Dagestan Jews as they are called. Mountain Jews: history, population, culture

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The appearance in the Caucasus of people professing Judaism is hidden in the darkness of centuries. And although they have been living there for millennia, it is clear that they came from somewhere long ago.

Mountain Jews

Mountain and Georgian Jews are considered to be the main carriers of Judaism in the Caucasus. They call themselves Juur. Mountain Jews retained the old way of life, the language with traditional terminology and Jewish names.

On the territory of ancient Iberia, they appeared at the end of the 7th century BC. e., after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, when Nebuchadnezzar II led the Jews into slavery in Babylon. The second wave of Jewish migration to the Caucasus took place in the 1st century, when the Romans captured Jerusalem. Perhaps part of the people came there from Byzantium, the Sasanian state, Caucasian Albania and the Khazar Khaganate.

There is a version that in the VI century BC. e. the ancestors of the Mountain Jews were captured by Cyrus II Achaemenides and only then moved to the Caucasus. This is indicated by the Iranian words in their language. It is known that in the 5th century a part of the Mountain Jews moved from Persia to Derbent. There is an assumption that they are descendants of the tribes of Israel: Benjamin and Judah.

It is possible that the leaders of the Khazar Khaganate, a powerful state stretching from the steppes of Kazakhstan to the Crimea, converted to Judaism under the influence of the Mountain Jews. This is a unique case, because Judaism does not provide for the conversion of other peoples.

Anthropologists say that the Mountain Jews are closest to the Lezgins. Genetic studies point to their kinship with other Jewish communities and define them as Jews of Mediterranean origin.

According to 2002 data, 38,170 Jews lived in Azerbaijan. Now there are three Jewish communities there: Mountain Jews in Guba, Ashkinaz in Baku and Sumgaiti, and Georgian Jews in Baku. There are several synagogues and a mikvah (a building for sacred ablution) in Azerbaijan.

The Jewish diaspora in Georgia is about one and a half thousand people. According to data at the end of the 20th century, 396 Jews lived in South Ossetia, but at the moment they have all already left there.

Armenian Jews (Van)

The history of the Armenian Jews has two thousand years. Their appearance in the Caucasus is associated with Nebuchadnezzar, but later the Armenian kings dealt with their fate. They deliberately settled them throughout the kingdom, to the point that they “went to Palestine and took many Jews captive,” believing that this would help prosperity. Many of the Jews converted to Christianity, but the Jews of Van retained their faith. Now about a thousand Jews live in Armenia. Scientists believe that some of them are of Iranian origin, while others are descended from Ashkenazi Jews (of European origin).

Dagestan tats

Dagestan Tats-Jews, compactly living near Derbent, are a mystery to scientists. They are related to Azerbaijani tatami by a common language of Iranian origin. But all Tats are Muslims. The question remains when the Dagestan Tats managed to convert to Judaism.

It is known that the Tats were not Jews before the annexation of the Caucasus to the Russian Empire. Scientists associate them with the history of the Khazar Khaganate. IN modern Russia Dagestan Tats received the status of an original indigenous people.

Krymchaks

The Krymchaks themselves call themselves "eudiler", which means Jews. This people is not numerous, lives in the Crimea, in the Caucasus is represented singly. Krymchaks are Turkic-speaking, profess Talmudic Judaism. The origin of this people is mixed - Turkic-Jewish. Most likely, the Krymchaks emerged as a separate people in the 14th-15th centuries. According to the linguistic analysis of the surnames, their connection with the Ashkenazi and Sepharid Jews (a group that formed within the Roman Empire on the Iberian Peninsula) is revealed. Anthropologist Weisberg believed that the Krymchaks were the direct descendants of the Khazars.

Russian Subbotniks

In the Caucasus, they are presented singly. They come from sectarians-subbotniks who settled north of the Caucasus. The Subbotnik movement originated in the 18th century in central Russia among peasants. Members of the communities observed Jewish holidays, called themselves gur (giyur), that is, people converted to Judaism. During the reign of Nicholas I, they were forcibly resettled to the outskirts of Russia - to Siberia and the Transcaucasus.

Lahluhi or Kurdish Jews

This is a special group of Jews who speak Hebrew-Aramaic. The Jews of Iranian Azerbaijan are considered to be Lahlukhs - they speak the local Jewish dialect of Azerbaijani. In Transcaucasia, lahlukhs began to live in the 20th century. They settled in Baku and Tbilisi, while some left in the 1930s, not wanting to take Soviet citizenship. Many were exiled to Siberia after the war, but returned to the Caucasus during the thaw. Now there are about 100 Lakhluh families in Tbilisi.

Ashkenazi Jews

The most widespread group of Jews in Russia, formed in Europe. The name gained popularity in the XIV century. There is a controversial theory according to which the Ashkenazim are the descendants of the Khazars, who, after the defeat of Khazaria by Prince Svyatoslav, spread throughout Rus'. According to genetic studies, the contribution of the Khazars to the origin of the Ashkenazim is about 12%. Ashkenazim have Middle Eastern roots.

In the North Caucasus, which is part of Russia, there are now 5,359 Ashkenazi Jews, 414 Mountain Jews, 725 Tats, and only four Krymchaks. Most of the Jews live in the Stavropol Territory - there are 2,644 of them.

in the Eastern Caucasus. Live mainly in Russian Federation, Azerbaijan, Israel. The total number of about 20 thousand people. In the Russian Federation, the 2002 census counted 3.3 thousand Mountain Jews, and the 2010 census counted 762 people. Mountain Jews speak the Tat language, dialects are Makhachkala-Nalchik, Derbent, Kuban. Writing based on the Russian alphabet.

The community of Mountain Jews in the Eastern Caucasus was formed in the 7th-13th centuries by immigrants from Northern Iran. Having adopted the Tat language, Mountain Jews from the 11th century began to settle in Dagestan, where they assimilated part of the Khazars. Close contacts with the Jewish communities of the Arab world contributed to the fact that the Sephardic liturgical way was established among the Mountain Jews. A continuous strip of Jewish settlements covered the territory between the cities of Derbent and Kuba. Mountain Jews until the 1860s paid local Muslim rulers kharaj. In 1742, the ruler of Iran, Nadir Shah, destroyed many settlements of the Mountain Jews. In the first third of the 19th century, the lands where the Mountain Jews lived became part of the Russian Empire. During the Caucasian War in 1839-1854, many Mountain Jews were forcibly converted to Islam and subsequently merged with the local population. From the 1860s-1870s, Mountain Jews began to settle in the cities of Baku, Temir-Khan-Shura, Nalchik, Grozny, and Petrovsk-Port. At the same time, contacts were established between Caucasian Jews and Ashkenazi Jews in the European part of Russia, and representatives of Mountain Jews began to receive European education. At the beginning of the 20th century, schools for Mountain Jews were opened in Baku, Derbent, and Cuba; in 1908-1909, the first Jewish books were published in the Tat language using the Hebrew alphabet. At the same time, the first few hundred Mountain Jews emigrated to Palestine.

