Mountain Jews

Mountain Jews, or Juhuro, are Jews of the eastern Caucasus, mainly of Dagestan. Also known as East Caucasian Jews or simply Caucasian Jews. The name "Mountain Jews" or "Caucasian Jews" is something of a misnomer, as it does not include Georgian and Ashkenazi Jews of the Caucasus Mountains. It is, however, the common term applied to them.

Self-designation

They call themselves "Juhuro" (or "Juwuro" in the Kuba dialect), which simply means "Jews" - any Jews, for example "Juhur Eshgenezini" - Ashkenazic Jew, while "Juhur imuni" means "our Jew", i.e. East-Caucasian Jew. They also call themselves "'ivri" and "yehudi", especially older people.

In literature they have been referred to as East Caucasian Jews, Mountain Jews, Jewish Tats, Juhur and Dagh Chufut. In Russian, they are known as Gorskiye Yevrei, meaning "Mountain Jews".

Location

The majority of Caucasian Mountain Jews live in Dagestan, Kaitag and Magaramkend (three settlements), Derbent, and Makhachkala. They also live in a few Azerbaijani villages (Krasnaya Sloboda part of Quba, Vartashen) and in some towns. A smaller number have settled in Northern Caucasus — Grozny, Gorny and Nalchik. In the period 1970–1990 the majority of Mountain Jews immigrated to Israel, some moved to Moscow and the United States. The majority of Mountain Jews that immigrated to the U.S. live in Brooklyn, New York

Population

The population is difficult to estimate, as during the censuses the Mountain Jews have been counted as members of the overall Jewish community, or as Tats, whose language they speak. In 1926 they numbered approximately 26,000; in 1959 about 15,000 lived in Dagestan (the Russian Federation total was 16,707) and more than 10,000 in Azerbaijan. In 1979 the overall number of Jews in Dagestan was 19,000 and 35,000 in Azerbaijan, the percentage of Mountain Jews is unknown. Ethnologue reports their number at 101,000:

Israel 70,000
Azerbaijan 24,000
Russia 7,000

Language

See main article Juhuri language.

The Mountain Jews speak Juhuri, or Judæo-Tat language, which is closely related to Middle Persian; it belongs to the Iranian division of the Indo-European languages.

Ethnic origins and history

In terms of ethnic origin, it is assumed that the Mountain Jews and Tats have inhabited Caucasia for a long time. Their distant forefathers once lived in south west Persia, the south-western part of present-day Iran. It was there that they adopted the Middle Persian language. The predecessors of the Mountain Jews settled in the Caucasian Albania in the 5th–6th century and from that time on their history has been related to the mountains and the people of Dagestan. Their tradition says that they lived in the eastern Caucasus since 722 BCE.

There are several theories about their origins. One is that they are descended from Jewish military colonists settled by Parthian and Sassanid rulers in the Caucasus as frontier guards against nomadic incursions from the Pontic steppe. Another speculation is that they are ethnic Tats converted to Judaism; still others regard the Muslim Tats as Mountain Jews that converted to Islam. Yet another theory is that they are descended from the Khazars; however, this seems unlikely, since they appear to have been settled in the Caucasus prior to the rise of the Khazar polity. Nevertheless, they may have been allied or subject to the Khazar Khaganate, and likely accepted Jewish Khazars into their communities following the fall of Khazaria in the tenth and eleventh centuries CE. The recent research on DNA of East Caucasian Jews put end to various speculations about their origin, since their Y-chromosome is consistent with Y-chromosome of other Jewish communities.

The Mountain Jews resettled from the mountains to the coastal lowlands in the 18th–19th century, but carried the name "Mountain Jews" with them.

In the villages (aouls) the Mountain Jews settled in a part of their own, in towns they did the same, although their dwellings did not differ from their neighbours’. The Mountain Jews also took to wearing the highlanders’ dress. Judaistic prohibitions ensured they retained specific dishes, and faith still enshrined in the rules for family life.

If elsewhere in the Jewish diaspora it was forbidden to own and till land (cf. the Jews of Central Asia), at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century the Mountain Jews were farmers and gardeners, growing mainly grain. Their oldest occupation was rice-growing, but raising silkworms and tobacco were also popular. The Jewish vineyards were especially famous. The Jews and their Armenian neighbors were the main producers of wine, an activity banned for Muslims by religion. Judaism, in turn, strictly limited any meat consumption; and unlike their neighbours, the Mountain Jews raised few domestic animals.

At the same time they were renowned tanners. Tanning was the third most important activity after farming and gardening, and at the end of the 19th century 6% of Jews were engaged in this trade. Handicrafts and commerce were mostly practiced by Jews in towns.

The Soviet authorities bound the Mountain Jews to collective farms but allowed them to carry on in their traditional ways, growing grapes, tobacco and vegetables and making wine. However, the former isolated lifestyle of the Jews has practically been eradicated, and they now live side by side with other ethnic groups.

Originally education was only for the boys who attended synagogue schools. With sovietization, Tat became the language of tuition at newly-founded elementary schools. It remained so till the beginning of World War II. The publication of the first native-language newspaper, Zakhmetkesh (Working People), began in 1928. After the war Russian became the only acceptable language at Dagestan schools and the publication of the newspaper stopped. Today Mountain Jewish intellectuals are active in the Dagestan cultural scene. Several of them are prominent actors and artists, and there are writers and poets. However, only amateur theatricals and concerts are there to highlight their culture.

References

''Some text used with permission from www.eki.ee/books/redbook. The original text can be found here.

External links

Juhuro.com, website first put together about Juhuro "Mountain Jews" by Vadim Alhasov in 2001, and later supported by Vitaliy Shalem (in Russian), who is updating the Russian-language portion weekly. As of March 2005 the English version has not been updated for a long time.
Ethnologue article on Judæo-Tat

Caucasus | Ethnic groups in Dagestan | Iranian languages | Jews