Exhibition of photographs by Michail Kheifets
... He settled them in Halah, in Habor, on the river Hozan,
and in the Median cities. (2 Kings 17:6)
(The Eastern Jewish Communities of the Former USSR)
The Jews of the former Soviet Union, the Russian Jews as they are known in the West, are generally defined as the Russian-speaking descendants of the former inhabitants of the Pale of Settlement. But there are many smaller groups of Jews, each with their own language, traditions and history, living in the former Soviet regions. Most important (and numerous) are the Tajik-speaking Bukharan Jews of Central Asia and the Tat-speaking Mountain Jews of Eastern Caucasia.
To a scholar and an outsider, the most obvious similarity is that all these Jewish communities form pockets of 'internal aliens' within the larger Ashkenazi world. Each presents a mirror, posing questions about Jewish identity and inviting a re-examination of the history and diversity of the Jewish world.
These Jewish communities makes are probably the only Jewish communities that have continued to live in the same areas. In the rest of the world, the hundred years from 1880 to 1980 was not only a period of catastrophe, it was also a period of mass Jewish migration. Whether these migrations were voluntary or forced, today most of the Jewish communities are no longer where they were a hundred years ago. In fact, nowadays much of Jewish ethnography is more like paleoethnography.
In contrast, the Jews of the Caucasus and Central Asia still live where they once formed separate ethnic groups. Naturally, the wave of Soviet Jewish emigration and the population movements of the post-Soviet era have had their effect on these communities. Nevertheless, more than any other Jewish group, they offer a unique source for historical and ethnic study.
Ever since Jews started leaving the Holy Land there have been two potential migration routes: east and west. Historically, the first diaspora was in Babylon, to the east. Its origins lay in the deportation of the Jewish population from Israel by the Assyrians, and from Judah by the Babylonians. In successive centuries the Babylonian community was augmented by waves of refugees, especially after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Throughout the first millennium CE the Babylonian Diaspora remained the most important Jewish community and the center of Spiritual development, as the Babylonian Talmud itself testifies.
Known as the Babylonian community, this center of Jewish life continued through many periods, generating a host of smaller communities and sub-ethnic Jewish groups in Asia. This was a result of the secondary dispersal of the Babylonian Diaspora. The Mountain Jews and the Bukharan community are clearly descended from Persian Jews whose ancestors first arrived in Persia from Mesopotamia. Emigration of Jews from Persia to Eastern Caucasia and Central Asia throughout the Middle Ages continued until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
There is considerable evidence of this connection with Persia: the direction their ancestors took is still reflected in their synagogues. The Holy Ark - the Hekhal - is at the western wall. Unlike Ashkenazim, Bukharan and Mountain Jews build their synagogues facing west. A curious illustration of this inbuilt historical awareness is the Ashkenazi synagogue and that of the Mountain Jews in Baku. They are on adjoining streets, but the former faces east, and the latter west, while Jerusalem is actually to the southwest.
Clearly, their common background accounts for much that is similar in the Central Asian and Caucasian communities. But ethnographically there is a considerable resemblance to the local populations. This includes the social structure of the communities, housing, food (apart from kashrut, of course), dress, art, folklore, music and musical instruments, rituals, rites, beliefs and superstitions, as well as language.
These communities have one other feature in common. They all used to have their own religious rituals and manuscripts. The austerity of religious life led to the import of printed books from Italy (Livorno, Venice) and the Holy Land, and the gradual substitution of the local liturgy with Sephardic traditions, the so-called nusah sepharad, since manuscript books could not compete with cheaper printed editions. In the conventional division of the Jewish world into Ashkenazim and Sephardim, the communities of Central Asia and Caucasia, like the other Eastern communities, therefore fall within the Sephardi category.
Jews of Central Asia
Bukharan Jews are a sub-ethnic Jewish group residing mostly in Central Asia, in the towns of Uzbekistan and the adjacent republics, as well as in Russia, Israel and the United States. The name comes from the Bukharan Emirate, a former feudal Moslem state in the territory of today's Uzbekistan and named after the capital, the city of Bukhara.
The Bukharan Jews speak Judeo-Tajic, a language related to Persian. This is a dialect of the Tajik language, which is spoken in the area between the Syrdar'ya and the Amudar'ya rivers.
No definitive statistics are available on the Bukharan Jews, as the statistical data on the Jewish population of Central Asia and the Caucasus are largely approximations. In the mid-nineteenth century, Bukharan Jews in Central Asia numbered around 10,000. The population increased to c. 16,000 at the turn of the twentieth century and to 20,000 in the 1910s. Despite the massive aliyah in the I970s, the population of c. 30,000 Bukharan Jews in Central Asia remained stable because of the high birth rate in the 1960s and 1970s. In the past decade, massive emigration by Bukharan Jews to Israel and the United States has considerably decreased the numbers living in their traditional surroundings. Certain communities of Bukharan Jews have even disintegrated. Unfortunately, no current statistics are available.
The largest communities of Bukharan Jews in Uzbekistan were located in Samarkand, Tashkent (capital of Uzbekistan), Bukhara, Shakhrisabz, Kattakurgan, Karmana, Khatyrchi, as well as in the cities of the Fergana Valley.
Jews are known to have lived in Central Asia since the Achaemenid period in Iran. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Jewish population was repeatedly documented in this area, the center of ancient civilizations and part of the Great Silk Road. But both Bukharan and Afghani Jews drifted away from the overall Jewish population of Khorasan (Eastern Iran) rather late. This process, which began in the sixteenth and continued until the eighteenth century, severed contacts between the Jews of Eastern Iran and those of Central Asia. Bukharan Jews therefore represent one of the most recent sub-ethnic groups of all the Jewish communities. The full cycle of ethnogenesis (i.e. the separation of Bukharan Jews from their Iranian and Afghan counterparts) has not been completed, as the resemblances between ritual art from synagogues in Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan indicate.