During the civil war, part of the villages of the Mountain Jews was destroyed, their population moved to Derbent, Makhachkala and Buynaksk. In the early 1920s, about three hundred families left for Palestine. During the period of collectivization, a number of collective farms of Mountain Jews were organized in Dagestan, Azerbaijan, the Krasnodar Territory and in the Crimea. In 1928 the writing of the Mountain Jews was translated into Latin, in 1938 into Cyrillic; A newspaper for Mountain Jews in the Tat language was launched. During the Great Patriotic War, a significant number of Mountain Jews who ended up in Nazi-occupied Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory were exterminated. In 1948-1953, teaching, literary activity, and the publication of a newspaper in the native language of the Mountain Jews were discontinued. The cultural activities of the Mountain Jews were not restored to their former extent even after 1953. Beginning in the 1960s, the transition of Mountain Jews to the Russian language intensified. A significant number of Mountain Jews began to be recorded on tatami. At the same time, the desire to emigrate to Israel grew. In 1989, 90% of Mountain Jews were fluent in Russian or called it their native language. In the second half of the 1980s, the emigration of Mountain Jews to Israel acquired a massive scale and even more intensified after the collapse of the USSR. During the period from 1989 to 2002, the number of Mountain Jews in the Russian Federation decreased threefold.

Traditional occupations of Mountain Jews: agriculture and handicraft. The townspeople were also largely engaged in agriculture, mainly horticulture, viticulture and winemaking (especially in Kuba and Derbent), as well as the cultivation of madder, from the roots of which red dye was obtained. By the beginning of the 20th century, with the development of the production of aniline dyes, the cultivation of madder stopped, the owners of the plantations went bankrupt and turned into laborers, peddlers and seasonal workers in the fisheries (mainly in Derbent). In some villages of Azerbaijan, Mountain Jews were engaged in tobacco growing and arable farming. In a number of villages until the beginning of the 20th century, leather craft was the main occupation. By the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, the number of people employed in petty trade increased, some merchants managed to get rich in the trade in fabrics and carpets.

Until the late 1920s and early 1930s, the main social unit of the Mountain Jews was a large three-four-generation family with 70 or more members. As a rule, a large family occupied one yard, in which each small family had its own house. Until the middle of the 20th century, polygamy was practiced, mainly two and three marriages. Each wife with children occupied a separate house or, more rarely, a separate room in a common house.

At the head of a large family was the father, after his death, the primacy passed to the eldest son. The head of the family took care of the property, which was considered a collective property, determined the order of work of all the men of the family; the mother of the family (or the first of the wives) ran the household and oversaw women's work: cooking (prepared and consumed together), cleaning. Several large families descended from a common ancestor formed a tukhum. At the end of the 19th century, the process of disintegration of a large family began.

Women and girls led a closed life, not showing themselves to strangers. The engagement was often made in infancy, and kalyn (kalym) was paid for the bride. The customs of hospitality, mutual assistance, and blood feud were preserved. There were frequent twinnings with representatives of neighboring mountain peoples. The auls of the Mountain Jews were located next to the auls of neighboring peoples, in some places they lived together. The settlement of Mountain Jews consisted, as a rule, of three to five large families. In the cities, Mountain Jews lived in a special suburb (Kuba) or in a separate quarter (Derbent). Traditional stone dwellings with oriental decoration, from two or three parts: for men, for guests, for women with children. The children's rooms were distinguished by the best decoration, decorated with weapons.

Mountain Jews borrowed pagan rituals and beliefs from neighboring peoples. The world was considered inhabited by many spirits, visible and invisible, punishing or favoring a person. This is Num-Negir, the lord of travelers and family life, Ile Novi (Ilya the prophet), Ozhdegoe-Mar (brownie), Zemirey (rain spirit), evil spirits Ser-Ovi (water) and Shegadu (an unclean spirit that drives one crazy, leading a person astray from the path of truth). In honor of the spirits of autumn and spring, Gudur-Boy and Kesen-Boy were held festivities. The holiday of Shev-Idor was dedicated to the ruler of plants, Idor. It was believed that on the night of the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles (Aravo), the fate of a person is determined; the girls saw her off in divination, dancing and singing. Fortune-telling of girls in the forest by flowers on the eve of the spring holiday is characteristic. Two months before the wedding, the rite of Rah-Bura (crossing of the path) was performed, when the groom gave the bride's father a dowry.

To a large extent, compliance religious traditions associated with the life cycle (circumcision, wedding, funeral), the consumption of ritually suitable food (kasher), matzah, the holidays of Yom Kippur (Judgment Day), Rosh Hashanah ( New Year), Easter (Nison), Purim (Gomun). In folklore, fairy tales (ovosuna) performed by professional storytellers (ovosunachi) and poems-songs (ma`ni) performed by poets-singers (ma`nihu) and transmitted with the name of the author stand out.

"Once again about Jews in hats. Mountain Jews: history and modernity"

WHO WE ARE AND WHERE?
- Mom, who are we? - once my son asked me, and then another question followed: - Are we Lezgins?
- No, my boy, not Lezgins - we are mountain Jews.
- And why mountain? What, there are still forest or sea Jews?

In order to stop the flow of endless “why”, I had to tell my son a parable that I heard from my father in childhood. I remember how in the sixth grade, having quarreled with me, one girl called me “juud”. And the first thing I asked my parents when I returned from school was:

And what are we, “juuds”?

Then dad told me briefly about the history of the Jewish people, how our compatriots appeared in the Caucasus, and why we are called Mountain Jews.

You see, daughter, a fortress above our city of Derbent, - the father began his story. - In ancient times, during its construction, they used the labor of captive slaves brought from Iran at the direction of Shah Kavad from the Sassanid dynasty in the fifth century AD. Among them were our ancestors, the descendants of those Jews who were expelled from Eretz Israel after the destruction of the First Temple.

