 | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 5,094 (2019 census data) | |
| Languages | |
| Hebrew (in Israel),Azerbaijani,Judeo-Tat,Russian | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Mountain Jews,Ashkenazi Jews,Georgian Jews |
Thehistory of the Jews in Azerbaijan dates back many centuries. Today,Jews inAzerbaijan mainly consist of three distinct groups:Mountain Jews, the most sizable and most ancient group;Ashkenazi Jews, who settled in the area during the late 19th – early 20th centuries, and duringWorld War II; andGeorgian Jews who settled mainly inBaku during the early part of the 20th century.
Historically, Jews in Azerbaijan have been represented by various subgroups, mainlyMountain Jews,Ashkenazi Jews andGeorgian Jews. Azerbaijan at one point was or still is home to smaller communities ofKrymchaks,Kurdish Jews andBukharian Jews, as wellGerim (converts) and non-JewishJudaistic groups likeSubbotniks. In those days, Jews used to live in and around the city ofShamakhi (mainly in the village ofMücü), but the community has been non-existent since the early 1920s.[1] In 2002, the total number of Jewish residents in Azerbaijan was 10,000 people with about 5,500 of them being Mountain Jews.[2] A few more thousand descend from mixed families.[1] In 2010, the total Jewish population in Azerbaijan was 6,400.[3] Jews mainly reside in the cities ofBaku,Ganja,Sumqayit,Quba,Oğuz,Goychay and the town ofQırmızı Qəsəbə, the only town in the world where Mountain Jews constitute the majority (and the only fully Jewish town outside ofIsrael).
Archaeological excavations carried out in 1990 resulted in the discovery of the remains of the 7th-century Jewish settlement near Baku, and of a synagogue 25 kilometres to the southeast of Quba.[1] The first religious meeting-house in Baku was built in 1832, and was reorganized into a synagogue in 1896; more synagogues were built in Baku and its suburbs in the late 19th century. The first choir synagogue in Baku opened in 1910.[4]
From the late 19th century, Baku became one of the centres of theZionist movement in theRussian Empire.[4] The firstHovevei Zion was established here in 1891, followed by the first Zionist organization in 1899. The movement remained strong in the short-livedDemocratic Republic of Azerbaijan (1918–1920) marked with the establishment of the Jewish Popular University in 1919, periodicals printed inYiddish,Hebrew,Judæo-Tat and Russian, and a number of schools, social clubs, benevolent societies and cultural organizations.[1]
AfterSovietization, all Zionism-related activities including those of cultural nature that were carried out in Hebrew were banned. In the early 1920s a few hundred Mountain Jewish families from Azerbaijan andDagestan left forIsrael and settled inTel-Aviv. The nextaliyah did not take place until the 1970s, after the ban on Jewish immigration toIsrael was lifted (see:Refusenik (Soviet Union)). Between 1972 and 1978 around 3,000 people left Azerbaijan for Israel. 1970 was the demographic peak for Azerbaijani Jews afterWorld War II; according to the census, 41,288 Jews resided in Azerbaijan that year.[1]
Most of the Azerbaijani Jewish population fled amid risingantisemitism and violence against Jews during theSoviet dissolution and independence of Azerbaijan. The majority of Jewish refugees from Azerbaijan emigrated toIsrael or theUnited States. Israeli PMYitzhak Shamir expressed hope that the Azerbaijani Jewish refugees could be settled in occupiedWest Bank. However, Israeli diplomat Miron Gordon, who oversaw issuing visas, welcomed Azerbaijani Jews regardless of whether they settled in Israel or the occupied territories. Gordon stated that of all the collapsing Soviet republics, the Jews in Azerbaijan faced the greatest threat of violence, and thus their immigration was prioritized by the Israeli Consulate.[5]
In a 1992 survey of antisemitism in the former Soviet Union, which compared results of a similar survey in 1990, Azerbaijan andUzbekistan displayed the largest surge in antisemitism. The causes were primarily attributed to Islamic nationalism and envy of Jews stereotyped as having wealth and privilege.[6]
Many Jewish émigrés from Azerbaijan settled in Tel-Aviv andHaifa. There are relatively large communities of Mountain Jewish expatriates from Azerbaijan in New York City andToronto.