A Jewish mahalla (quarter) is an integral part of many cities in Central Asia. Life in a compact and nationally homogeneous quarter guarantees all families support from their neighbors and safety, which has become more important in recent years; it also ensures continuity of religious traditions. The population of a Jewish quarter conforms to a hierarchy based on families and clans. Endless joint celebrations strengthen local ties: commemorative ceremonies, engagements, weddings and circumcisions.
Bukharan Jews tend to follow all the life cycle rituals of circumcision, weddings and funerals. Observance of other religious rituals depends largely on the city, whether there is a Jewish mahalla, and whether the individual concerned lives in the mahalla or in a modern apartment complex. Nevertheless, Bukharan Jews are generally involved in religious activities. Most Jewish communities - even fairly small ones - have a minyan in the synagogue every morning.
The community has an elected secular leader, known as the kalantar. Previously, the kalantar served as a judge and as the community's representative before the gentile authorities. Today this individual is primarily the religious head of the Jewish community and supervises the synagogue and the quarter's self-government. His main concerns are maintenance and upkeep. A hakham used to be the religious leader of a Jewish community (the equivalent of rabbi in an Ashkenazi community). The last local hakham died in the early 1980s. Today, a shohet or kalantar retains sole responsibility for the community. New rabbis - educated in yeshivas, some from Israel - are arriving.
Mountain Jews
Mountain Jews represent the native Jewish population of the Eastern Caucasus. Traditionally, they lived in Northern Azerbaijan and Southern Dagestan. From this area they spread all over Northern Caucasia. Mountain Jews now live in Georgia, as well as in Russia outside the Caucasus, in Israel and in the USA. The largest communities of Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan are in Baku, Kuba and Oguz (known as Vartashen until 1991); in Dagestan in Derbent, Makhachkala and Buynaksk (formerly Temir-Khan-Shura); and also in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkarya. Mountain Jews speak several dialects closely related to the Tat language, which pertains to the Western branch of the Iranian language group. In addition to being spoken by Mountain Jews, the Tat language is common among the Moslem Tats (who in fact call themselves the Tats) and the Christian or Armenian Tats (who belong to the Armenian Gregorian Church).
Statistics indicate that there were about 21,000 Mountain Jews in the late nineteenth century. In the 1970s their number was estimated at 50,000 to 70,000. The Soviet ethnic policy towards the Mountain Jews precludes greater accuracy. In Russian Federation the majority of the Tat-speaking population consisted of Mountain Jews. Officially, all Tat Speakers - irrespective of their religion - were regarded as belonging to the ethnic group of the Tats, one of several peoples of Dagestan. Mountain Jews frequently registered as Tats to avoid suffering ethnic discrimination as Jews. In the 1979 census over 20,000 Mountain Jews chose to register as Tats. Accordingly, statistics on the Mountain Jews are largely improvised.
For centuries Mountain Jews lived in the highlands and in the areas alongside the Caucasus dose to the Caspian Sea. They believe they arrived in the area following the Assyrian exile of the Ten Tribes of Israel to the Median Mountains that they associate with the Caucasus. Aside from the legends about their origin, however, the roots of the Caucasian Jews date back centuries and remain largely a mystery.
Nevertheless, the descent of the Mountain Jews from a branch of the Persian Jews is borne out by both linguistic and cultural relics. Mountain Jews have always maintained contact with Iran. Their communities expanded following waves of migration by Jews from Northwest Iran (the province of Gilan) until the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.
Between the tenth and the eighteenth centuries travelers and geographers repeatedly reported a substantial Jewish population in the Eastern Caucasus, especially on the Caspian Plain near today's border between Azerbaijan and Dagestan between Derbent and Kuba. Jews also lived in the highland villages. According to most sources, they were mainly farmers and, occasionally, merchants.
Many settlements of Mountain Jews were near old feudal centers. Krasnaya (formerly Jewish) Sloboda is a quarter of Kuba, Vartashen is close to Sheki, and Mudgi is in the area of Shemakha. Kuba, Sheki and Shemakha are former capitals of small Turkic kingdoms. The Jews sought protection from the local rulers (Khans), who welcomed them as taxpayers and as merchants. These relations, which arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries resembled those between the feudal lords and the Jewish communities in medieval Europe.
In the 1730s, a fierce conflict broke out between Russia, Turkey and Persia in this area, ushering in a period of decline among the communities of Mountain Jews. Following these tragic events, Mountain Jews moved into more protected settlements and founded the communities that still exist today. In the early nineteenth century the incorporation of Dagestan and Azerbaijan into Russia meant that the Mountain Jews became Russian subjects. In 1830 a thirty-year uprising against Russia headed by Shamil broke out in the highlands of Dagestan. The rebels founded a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy, an Imamate. All infidels (primarily Jews) had to adopt Islam or flee from the highland villages to areas controlled by the Russian army. The principal havens of refuge were Derbent in Southern Dagestan and Krasnaya Sloboda.
In the second half of the nineteenth Century migration increased. Mountain Jews moved to centers they had never inhabited before, such as Baku and settlements founded by the Russian authorities. Civil war stimulated further Jewish migration from the highland villages. This migration of the Mountain Jews continued throughout the twentieth century. The Mountain Jews, once involved in agriculture, now live almost entirely in the cities.
In the 1970s migration to Israel accelerated this exodus by the Mountain Jews from their traditional surroundings. Although the Mountain Jews did not move to Israel with the same enthusiasm as the other Eastern Jewish communities of the Soviet Union, the growing political instability and declining economy in the Caucasus have made aliyah a widespread practice in recent years.