Most of them remained to live in the vicinity of the Naryn-Kala fortress. In the eighteenth century, the city of Derbent was captured by the Persian Nadir Shah. He was a very cruel man, but he was especially merciless with those who professed Judaism. For the slightest offense, the Jews were subjected to barbaric tortures: they gouged out their eyes, cut off their ears, cut off their hands ... And, you see, under the fortress you can see the dome of the Juma mosque? According to legend, it is in the courtyard of the mosque, between two huge platinum trees, that ancient stone“Guz Dash”, which in Persian means “eye stone”. It is there that the eyes of those unfortunate slaves are buried. Unable to withstand the hellish labor and cruel punishments, the slaves arranged escapes. But only a few managed to escape from the fortress. Only those lucky ones who were able to leave climbed high into the mountainous regions of the Caucasus. There, life gradually improved, but the Mountain Jews always kept apart in their community. Observing the customs of their ancestors, they conveyed to their descendants the faith in the Jewish God. It was only under Soviet rule that Jews gradually began to descend from the mountains to the plains. Therefore, since then we have been called that - Mountain Jews.

MOUNTAIN JEWS OR TATs?
When I graduated from school, it was in the late eighties, my dad handed me a passport, in which “tatka” was marked in the “nationality” column. I was very embarrassed by this entry in the passport, because there was another entry in the metric - “Mountain Jewess”. But my father explained that this way, they say, it would be easier to go to college, and in general to make a good career. Having entered a Moscow university, I was forced to explain to my classmates what kind of nationality this is.

An incident with nationality happened to my older brother. After serving in the army, my brother went to build the Baikal-Amur Mainline. When registering a residence permit, several letters were added to the word “tat” in the fifth column, and it turned out to be “Tatar”. Everything would be fine, but when repatriating to Israel, this became a big problem: he could not prove his Jewish origin in any way.

IN last years many scholars and historians turn to the study of the history of the Mountain Jews. Many books have been published on different languages(Russian, English, Azerbaijani, Hebrew), various conferences and research trips to the Caucasus are held. But the historical past of the Mountain Jews is still insufficiently studied and causes controversy about when they appeared in the Caucasus. Alas, no written documents have been preserved about the history of the resettlement. There are different versions about the appearance of Jews in the Caucasus:

* The Jews of the Caucasus have deep historical roots - they are the descendants of exiles from Jerusalem after the destruction of the First Temple;

* Mountain Jews originate from the Israelites, they are the descendants of ten tribes brought out of Palestine and settled in Media by the Assyrian and Babylonian kings;

* Jews who were under the rule of the Achaeminids, being merchants, officials and administrators, could easily move throughout the territory of the Persian state;

* In Babylonia and adjacent territories that are part of the New Persian kingdom, Jews mainly lived in big cities. They successfully engaged in crafts and trade, kept caravanserais, among them were doctors, scientists, teachers. Jews actively participated in trade on the Great Silk Road, which also passed through the Caucasus. The first representatives of the Jews, later called Mountain Jews, began to migrate from Iran to the Caucasus along the Caspian routes through Fiery Albania (now Azerbaijan).

Here is what the well-known Dagestan historian Igor Semenov writes in his article “Ascended to the Caucasus”:

“Mountain Jews, as a special part of the Jewish world, were formed in the Eastern Caucasus as a result of several waves of migration, mainly from Iran. By the way, the fact that the last two waves occurred relatively recently was reflected in many elements of the culture of the Mountain Jews, in particular in their name book. If any ethnic group has up to 200 male names and about 50 female names, then I have identified more than 800 male and about 200 female names among Mountain Jews (as of the beginning of the 20th century). This may indicate that there were more than three waves of Jewish migration to the Eastern Caucasus. Speaking about the migration of Jews to the Eastern Caucasus, one should not lose sight of the issue of their resettlement within the region. So, in relation to the territory of modern Azerbaijan, there is evidence that before the formation of the Jewish Sloboda of the city of Cuba, Jewish quarters existed in such settlements as Chirakhkala, Kusary, Rustov. And the village of Kulkat had an exclusively Jewish population. IN XVIII-XIX centuries Jewish Sloboda was the largest mountain Jewish center and as such played a significant role in the consolidation of various mountain Jewish groups. Later, the same role was played by those settlements that were centers of attraction for rural Jews - the cities of Derbent, Baku, Grozny, Nalchik, Makhachkala, Pyatigorsk, etc.”

But why were Mountain Jews called tatami in Soviet times?

Firstly, this is due to their Tat-Jewish language. Secondly, because of some representatives holding leading party posts, who tried their best to prove that the Mountain Jews, they say, are not Jews at all, but Tats. But not only Tats-Jews lived in the Eastern Caucasus, but also Tats-Muslims. True, the latter in their passport data indicated in their “nationality” column - “Azerbaijani”.

The same Igor Semenov writes:

“Regarding the origin of the Mountain Jews, the most different points vision. One of them boils down to the fact that the Mountain Jews are the descendants of those Tats who, having been Judaized in Iran, were resettled by the Sassanids to the Caucasus. This version, which arose among the Mountain Jews at the beginning of the 20th century, received the name of the Tat myth in the scientific literature ... It should also be pointed out that in reality the Tat tribe never existed in the Sasanian state. The term “tat” appeared in Iran much later, during the period of the Turkic (Seljuk) conquests, and in the narrow sense, the Turks denoted by it the Persians of Central Asia and North-Western Iran, and in the broad sense - all the sedentary population conquered by the Turks. In the Eastern Caucasus, this term was used by the Turks in its first, main meaning - in relation to the Persians, whose ancestors were resettled in this region under the Sassanids. It is also necessary to take into account that the Caucasian Persians themselves never called themselves “tatami”. And they called their language not “Tat”, but “Parsi”. Nevertheless, in the 19th century, the concepts of “Tats” and “Tat language” first entered the official Russian nomenclature, and then into linguistics and ethnographic literature.

Of course, the basis for the emergence and development of the Tat myth was the linguistic relationship between the Tat and Mountain Jewish languages, but even here the fact of very significant differences between the Tat proper and the Mountain Jewish languages ​​was ignored. In addition, it was not taken into account that all the languages ​​of the Jewish diaspora - Yiddish, Ladino, Jewish-Georgian, Jewish-Tajik and many others - are based on non-Jewish languages, which reflects the history of the formation of a particular Jewish group, but at the same time, this circumstance does not give any reason to consider the speakers of Ladino as Spaniards, Yiddish speakers as Germans, Georgian-Jewish speakers as Georgians, etc.”

Note that in all languages ​​close to Hebrew there are no borrowings from Hebrew. So the presence of elements of the Hebrew language - sure sign the fact that this dialect is most directly related to the Jewish people.

