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Chabad emissaries in the mountain Jewish communities: negotiating religious and cultural practices in the North Caucasus
Author(s): Redmond, Varvara
Date: 2025
Topics: Chabad-Lubavitch, Mountain Jews, Main Topic: Other, Outreach, Social Media
Abstract: In this paper, I focus on online and offline practices of community-building within two specific religious communities that remain active despite mass emigration. These communities are based in Derbent, Dagestan, and Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria, with members located in Moscow and the North Caucasus. Both communities have formally accepted rabbis from Chabad-Lubavitch, who are likely to promote Chabad-Lubavitch values among community members. I investigate the strategies and methods used by Chabad emissaries in the region to facilitate the process of chabadization. In addition to outreach activities, the visual manifestations of chabadization are significant in this study, as they are presented across multiple online platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and other social forums, chats, and websites. My research combines online analysis with fieldwork conducted in Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Moscow between 2018 and 2020.
Caucasus Jews and their Neighbors: Social Network in a Multi-Ethnic Society
Author(s): Bram, Chen
Editor(s): Özgür, Ergün
Date: 2009
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Diaspora, Mountain Jews, Language, Networks, Jewish Identity, National Identity, Ethnicity, Ethnography, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Jewish - Muslim Relations
The Mountain Jews in Post-Soviet Caucasus: Reconstructing Ethnic Identification and Political Orientation
Author(s): Grebennikov, Marat
Date: 2015
Topics: Mountain Jews, Jewish Revival, Ethnicity, Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: Even though the ethnic factor played a significant role in Soviet and post-Soviet politics in the Caucasus and contributed to the rapid transformation of the ethnic organizations into political movements and parties, one ethnic group, the Mountain Jews, stands out as an exception. Unlike other ethnic groups, no community of Mountain Jews in the Caucasus has ever mobilized politically to get official acknowledgment on the basis of its ethic and religious identity. Why? The answer to this question lies in explanation of certain aspects of ethnic identification and political orientation of the Mountain Jews discussed in this paper. The paper concludes that the political culture and historical experience of Mountain Jews delegitimizes the very idea of ethnic mobilization in regional politics regardless of their official status within political regime. The Mountain Jews have never relinquished their national identity and ethno-cultural affiliation with their brethren beyond the Caucasian mountains. Nor have they ever abandoned the Jewish faith.
Ethnic identity and ethnic relations among the Jews of the non‐European USSR
Author(s): Gitelman, Zvi
Date: 1991
Topics: Bukharian Jews, Mountain Jews, Ethnicity, Surveys, Aliyah, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: This study of ethnic identity and ethnic relations in the Caucasus and Central Asia uses a 1985 sample of Soviet Jews who immigrated to Israel. Georgian, ‘Bukharan’ (Central Asian) and Mountain Jews are more attached to religion and tradition than their Ashkenazi brethren. They do not use religion as a surrogate for ethnicity, and they have a strong sense of ethnic identification, including a highly specific self‐identity as Georgian, Bukharan or Mountain Jews, different from other Jews. Georgian Jews report less frequent encounters with anti‐Semitism than any other Jewish group, but all groups believe that ethnicity plays a major role in daily life, in encounters with officials, and in social relations. Ethnic stereotypes and ethnic distances are clearly revealed in tests among the respondents. Ethnicity emerges as an important factor in daily life and ethnic gaps appear quite wide. These conclusions are supported by recent events in the USSR.
Современная семья у горских евреев Кабардино-Балкарии
Translated Title: Modern Family of the Mountain Jews of Kabardino-Balkaria
Author(s): Мурзаханов, Юрий Исаевич
Date: 1994
Topics: Ethnography, Family and Household, Mountain Jews, Main Topic: Other
The Subbotniks
Translated Title: הסובוטניקים
Author(s): Chernin, Velvl
Date: 2007
Topics: Karaites, Aliyah, Conversion, Small Jewish Communities, Conversion, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: This field report takes interest in the Subbotniks, a group whose name is known to many but whose reality is known but to a few. Dr. