Mountain Jews (Juhuro)

Origins

Mountain Jews trace their roots to Jews from Iran.¹⁴ Genetic and historical scholarship places the community's establishment in the eastern Caucasus in the eighth century, 'as a result of a movement of Jews from Iran.'¹ For centuries a dispersed rural and small-town minority, they 'only took shape as a community after Qajar Iran ceded the areas in which they lived to the Russian Empire under the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813.'⁵

Religious life

Mountain Jews 'follow Edot HaMizrach customs,' preserving a distinct Mizrahi rite rooted in Persian Jewry rather than Sephardi or Ashkenazi tradition.³ From roughly 1600 to 1800 their spiritual center lay at the settlement of Aba-Sava; after its destruction the religious center moved to Derbent.³ Rabbi Ya'akov Yiṣḥaqī 'served as the Chief Rabbi of Derbend and Daghestan' from 1868 and compiled the first Judeo-Tat dictionary.⁶ Communities maintained synagogues, ritual slaughter and pilgrimage, though 'in the 1930s, the Soviet Union closed synagogues belonging to Mountain Jews.'³ The Jewish town at Quba, Krasnaya Sloboda—'the Jerusalem of the Caucasus'—'remains the largest settlement of Mountain Jews in the world.'³

Language & culture

Their vernacular, Judeo-Tat or Juhuri, 'belongs to the southwestern group of the Iranian division of the Indo-European languages, albeit with heavy influence from Hebrew,'² and uniquely retains the Semitic pharyngeal ayin.² Once written in Hebrew script, 'the Latin alphabet was imposed on this language in place of the Hebrew one' in 1929, and Cyrillic followed by 1939 as Soviet scholars standardized a literary Juhuri.⁷ It became 'one of the five official languages of the Dagestan Republic,'⁷ yet UNESCO now rates it 'Definitely Endangered,'⁸ with about 101,000 speakers worldwide.⁹ A rich oral, musical and dance tradition endured—embodied by choreographer Tankho Israilov's Dagestani ensemble 'Lezginka.'¹⁰

Relations with neighbours

Living among Muslim Azeris, Lezgins and other Caucasus peoples, Mountain Jews were valued as farmers and artisans, 'allowed to work in agriculture, trade, and crafts.'¹¹ In 1742 the khan of Quba, Huseynali Khan, 'gave the Jewish people permission to set up a community free of persecution across the river from the city of Quba,' and his son Fatali Khan protected and employed them.¹¹ Under Nazi occupation 'the local Jews (and their Muslim friends) argued that they were not part of the Jewish race, but belonged to the Tat people.'⁴ Yet security was fragile: in 1942 'Germans killed 472 Mountain Jews near the village of Bogdanovka,'¹² and 'some 1000–1500 Mountain Jews were killed in mass executions.'¹²

Decline & dispersal

Soviet rule secularized and urbanized the community—by 1926 'more than 85% of Mountain Jews in Dagestan were already classed as urban'—while closing synagogues and suppressing religion.³ The USSR's 1991 collapse, economic ruin and rising nationalism triggered mass emigration; 'the majority of Mountain Jews emigrated to Israel with a considerable amount emigrating to the United States.'³ Others resettled in Moscow, Brooklyn, Toronto and Vienna.⁴ The Caucasus population cratered—Russia recorded just '266 (2021)'³—while Krasnaya Sloboda holds about 3,500¹¹ and Azerbaijan some '11,000 (2016)'.³ Worldwide the community numbers well over 100,000, with an estimated '100,000–140,000' in Israel alone.³

Notable figures

• Rabbi Ya'akov Yiṣḥaqī (1846–1917) — Chief Rabbi of Derbent, lexicographer. Chief Rabbi of Derbent and Dagestan from 1868 who compiled the first Judeo-Tat dictionary,⁶ and in 1907 led Mountain Jews to found the colony of Be'er Ya'akov in Ottoman Palestine.⁶
• Gavriil Ilizarov (1921–1992) — Surgeon, inventor of the Ilizarov apparatus. Soviet surgeon of Mountain Jewish descent—his father was 'a Mountain Jew from Qusar'—who invented the Ilizarov apparatus for lengthening and reconstructing limb bones.¹³
• Tankho Israilov (1917–1981) — Dancer and choreographer. Mountain Jewish dancer and choreographer, People's Artist of the USSR (1978), who founded and directed Dagestan's celebrated state folk-dance ensemble 'Lezginka.'¹⁰
• Hizgil Avshalumov (1913–2001) — Juhuri and Russian writer. Dagestani Mountain Jewish novelist, poet and satirist who 'wrote in languages of the Mountain Jews (Juhuri) and Russian,' famed for his humorous character Shimi Derbendi.¹⁴

Key events

• 700 Persian Jews settle the eastern Caucasus. During the eighth century, Jews from Iran moved into the region corresponding to Dagestan and present-day Azerbaijan,¹ establishing the community later known as the Mountain Jews.¹
• 1742 Jewish settlement founded at Quba. Huseynali Khan of Quba granted Jews land across the river to live free of persecution, founding the settlement later called Krasnaya Sloboda, the 'Jerusalem of the Caucasus.'¹¹
• 1813 Treaty of Gulistan. Qajar Iran ceded the eastern Caucasus to the Russian Empire; under one state the scattered Jewish communities of Dagestan and Azerbaijan first coalesced as the Mountain Jews.⁵
• 1907 Founding of Be'er Ya'akov. Rabbi Ya'akov Yiṣḥaqī led a group of Mountain Jews from Dagestan to Ottoman Palestine, where they bought German-owned land and established the agricultural colony of Be'er Ya'akov.⁶
• 1929 Latinization of Juhuri. Soviet authorities replaced the Hebrew script of Judeo-Tat with a Latin alphabet, part of engineering a secular literary Juhuri; Cyrillic followed a decade later.⁷
• 1942 Nazi massacres of Mountain Jews. During the German occupation of the North Caucasus, 472 Mountain Jews were shot near Bogdanovka on 19 August 1942;¹² some 1,000–1,500 were murdered before the Red Army retook the region.¹²
• 1991 Post-Soviet mass emigration. The Soviet collapse, economic crisis and Caucasus nationalism drove most Mountain Jews to emigrate—chiefly to Israel and the United States—hollowing out the ancient Caucasus communities.³

Where they lived

• Eastern Caucasus (Mountain Jews) · 500