* * *
At present, the community of Mountain Jews is scattered all over the world. Despite the small number (although there is no exact number of their census), there are approximately 180-200 thousand people in the world on average. One of the largest communities in Israel - up to 100-120 thousand people, the rest of the Mountain Jews live in Russia, the USA, Canada, Germany, Austria, Australia, Spain, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and other regions of the world.

It is easy to come to the conclusion that the vast majority of Mountain Jews are not aliens who converted to Judaism, but are descendants of ancient settlers from the Promised Land. To the best of our knowledge, genetic studies confirm this fact. In appearance, unlike the Tats, the majority of Mountain Jews are typical Semites. There is one more argument: it is enough to look into the eyes of our compatriots from the Caucasus to catch in them all the longing of world Jewry.

In the photo: Mountain Jews, 1930s, Dagestan.

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During their long and difficult history, Jews have repeatedly been subjected to various persecutions in many countries of the world. Fleeing from their pursuers, representatives of the once united people scattered over the centuries to different parts of Europe, Asia and North Africa. One group of Jews as a result of long wanderings arrived on the territory of Dagestan and Azerbaijan. These people created an original culture that absorbed the traditions and customs of different peoples.

They call themselves juuru

The ethnonym "Mountain Jews", which has become widespread in Russia, cannot be considered completely legitimate. This is what the neighbors called these people to emphasize their difference from the rest of the representatives. ancient people. Mountain Jews call themselves dzhuur (in the singular - dzhuur). Dialect forms of pronunciation allow such variants of the ethnonym as "zhugur" and "gyivr".

They cannot be called a separate people, they are an ethnic group formed in the territories of Dagestan and Azerbaijan. The ancestors of the Mountain Jews fled to the Caucasus in the 5th century from Persia, where representatives of the tribe of Simon (one of the 12 tribes of Israel) lived from the 8th century BC.

Over the past few decades, most of the Mountain Jews have left their native lands. According to experts, the total number of representatives of this ethnic group is about 250 thousand people. Most of them now live in Israel (140-160 thousand) and the USA (about 40 thousand). There are about 30 thousand Mountain Jews in Russia: large communities are located in Moscow, Derbent, Makhachkala, Pyatigorsk, Nalchik, Grozny, Khasavyurt and Buynaksk. About 7 thousand people live in Azerbaijan today. The rest are in various European countries and Canada.

Do they speak a dialect of the Tat language?

From the point of view of most linguists, Mountain Jews speak a dialect of the Tat language. But the representatives of the tribe of Simonov themselves deny this fact, calling their language Juuri.

To begin with, let's figure it out: who are the Tats? These are people from Persia who fled from there, fleeing wars, civil strife and uprisings. They settled in the south of Dagestan and in Azerbaijan, like the Jews. Tat belongs to the southwestern group of Iranian languages.

Due to the long neighborhood, the languages ​​of the two above-mentioned ethnic groups inevitably acquired common features, which gave specialists a reason to consider them as dialects of the same language. However, Mountain Jews consider this approach fundamentally wrong. In their opinion, Tat influenced the Juuri in the same way that German influenced Yiddish.

However, the Soviet government did not delve into such linguistic subtleties. The leadership of the RSFSR generally denied any relationship between the inhabitants of Israel and the Mountain Jews. Everywhere there was a process of their tatization. In the official statistics of the USSR, both ethnic groups were counted as some kind of Caucasian Persians (Tats).

Currently, many Mountain Jews have lost their native language, switching to Hebrew, English, Russian or Azerbaijani, depending on the country of residence. By the way, representatives of the Simonov tribe have had their own written language for a long time, which in Soviet times was first translated into Latin, and then into Cyrillic. Several books and textbooks were published in the so-called Jewish-Tat language in the 20th century.

Anthropologists are still arguing about the ethnogenesis of the Mountain Jews. Some experts rank them among the descendants of the forefather Abraham, others consider them a Caucasian tribe that converted to Judaism in the era of the Khazar Khaganate. For example, the famous Russian scientist Konstantin Kurdov, in his work “Mountain Jews of Dagestan”, which was published in the Russian Anthropological Journal of 1905, wrote that Mountain Jews are most close to the Lezgins.

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Other researchers note that the representatives of the Simonov tribe, who settled in the Caucasus long ago, are similar to Abkhazians, Ossetians, Avars and Chechens in their customs, traditions and national clothes. The material culture and social organization of all these peoples are almost identical.

Mountain Jews lived for many centuries in large patriarchal families, they had polygamy, and it was necessary to pay bride price for a bride. The customs of hospitality and mutual assistance inherent in neighboring peoples have always been supported by local Jews. Even now they cook dishes of Caucasian cuisine, dance lezginka, perform incendiary music, characteristic of the inhabitants of Dagestan and Azerbaijan.

But, on the other hand, all these traditions do not necessarily indicate ethnic kinship, they could be borrowed in the process of long-term coexistence of peoples. After all, the Mountain Jews have retained their national characteristics, the roots of which go back to the religion of their ancestors. They celebrate all major Jewish holidays, observe wedding and funeral rites, numerous gastronomic prohibitions, and follow the instructions of the rabbis.

British geneticist Dror Rosengarten analyzed the Y-chromosome of Mountain Jews in 2002 and found that the paternal haplotypes of this ethnic group and other Jewish communities largely coincide. Thus, the Semitic origin of the Juuru is now scientifically confirmed.

Fight against Islamization

One of the reasons that allowed the Mountain Jews not to get lost among other inhabitants of the Caucasus is their religion. Firm adherence to the canons of Judaism contributed to the preservation of national identity. It is noteworthy that at the beginning of the 9th century, the class top of the Khazar Khaganate - a powerful and influential empire located in the south of modern Russia - adopted the faith of the Jews. This happened under the influence of representatives of the tribe of Simonov, who lived on the territory of the modern Caucasus. By converting to Judaism, the Khazar rulers received the support of the Jews in the fight against the Arab invaders, whose expansion was stopped. However, the kaganate still fell in the 11th century under the onslaught of the Polovtsians.

Having survived the Mongol-Tatar invasion, for many centuries the Jews fought against Islamization, not wanting to give up their religion, for which they were repeatedly persecuted. Thus, the troops of the Iranian ruler Nadir Shah Afshar (1688-1747), who repeatedly attacked Azerbaijan and Dagestan, did not spare the Gentiles.

Another commander who, among other things, sought to Islamize the entire Caucasus, was Imam Shamil (1797-1871), who opposed the Russian Empire, which asserted its influence on these lands in the 19th century. Fearing extermination by radical Muslims, the Mountain Jews supported the Russian army in the fight against Shamil's detachments.

