Azerbaijani Jews - History

History

Azerbaijani Jewry traces its roots back to the existence of Caucasian Albania, an ancient and early medieval kingdom situated in what is now Azerbaijan, and populated with predecessors of modern Lezgins, Tsakhurs, Azeris, Udis, etc. 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 Guba.

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.

From the late 19th century Baku became one of the centres of the Zionist movement in the Russian Empire. The first Hovevei Zion was established here in 1891, followed by the first Zionist organization in 1899. The movement remained strong in the short-lived Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan (1918–1920) marked with the establishment of the Jewish Popular University in 1919, periodicals printed in Yiddish, Hebrew, Judæo-Tat and Russian, and a number of schools, social clubs, benevolent societies and cultural organizations.

After Sovietization 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 and Dagestan left for Israel and settled in Tel-Aviv. The next aliyah did not take place until the 1970s, after the ban on Jewish immigration to Israel 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; according to the census, 41,288 Jews resided in Azerbaijan that year.

Many Jewish émigrés from Azerbaijan settled in Tel-Aviv and Haifa. There are relatively large communities of Mountain Jewish expatriates from Azerbaijan in New York and Toronto.

A new Jewish synagogue, which became the biggest synagogue of Europe was opened in Baku on March 9, 2003. There is also a Jewish school, which has been operating in Azerbaijan since 2003. Currently, there are three synagogues in Baku, two in Quba and one in Oghuz.