Kesher Talk

Jews in odd places: Azerbaijan: In the highlands of northern Azerbaijan, a community of Jews has quietly thrived in a mainly Islamic region. Legend has it that the mountain Jews of Azerbaijan are descended from one of the lost tribes of Israel, having fled the Holy Land after the destruction of the first temple in 722 b.c. They settled in the mountains of northern Azerbaijan roughly two centuries ago, after being forced to flee from what was then Persia.

Hardened by centuries of self-defense and self-reliance, and free of the anti-Semitism and pogroms that plagued the Jews of Eastern Europe, these mountain Jews are a proud, tough-minded, patriarchal lot. Respected as horsemen and marksmen, some of them were among the first fighters in Jewish Palestine.

But every year, fewer Jews are living — and dying — here.

The paucity of jobs and economic hardship common here since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Communist system has compelled thousands of Jewish mountain men to venture abroad in search of work, often leaving their wives and children behind or resettling with their families in places like Israel, New York or Moscow, which now has its own cemetery for mountain Jews.

posted by William @ 9/02/2003 08:07:17 AM