A new Jewish synagogue, which became one of the biggest synagogues in Europe opened in Baku on 9 March 2003. There is also aJewish school, operating in Azerbaijan since 2003. Currently, there are seven functioning synagogues in Azerbaijan: three inBaku, two inQuba and two inOghuz.[7] Some of them were constructed with government financial support.[8] In January 2020, The Association of Mountain Jews opened a new community center in Moscow'sSokolniki Park.[9]
In 2017, anAzerbaijani laundromatmoney-laundering scheme was uncovered, revealing that, between 2012 and 2014, Azerbaijan created aslush fund of USD $2.9 billion used to bribe European and American politicians, journalists, lawmakers, and academics to lobby for Azerbaijani interests abroad. One of the primary agendas of the laundromat was to portray Azerbaijan as "a role model for multicultural tolerance". In particular, Israeli and Jewish organizations in USA and Europe were used to present Azerbaijan as "a trusted Muslim partner of Israel and the Jewish people". German and French lobbyists bribed by the laundromat frequently sought to portray Azerbaijan as a friend of Israel. ThePodesta Group, an American lobbying firm paid $60,000 per month by the Azerbaijani government, contacted pro-Israel groups such asAIPAC andJINSA on behalf of Azerbaijan.[10]
Mountain Jews are believed to have moved north making way to mass migration ofOguz Turks into the region. Their increase in number was supported by a constant flow of Jews from Iran. In the lateMiddle Ages Jews fromGilan founded a settlement in Oguz. Throughout the medieval epoch Mountain Jews were establishing cultural and economic ties with other Jewish communities of theMediterranean. Agriculture and fabric trade was their main occupation until Sovietization. Some families practicedpolygamy.[1] In 1730, Huseyn Ali, the ruler of theQuba Khanate (then newly separated from theSafavid Empire), issued a decree according to which Jews could own property in the khanate.[11]
According to the 1926 Soviet census, there were 7,500 Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan (roughly 25% of the country's entire Jewish population).[12] The exact numbers of the late Soviet period are unknown, since many were counted[13] or preferred to be counted[1] as Tats mostly due to theantisemitic attitude of the Soviet government. The theory of common origins of Tats and Mountain Jews (previously referred to as Judæo-Tats) has been vehemently dismissed by a number of researchers.[14][15]
Mountain Jews currently dominate the entireJewish Diaspora of Azerbaijan. They speak a distinct dialect of theTat language calledJuhuri or Judæo-Tat. The majority speaks more than one language, the second and/or third one most often being Azeri or Russian.
1811 is the year when the firstAshkenazi Jews settled in Baku, but their mass immigration to what is now Azerbaijan did not start until the 1870s. Their immigration was relatively steady leading them to outnumber the local Mountain Jewish community by 1910. They settled mostly in the booming oil-rich city ofBaku. TheCaspian-Black Sea Company, one of the leading oil companies in theRussian Empire, was established in Baku by the wealthyRothschild family of German Jewish origin. Ashkenazi Jews continued immigrating to Azerbaijan until the late 1940s, with a number of them beingWorld War II evacuees from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus who chose to stay in their country of refuge.[1]
Ashkenazi Jews were particularly active in Azerbaijani politics. Dr.Yevsey Gindes, aKyiv native, served as Minister of Health of theDemocratic Republic of Azerbaijan (1918–1920). Along with that, 6 of the26 Baku Commissars were Ashkenazi Jewish. In 1912 around one third of Baku's registered lawyers and physicians were Ashkenazi Jewish as well.[1]
The post-1972aliyah largely affected this subgroup of Azerbaijani Jews, as among all they were more exposed to emigration. This resulted in the decline of their number, making Mountain Jews the largest Jewish group of Azerbaijan by the mid-1990s. Today there are about 500 Ashkenazi Jews living in the country.[16]
Similar to many immigrant communities of the Czarist and Soviet eras in Azerbaijan, Ashkenazi Jews appear to be linguisticallyRussified. The majority of Ashkenazi Jews speak Russian as their first language with Azeri being spoken as the second. The number of Yiddish-speakers is unknown.
Rabbi Shneor Segal serves as the Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazi community since 2010. He is a member of theAlliance of Rabbis in Islamic States and the topChabad emissary to Baku.
