jewish groups; they observed the Judaic rites and rituals even during the years of official suppression of religion in the Soviet Union.
In 1953 all the synagogues in Georgia were closed down in connection with the “Doctors’ Plot”; chief rabbi of Tbilisi Khaim Kupchan was arrested and sentenced (he was later rehabilitated). After a while, however, the Georgian Jews restored all the religious organizations. According to the 1970 census, there were 52,382 Jews in Georgia in the late 1960s and early 1970s; there were 14 official synagogues; the Jews were mainly concentrated in the cities of Kutaisi, Kulashi, Tskhinvali, Gori, Oni, Sachkhere, and some others.
By the late 1970s, 70 percent of the Georgian Jews had already emigrated to Israel; according to the 1989 census, there were 24,800 Jews (mainly Ashkenazim); the majority of them (13,500) lived in Tbilisi.28
Since the early 1990s the Georgian Jews have been restoring and developing their religious life; in Tbilisi two Jewish religious communities recovered two synagogues closed by the Soviet government; in Kutaisi three synagogues were returned to the local Jews; in Sukhumi two synagogues; in Akhaltsikhe two synagogues, one of which was closed in 1995 because of massive Jewish emigration; in Batumi two synagogues were returned to the Jews; later, in 1998, one was closed for the same reason.
In post-Soviet times, Georgian Jews and Ashkenazim began emigrating in great numbers because of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Osset conflicts, internal strife in Georgia, and economic hardships in general. According to the 2002 Georgian population census, 3,500 Georgian Jews professed Judaism: 2,320 of them lived in Tbilisi. In the early 2000s, there were about 5,000 Jews in Georgia who mainly inhabited Tbilisi, and Kutaisi; several scores in Akhaltsikhe, Gori, Kareli, and Surami.29
26 See: Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1959 goda. SSSR. Svodnyi tom, Goskomizdat, Moscow, 1962.
27 See: Concise Demographic Encyclopedic Dictionary, Tbilisi, 2000; G.G. Meladze, G.E. Tsuladze, Georgian Population and Demographic Processes (1990-1996), Pako, Tbilisi, 1997 (both in Georgian).
28 See: Naselenie SSSR. Po dannym Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 goda, Finansy i statistika, Moscow, 1990.
29 See: The Results of the First Nationwide Census in Georgia, Vol. 1, Tbilisi, 2003 (in Georgian).
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Since the late 1990s and early 2000s two communities have been functioning in Georgia: the Georgian Community of Ashkenazi Jews (Rakhamim) and the Association of Georgian Jews (Derekh yehudi); there is a Jewish secondary religious day school and several Sunday schools for children and adults, yeshiva-kolel Or emet. Tbilisi University opened a department of Judaics. Today the Jewish community of Georgia is between 8 and 12 thousand strong (nearly all its members live in Tbilisi).
On the territory of contemporary Azerbaijan Jews lived in small communities in Chirakhkala, Gusary, and Rustov before the Jewish Quarter of the Guba District appeared. Early in the 18th century there was Kulgat, a settlement of Mountain Jews on the left bank of Gudiial-chai, 3 km from the present-day Jewish Quarter. It was destroyed by the armies of Nadir Shah. Later those who lived in it started a new settlement known today as the Red Quarter. It reached its heyday under Fatali Khan of Guba who patronized the Jews and defended his Jewish subjects against attacks and slander. The Jews commemorated him by naming the central street of the Red Quarter after him.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries the Jewish Quarter remained the largest center of the Mountain Jews and as such played an important role in consolidating their groups into a community. It was home for Jews from Gilan, Turkey, Daghestan, and other places.
Those who came from the Persian Province of Gilan constituted the majority of the Jewish community of the Azeri town of Oguz: in the 19th century they made up a third of its total population. There were Jews in Shemakha, Geokchai, Evlakh, and the villages of Miuji and Miuji-Gaftaran.
The Jews of Baku were first mentioned early in the 19th century; the first Ashkenazi Jews appeared there in 1832. Industrial oil production, which began in 1872, created jobs and career opportunities which naturally attracted people of all nations. The Jews were no exception. In 1897 there were 2,340 Jews living in Baku; in 1913 their number swelled to over 9,500. In 1910 Baku acquired its first choral synagogue; in 1919 the Shirvani Jews opened a synagogue of their own. The Kurdistan Lakhlukha Jews opened a synagogue as well. Early in the 20th century the Mountain Jews of the Sabunchi settlement and Torgovy Lane in Baku built synagogues.30 The Baku Jews opened a Jewish Sephardim grammar school for Mountain and Georgian Jews; there was a yeshiva for those who wanted to study the Torah, Talmud, and Mishnah. In 1910-1913, five Jewish charities in Baku ran a synagogue and all sorts of Jewish educational establishments at it. The Jewish educational and spiritual structures survived the 1917 revolution and continued functioning until the mid-1930s. In 1934 the synagogue of the Shirvani Jews was closed down together with the Baku Choral Synagogue, the building of which was transferred to the State Jewish Theater. In 1939 the Kurdistan Lakhlukha Jews lost their synagogue.
After World War II Jewish migrants from Ukraine, Moldavia, Byelorussia, and Russia increased the Jewish population of Azerbaijan. In 1945 and 1946 Mountain Jewish and Ashkenazi-Georgian synagogues were opened one after the other despite the country’s prevailing atheist ideology. Every year one of the Baku bakeries produced matzoth for Pesah. Jewish religious life gained momentum within the permitted limits.
In post-Soviet times, when Azerbaijan became independent, Jews in Baku and in Sumgayit and Ganja, two other large cities, were given a new lease of life. Today there are over 30 thousand Jews living in Azerbaijan; they mainly congregate in the country’s capital. The Red Quarter of the Guba District with about a 4,000-strong Jewish population is another large Jewish center. There are over 300 Jews in Sumgayit and about 450 Jews in Ganja. There is an eight-thousand-strong Ashkenazi community in Baku31 with a synagogue that attracts all faithful Jews and a matzoth bakery at it. The synagogue of the Georgian Jews was restored while restoration of the synagogue of the Mountain Jews is still underway.
It should be said that Jews and the Judaic traditions have always been accepted in Azerbaijan without enmity. The Republic of Azerbaijan is a highly tolerant country with no traces of anti-
30 See: M. Bekker, Evrei Azerbaidzhana: istoriia i sovremennost, Baku, 2000.
31 See: Ibidem.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Semitism and racial discrimination. On 15 November, 1998 then President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliev said at a meeting with the heads of the Jewish communities: “We have no manifestations of this phenomenon and we shall never tolerate it. This is our firm position and we shall never budge from it.”32
C o n c l u s i o n
Over the course of history the Jews have become an intrinsic part of the Caucasian community. Having found their second homeland in the Caucasus they acquired and still enjoy every opportunity to fully tap their social and ethnocultural potential. This means that studies of Judaism and the Jews in the Caucasus should take into account both the past and the present of the Caucasian countries and nationalities.
З2 M. Bekker, “Evrei Azerbaidzhana: istoriia i sovremennost,” Azerbaidzhan i azerbaidzhantsy v mire, No. 1, June, 2007, p. 38.