Growers, winemakers, merchants

The Jewish population of Dagestan and Azerbaijan, like their neighbors, is engaged in gardening, winemaking, weaving carpets and fabrics, leatherworking, fishing and other crafts traditional for the Caucasus. There are many successful businessmen, sculptors and writers among the Mountain Jews. For example, one of the authors of the monument to the Unknown Soldier, erected in Moscow near the Kremlin wall, is Yuno Ruvimovich Rabaev (1927-1993). In Soviet times, the writers Khizgil Davidovich Avshalumov (1913-2001) and Mishi Yusupovich Bakhshiev (1910-1972) reflected the life of fellow countrymen in their work. And now books of poems by Eldar Pinkhasovich Gurshumov, who heads the Union of Caucasian Writers of Israel, are being actively published.

Representatives of the Jewish ethnic group on the territory of Azerbaijan and Dagestan should not be confused with the so-called Georgian Jews. This sub-ethnos arose and developed in parallel and has its own original culture.

Orynganym Tanatarova
russian7.ru

MOUNTAIN JEWS, Jewish ethnolinguistic group (community). They live mainly in Azerbaijan and Dagestan. The term Mountain Jews arose in the first half of the 19th century. during the annexation of these territories by the Russian Empire. The self-name of the Mountain Jews is ju X ur.

Mountain Jews speak several dialects close to each other (see Jewish-Tat language) of the Tat language, which belongs to the western branch of the Iranian group of languages. According to estimates based on the Soviet censuses of 1959 and 1970, the number of Mountain Jews in 1970, according to various estimates, was fifty to seventy thousand people. 17,109 Mountain Jews in the 1970 census and about 22,000 in the 1979 census chose to call themselves Tats in order to avoid registration as Jews and the resulting discrimination from the authorities. The main centers of concentration of Mountain Jews are: in Azerbaijan - Baku (the capital of the republic) and the city of Kuba (where the majority of Mountain Jews live in the Krasnaya Sloboda suburb, inhabited exclusively by Jews); in Dagestan - Derbent, Makhachkala (the capital of the republic, until 1922 - Petrovsk-Port) and Buynaksk (until 1922 - Temir-Khan-Shura). Prior to the outbreak of hostilities in Chechnya, outside of Azerbaijan and Dagestan, a significant number of Mountain Jews lived in Nalchik (a suburb of the Jewish Kolonka) and in Grozny.

Judging by the linguistic and indirect historical data, it can be assumed that the community of Mountain Jews was formed as a result of the constant immigration of Jews from Northern Iran, and also, possibly, the immigration of Jews from the nearby regions of the Byzantine Empire to Transcaucasian Azerbaijan, where they settled (in its eastern and north- eastern regions) among the population speaking Tat and switched to this language. This immigration apparently began with the Muslim conquests in these areas (639-643) as part of the migratory movements characteristic of that time, and continued throughout the period between the Arab and Mongol (mid-13th century) conquests. It can also be assumed that its main waves ceased at the beginning of the 11th century. in connection with the mass invasion of nomads - the Oghuz Turks. Apparently, this invasion also caused the movement of a significant part of the Tat-speaking Jewish population of Transcaucasian Azerbaijan further north, to Dagestan. There they came into contact with the remnants of those who accepted in the 8th century. Khazar Judaism, whose state (see Khazaria) ceased to exist no earlier than the 60s. 10th century, and those over time were assimilated by Jewish immigrants.

Already in 1254, the Flemish traveler monk B. Rubrukvis (Rubruk) noted the presence of a "large number of Jews" in the entire Eastern Caucasus, apparently both in Dagestan (or part of it) and in Azerbaijan. Probably, the Mountain Jews maintained ties with the geographically closest Jewish community to them - with the Jews of Georgia, but data on this have not been found. On the other hand, it is safe to say that the Mountain Jews maintained contacts with the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean basin. The Egyptian Muslim historiographer Taghriberdi (1409–1470) tells of Jewish merchants from "Cherkessia" (that is, from the Caucasus) visiting Cairo. As a result of such connections, printed books also found their way into the places of residence of the Mountain Jews: in the city of Kuba, until the beginning of the 20th century. books printed in Venice at the end of the 16th century were kept. and the beginning of the 17th century. Apparently, along with printed books, the Sephardic noses (liturgical way) spread and took root among the Mountain Jews, which they have adopted to this day.

Since European travelers did not reach these places in the 14th–16th centuries, the reason that gave rise to the turn of the 16th–17th centuries in Europe. rumors about the existence of "nine and a half Jewish tribes", which "Alexander the Great drove beyond the Caspian mountains" (that is, to Dagestan), was, perhaps, the appearance at that time in Italy (?) of Jewish merchants from the Eastern Caucasus. The Dutch traveler N. Witsen, who visited Dagestan in 1690, found many Jews there, especially in the village of Buynak (not far from present-day Buynaksk) and in the specific possession (khanate) of Karakaytag, where, according to him, 15 thousand Jews lived at that time. Jews. Apparently 17th century. and the beginning of the 18th century. were a period of certain calm and prosperity for the Mountain Jews. There was a continuous strip of Jewish settlements in the north of present-day Azerbaijan and in the south of Dagestan, in the area between the cities of Kuba and Derbent. One of the valleys near Derbent was apparently inhabited mainly by Jews, and the surrounding population called it Dzhu X ud-Kata (Jewish Valley). The largest settlement in the valley - Aba-Sava - also served as the center of the spiritual life of the community. Several piyuts have been preserved, which were composed in Hebrew by the Paytan Elisha ben Shmuel who lived there. The theologian Gershon Lala ben Moshe Nakdi also lived in Aba Sava, who wrote a commentary on Yad X hazaka Maimonides. The last evidence of religious creativity in Hebrew among the community should be considered the Kabbalistic work "Kol mewasser" ("Voice of the messenger"), which was written somewhere between 1806 and 1828 by Mattatya ben Shmuel X a-ko X en Mizrahi from the city of Shemakha, south of Quba.

From the second third of the 18th century. The position of the Mountain Jews deteriorated significantly as a result of the struggle for possession of the area of ​​their residence, in which Russia, Iran, Turkey and a number of local rulers participated. In the early 1730s. Iranian commander Nadir (Shah of Iran in 1736–47) managed to oust the Turks from Azerbaijan and successfully resist Russia in the struggle for the possession of Dagestan. Several settlements of Mountain Jews were almost completely destroyed by his troops, a number of others were destroyed and plundered. Those who escaped the defeat settled in Quba under the auspices of its ruler Hussein Khan. In 1797 (or 1799), the ruler of the Kazikumukhs (Laks), Surkhay Khan, attacked Aba-Sava and, after a fierce battle in which almost 160 defenders of the village fell, executed all the captured men, destroyed the village, and destroyed the women and children taken away as booty. Thus came the end of the settlements of the Jewish Valley. The Jews who survived and managed to escape found refuge in Derbent under the auspices of the local ruler Fath-Alikhan, whose possessions extended to the city of Kuba.