It is not clear whether local Jewish communities had established ties with Georgian Jews before the Czarist epoch, however by the 1910s the Georgian Jewish diaspora in Baku already accounted for its own educational club. Today there are a few hundreds of Georgian Jews living in Azerbaijan.[1]
In 1827 first groups ofJudæo-Aramaic-speaking Kurdish Jews started settling in Azerbaijan. In 1919–1939 a synagogue for Kurdish Jews functioned in Baku. After Sovietization the attitude of theStalinist Soviet government towards them was somewhat unfavourable, and in 1951 all Kurdish Jews were deported from theCaucasus.[1]
Krymchaks, who nowadays number only 2,500 people worldwide, consequently remained in quite low numbers in Azerbaijan throughout the 20th century. There were only 41 of them in the country in 1989. Bukharian Jews numbered 88 persons.[17]
Gerim andSubbotniks were ethnicRussians from various parts of Russia who converted to Judaism primarily in the 1820s. In 1839–1841 the Czarist government expelled these communities to the newly conqueredSouth Caucasus, mainly to what is now Azerbaijan. Upon arriving here, they founded several settlements aroundJalilabad (then called Astrakhan-Bazar), of which the largest one wasPrivolnoye, Azerbaijan. It later became the largest Judaistic Russian settlement in Russia. By the late Soviet epoch the overall number of Gerim and Subbotniks in Azerbaijan was 5,000. There were only around 200 of them left in 1997 (when the region was visited by a research group fromSaint Petersburg) with many planning to move to Russia and leaving virtually no chance for further preservation of this unique community.[18]
In the Soviet era, Jews in Azerbaijan displayed high rates ofmarriage outside their community. In 1989, 48% ofAshkenazi Jews and 18% ofMountain Jews were married to non-Jews.[19]
Beginning in the 1960s, Azerbaijan's Jewish community experienced cultural revival. Jewishsamizdat publications started being printed. Many cultural and Zionist organizations were reestablished in Baku and Sumqayit since 1987, and the first legal Hebrew courses in the Soviet Union were opened in Baku.[1]
Education inJewish languages was discontinued by theKremlin in the 1930s and the 1940s, and teaching in Yiddish and Juhuri was replaced by that in Russian. After the fall of the Soviet Union, ayeshiva opened in Baku in 1994 and anOhr Avner Chabad Day School was established in 1999. In 1994, Hebrew was studied at one state university and offered as a course choice in two secondary schools.[1] On 31 May 2007, a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Ohr Avner Chabad Centre for Jewish Studies took place in Baku. The centre is intended to include a day school, a kindergarten, residence halls, a scientific centre, a library, etc.[20]
According to the Report on Global Anti-Semitism released by the USABureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor on 5 January 2005, "Cases of prejudice and discrimination against Jews in the country were very limited, and in the few instances of anti-Semitic activity the Government has been quick to respond. The Government does not condone or tolerate persecution of Jews by any party".[21] Jews do not suffer from discrimination, and the country is remarkably free from anti-Semitism.[22]
In 2005Yevda Abramov, himself a Jew, was elected to theNational Assembly of Azerbaijan as an MP representing the Rural Guba riding.
As of 2017, there are seven synagogues in Azerbaijan: three in Baku (one for each community, the Ashkenazi, Mountain and Georgian; the second one being the largest in the Caucasus), two inQırmızı Qəsəbə nearQuba, and two inOğuz.[7]
A delegation of theWorld Jewish Congress visited Azerbaijan in September 2016 where during the talks with the Azeri PresidentIlham Aliyev emphasis was put on "Excellent relations with Jewish community and Israel".[23][24]
Azerbaijan was also visited by John Shapiro, executive director of theAmerican Jewish Committee, in January 2017, shortly after the visit ofBenjamin Netanyahu to Baku. During the interview, Shapiro said that "the delegation met with the Jewish community in Azerbaijan and saw they are very happy and feel very comfortable living in the country".[25]
In 2020, theAzerbaijan Jewish Media Center was established inSumgayit.[26]
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
|---|---|---|
| 1886 | 10,357 | — |
| 1897 | 8,430 | −18.6% |
| 1926 | 59,768 | +609.0% |
| 1939 | 41,245 | −31.0% |
| 1959 | 46,091 | +11.7% |
| 1970 | 49,057 | +6.4% |
| 1979 | 44,345 | −9.6% |
| 1989 | 41,072 | −7.4% |
| 1999 | 8,916 | −78.3% |
| 2009 | 9,084 | +1.9% |
| 2019 | 5,094 | −43.9% |
Source:
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Azerbaijan's Jewish population significantly decreased between 1926 and 1939, but then didn't change much between 1939 and 1989 (it increased a little until 1970, and then decreased a little until 1989). Since 1989 and thefall of Communism, Azerbaijan's Jewish population has significantly decreased. Most of the Jews in Azerbaijan left and moved to other countries between 1989 and 2002, with most of themmoving to Israel.[33]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Most experts place him the second or third best ever, behind Kasparov but probably ahead of Karpov.
History of the Jews in Asia | |
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| Sovereign states |
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| States with limited recognition | |
| Dependencies and other territories | |