In 1806, Russia finally annexed Derbent and the surrounding area. In 1813 Transcaucasian Azerbaijan was actually (and in 1828 officially) annexed. Thus, the areas where the vast majority of Mountain Jews lived came under Russian rule. In 1830, in Dagestan (except for part of the coastal strip, including Derbent), an uprising against Russia began under the leadership of Shamil, which continued intermittently until 1859. The slogan of the uprising was the holy war of Muslims against the "infidels", so it was accompanied by brutal attacks on the Mountain Jews. The inhabitants of a number of auls (villages) were forcibly converted to Islam and eventually merged with the surrounding population, although among the inhabitants of these auls, for several generations, the memory of their Jewish origin. In 1840, the heads of the community of Mountain Jews in Derbent turned to Nicholas I with a petition (written in Hebrew), asking him to “gather those scattered from the mountains, from forests and small villages that are in the hands of the Tatars (that is, the rebellious Muslims) into cities and large settlements”, that is, transfer them to the territory where the power of Russia remained unshaken.

The transition of Mountain Jews under Russian rule did not lead to immediate changes in their position, occupations, and community structure; Such changes were outlined only by the end of the 19th century. Of the 7649 Mountain Jews who, according to official Russian data, were under Russian rule in 1835, rural residents accounted for 58.3% (4459 souls), city dwellers - 41.7% (3190 souls). Urban residents were also largely engaged in agriculture, mainly viticulture and winemaking (especially in Kuba and Derbent), as well as madder cultivation (a plant from whose roots red paint is extracted). From among the winemakers came the families of the first mountain-Jewish millionaires: the Khanukaevs, owners of a company for the production and marketing of wine, and the Dadashevs, who, in addition to winemaking, were engaged by the end of the 19th century. and fishing, having founded the largest fishing company in Dagestan. Cultivation of madder almost completely ceased by the end of the 19th century. - early 20th century as a result of the development of the production of aniline dyes; Most of the Mountain Jews who were engaged in this craft went bankrupt and turned into laborers (mainly in Baku, where Mountain Jews began to settle in significant numbers only towards the end of the 19th century, and in Derbent), peddlers and seasonal workers in the fisheries (mainly in Derbent). Almost every Mountain Jew, engaged in viticulture, was also engaged in horticulture. In some settlements of Azerbaijan, Mountain Jews were mainly engaged in tobacco growing, and in Kaitag and Tabasaran (Dagestan) and in a number of villages in Azerbaijan - arable farming. In some villages, leather craft was the main occupation. This industry went into decline in the early 20th century. because of the prohibition of the Russian authorities on the entry of Mountain Jews into Central Asia, where they bought raw skins. A significant part of the tanners also turned into urban laborers. The number of people employed in petty trade (including peddling) was relatively small in the initial period of Russian power, but increased significantly towards the end of the 19th century. - the beginning of the 20th century, mainly due to the ruined owners of madder plantations and tanners. There were few wealthy merchants; they were concentrated mainly in Cuba and Derbent, and by the end of the 19th century. also in Baku and Temir-Khan-Shura and were mainly engaged in the trade of fabrics and carpets.

The main social unit of the Mountain Jews until the late 1920s - early 1930s. was a big family. Such a family covered three or four generations, and the number of its members reached 70 people or more. As a rule, a large family lived in one "yard", where each nuclear family (father and mother with children) had a separate house. The prohibition against rabben Gershom was not adopted by the Mountain Jews, so polygamy, mainly two and three marriages, was common among them until the Soviet period. If the nuclear family consisted of a husband and two or three wives, each of the wives with her children had a separate house or, more rarely, each of them lived with her children in a separate part of the family's common house. The head of a large family was the father, and after his death, the primacy passed to the eldest son. The head of the family took care of the property, which was considered the collective property of all its members. He also determined the place and order of work of all men in the family. His authority was indisputable. The mother of the family or, in polygamous families, the first of the wives of the father of the family ran the family household and supervised the work performed by women: cooking, which was prepared and eaten together, cleaning the yard and house, etc. Several large families who knew about their origin from a common ancestor, formed an even wider and relatively poorly organized community, the so-called tukhum (literally `seed`). A special case of creating family ties arose in the event of non-fulfillment of blood feud: if the killer was also a Jew, and the relatives did not manage to avenge the blood of the murdered within three days, the families of the murdered and the murderer were reconciled and considered to be related by ties of blood relationship.

The population of the Jewish village consisted, as a rule, of three to five large families. The village community was led by the head of the most respected or most numerous family of the given settlement. In cities, Jews lived either in their own special suburb (Kuba) or in a separate Jewish quarter within the city (Derbent). Starting from the 1860s–70s. Mountain Jews began to settle in cities where they had not previously lived (Baku, Temir-Khan-Shura), and in cities founded by Russians (Petrovsk-Port, Nalchik, Grozny). This resettlement was accompanied, for the most part, by the destruction of the framework of a large family, since only a part of it - one or two nuclear families - moved to a new place of residence. Even in the cities where the Mountain Jews lived for a long time - in Kuba and Derbent (but not in the villages), - by the end of the 19th century. the process of disintegration of a large family began and the emergence, along with it, of a group of families of several brothers, connected by close ties, but no longer subordinate to the exclusive and indisputable authority of a single head of the family.

Reliable data on the administrative structure of the urban community are available only for Derbent. The community of Derbent was led by three persons elected by it. One of the elected was, apparently, the head of the community, the other two - his deputies. They were responsible both for relations with the authorities and for the internal affairs of the community. There were two levels of the rabbinical hierarchy - "rabbi" and "dayan". The rabbi was a cantor (see Khazzan) and a preacher (see Maggid) in the namaz (synagogue) of his village or his quarter in the city, a teacher in the talmid-huna (cheder) and shochet. Dayan was the chief rabbi of the city. He was elected by the leaders of the community and was the highest religious authority not only for his city, but also for neighboring settlements, presided over a religious court (see Bet-din), was a cantor and preacher in the city's main synagogue, and led a yeshiva. The level of knowledge of Halakha among those who graduated from the yeshiva corresponded to the level of the butcher, but they were called "rabbi". Starting from the middle of the 19th century. a certain number of Mountain Jews studied in the Ashkenazi yeshivas of Russia, mainly in Lithuania, but even there they received, as a rule, only the title of slaughterer (shochet) and, upon returning to the Caucasus, served as a rabbi. Only a few of the Mountain Jews who studied in Russian yeshivas received the title of rabbi. Apparently, since the middle of the 19th century. The dayan of Temir-Khan-Shura was recognized by the tsarist authorities as the chief rabbi of the Mountain Jews in Northern Dagestan and the North Caucasus, and the dayan of Derbent was recognized as the chief rabbi of the Mountain Jews in Southern Dagestan and Azerbaijan. In addition to their traditional duties, the authorities assigned them the role of state rabbis.

In the pre-Russian period, the relationship between the Mountain Jews and the Muslim population was determined by the so-called Omar Laws (a special set of general Islamic regulations in relation to dhimmis). But here their use was accompanied by special humiliations and significant personal dependence of the Mountain Jews on the local ruler. According to the description of the German traveler I. Gerber (1728), the Mountain Jews not only paid money to Muslim rulers for patronage (here this tax was called kharaj, and not jizya, as in other countries of Islam), but were also forced to pay additional taxes, as well as " to do all sorts of hard and dirty work that a Muslim cannot be forced to do.” The Jews were supposed to supply the ruler with the products of their household (tobacco, madder, processed leather, etc.) for free, participate in harvesting in his fields, in the construction and repair of his house, in work in his garden and vineyard, and provide him with certain the timing of their horses. There was also a special system of extortion - dish-egrisi: collection of money by Muslim soldiers "for causing toothache" from a Jew in whose house they ate.

Until the end of the 60s. 19th century Jews of some mountainous regions of Dagestan continued to pay kharaj to the former Muslim rulers of these places (or their descendants), whom the tsarist government equated in rights with the Russian eminent nobility, and left estates in their hands. The former obligations of the Mountain Jews towards these rulers also remained, arising from the dependence that had been established even before the Russian conquest.

Blood libels became a phenomenon that arose in the areas of settlement of Mountain Jews only after they joined Russia. In 1814, there were riots on this ground, directed against Jews living in Baku, immigrants from Iran, and the latter found refuge in Cuba. In 1878, dozens of Cuban Jews were arrested on the basis of a blood libel, and in 1911, the Jews of the village of Tarki were accused of kidnapping a Muslim girl.

By the twenties and thirties of the 19th century. include the first contacts between Mountain Jews and Russian Ashkenazi Jews. But only in the 60s, with the publication of decrees allowing those categories of Jews who had the right to live outside the so-called Pale of Settlement, to settle in most of the areas of settlement of Mountain Jews, contacts with the Ashkenazim of Russia became more frequent and strengthened. Already in the 70s. chief rabbi Derbent, Rabbi Ya'akov Yitzhakovich-Yitzhaki (1848–1917) established contacts with a number of Jewish scientists in St. Petersburg. In 1884, the chief rabbi of Temir-Khan-Shura, Rabbi Sharbat Nissim-ogly, sent his son Eliya X y (see I. Anisimov) to the Higher Technical School in Moscow, and he becomes the first mountain Jew to receive a higher secular education. At the beginning of the 20th century schools for Mountain Jews were opened in Baku, Derbent and Cuba with teaching in Russian: in them, along with religious, secular subjects were also studied.

Probably already in the 40s or 50s. 19th century the desire for the Holy Land led some Mountain Jews to Eretz Israel. In the 1870s–80s. Dagestan is regularly visited by emissaries from Jerusalem collecting money for the halukkah. In the second half of the 1880s. in Jerusalem already exists "Kolel Dagestan". Late 1880s or early 90s. Rabbi Sharbat Nissim-ogly settles in Jerusalem; in 1894 he published the pamphlet “Kadmoniot ie X uday X e- X arim" ("Antiquities of the Mountain Jews"). In 1898, representatives of the Mountain Jews took part in the work of the 2nd Zionist Congress in Basel. In 1907, Rabbi Yaakov Yitzhakovich-Yitzhaki moved to Eretz Israel and led a group of 56 founders of a settlement near Ramla, named after him Beer Yaakov; a significant part of the group were Mountain Jews. Another group of Mountain Jews tried, though unsuccessfully, to settle in 1909–11. in Mahanaim (Upper Galilee). Yehezkel Nisanov, who arrived in the country in 1908, became one of the pioneers of the organization X a-Shomer (was killed by the Arabs in 1911). IN X HaShomer and his brothers Ye X uda and zvi. Before the First World War, the number of Mountain Jews in Eretz Israel reaches several hundred people. A significant part of them settled in Jerusalem, in the Beth Israel quarter.

One of the active disseminators of the idea of ​​Zionism among the Mountain Jews in the early 20th century. was Asaf Pinkhasov, who in 1908 published in Vilna (see Vilnius) his translation from Russian into Hebrew-Tat of the book of Dr. Iosef Sapir (1869-1935) "Zionism" (1903). It was the first book published in the language of the Mountain Jews. During the First World War, a lively Zionist activity takes place in Baku; a number of Mountain Jews also take part in it. This activity developed with particular force after the February Revolution of 1917. Four representatives of Mountain Jews, including one woman, took part in the Conference of the Zionists of the Caucasus (August 1917). In November 1917, power in Baku passes into the hands of the Bolsheviks. In September 1918, an independent Azerbaijan Republic was proclaimed. All these changes - until the secondary Sovietization of Azerbaijan in 1921 - in essence, do not affect Zionist activity. The National Jewish Council of Azerbaijan, led by the Zionists, created in 1919 the Jewish People's University. Lectures on Mountain Jews were given by F. Shapiro, and there were also Mountain Jews among the students. In the same year, the District Caucasian Zionist Committee began publishing a newspaper in the Jewish-Tat language, Tobushi Sabakhi (Zarya), in Baku. Among the active Zionists from among the Mountain Jews stood out Gershon Muradov and the already mentioned Asaf Pinkhasov (both later died in Soviet prisons).

Mountain Jews living in Dagestan saw the struggle between the Soviet authorities and local separatists as a continuation of the struggle between Russians and Muslims, so their sympathies were, as a rule, on the side of the Soviets. Mountain Jews made up about 70% of the Red Guards in Dagestan. Dagestani separatists and the Turks who came to their aid massacred Jewish settlements; some of them were destroyed and ceased to exist. As a result, a large number of Jews living in the mountains moved to cities on the plain along the coast of the Caspian Sea, mainly in Derbent, Makhachkala and Buynaksk. After the consolidation of Soviet power in Dagestan, hatred of the Jews did not disappear. In 1926 and 1929 there were blood libels against the Jews; the first of these was accompanied by pogroms.

In the early 1920s approximately three hundred families of Mountain Jews from Azerbaijan and Dagestan managed to leave for Eretz-Israel. Most of them settled in Tel Aviv, where they created their own "Caucasian" quarter. One of the most prominent figures in this second aliyah of the Mountain Jews was Je X uda Adamowicz (died 1980; father of Deputy Chief of the General Staff Tsa X ala Yekutiel Adam, who died during the Lebanese war in 1982).

In 1921–22 organized Zionist activity among the Mountain Jews was effectively stopped. The wave of repatriation to Eretz Israel also stopped and resumed only 50 years later. In the period between the end of the civil war and the entry of the USSR into World War II, the most important goals of the authorities in relation to the Mountain Jews were their “production” and the weakening of the positions of religion, in which the authorities saw the main ideological enemy. In the field of "productivization" the main efforts, starting from the second half of the 1920s, were concentrated on the creation of Jewish collective farms. In the North Caucasian (now Krasnodar) Territory, two new Jewish collective farms were founded in the settlements of Bogdanovka and Ganshtakovka (about 320 families in 1929). In Dagestan, by 1931, about 970 families of Mountain Jews were involved in collective farms. Collective farms were also created in Jewish villages and the Jewish suburbs of Cuba in Azerbaijan: in 1927, in this republic, members of 250 families of Mountain Jews were collective farmers. By the end of the 30s. there was a tendency among the Mountain Jews to leave the collective farms, but many Jewish collective farms continued to exist after the Second World War; in the early 1970s. about 10% of the community members remained collective farmers.

With regard to religion, the authorities preferred, in accordance with their general policy in the "eastern periphery" of the USSR, not to deal an immediate blow, but to shake the religious foundations gradually, with the help of the secularization of the community. An extensive network of schools was created, special attention was paid to work with youth and adults within the clubs. In 1922, the first Soviet newspaper in the Jewish-Tat language "Korsoh" ("Worker") began to appear in Baku - the organ of the Caucasian Regional Committee of the Jewish Communist Party and its youth organization. The newspaper, which bore traces of the Zionist past of this party (it was that faction of Po'alei Zion, which strove for complete solidarity with the Bolsheviks), did not fully satisfy the authorities and did not last long. In 1928, a newspaper of Mountain Jews called Zakhmatkash (Worker) began to appear in Derbent. In 1929–30 the Hebrew-Tat language was translated from the Hebrew alphabet into Latin, and in 1938 into Russian. In 1934, the Tat literary circle was founded in Derbent, and in 1936 - the Tat section of the Union Soviet writers Dagestan (see Jewish-Tat literature).

The works of Mountain Jewish writers of that period are characterized by strong communist indoctrination, especially in drama, which the authorities considered the most effective propaganda tool, which found expression in the creation of numerous amateur theater groups and the founding of a professional theater of Mountain Jews in Derbent (1935). In 1934, a dance ensemble of mountain Jews was created under the direction of T. Izrailov (1918–81, People's Artist of the USSR since 1978), an expert on dances and folklore of the peoples of the Caucasus. Wave of terror 1936–38 did not pass by the Mountain Jews. Among the victims was G. Gorsky, the founder of Soviet culture among the Mountain Jews.

During the Second World War, the Germans briefly occupied some of the districts North Caucasus where the Mountain Jews lived. In those places where there was a mixed Ashkenazi and mountain-Jewish population (Kislovodsk, Pyatigorsk), all Jews were destroyed. The same fate befell the population of some collective farms of Mountain Jews in the Krasnodar Territory, as well as settlements of Mountain Jews in the Crimea, founded in the 1920s. (collective farm named after S. Shaumyan). In the regions of Nalchik and Grozny, the Germans, apparently, were waiting for a "professional" opinion of "experts on the Jewish question" about this ethnic group unknown to them, but retreated from these places before receiving precise instructions. Big number mountain Jews participated in military operations, and many of them were awarded high military awards, and Sh. Abramov and I. Illazarov - the title of Hero Soviet Union.

After World War II, the anti-religion campaign resumed on an even larger scale, and in 1948-53. teaching in the Jewish-Tat language was abolished, and all the schools of the Mountain Jews turned into Russian-speaking ones. The publication of the Zakhmatkash newspaper and literary activity in the Jewish-Tat language were discontinued. (Issue of the newspaper in the form of a weekly resumed in 1975 as a reaction of the authorities to the rapid growth among the Mountain Jews of the movement for repatriation to Israel.)

Anti-Semitism persecuted the Mountain Jews in the post-Stalin period as well. In 1960, the Kommunist newspaper, published in Buynaksk in the Kumyk language, wrote that the Jewish religion commands believers to add a few drops of Muslim blood to Easter wine. In the second half of the 70s, on the basis of repatriation to Israel, attacks on Mountain Jews resumed, in particular in Nalchik. Cultural and literary activity in the Jewish-Tat language, which resumed after the death of I. Stalin, was clearly rudimentary in nature. Since the end of 1953, an average of two books per year have been published in this language in the USSR. In 1956, the almanac "Vatan Sovetimu" ("Our Soviet Motherland") began to appear, conceived as a yearbook, but in fact appearing less than once a year. The main, and sometimes the only language of a significant part of the youth is Russian. Even representatives of the middle generation use the language of the community only at home, in the family circle, and for a conversation on more complex topics they are forced to switch to Russian. This phenomenon is especially noticeable among residents of cities where the percentage of Mountain Jews is relatively low (for example, in Baku), and in circles of Mountain Jews who have received higher education.

Religious foundations among the Mountain Jews are weakened more than among the Georgian and Bukharian Jews, but still not to the same extent as among the Ashkenazim of the Soviet Union. Most members of the community still observe religious customs associated with the life cycle of a person (circumcision, traditional wedding, burial). Kosher is observed in a large part of the houses. However, observance of the Sabbath and Jewish holidays (with the exception of Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year, the Passover Seder, and the use of matzah) is inconsistent, and familiarity with the order and traditions of reciting prayers is inferior to knowledge of them in other "Eastern" Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union. Despite this, the degree of Jewish self-consciousness is still very high (even among Mountain Jews registered as Tats). The resumption of the mass repatriation of Mountain Jews to Israel began with some delay compared to other groups of Jews in the Soviet Union: not in 1971, but after the Yom Kippur War, in late 1973 - early 1974. Until mid-1981, they repatriated to Israel over twelve thousand Mountain Jews.

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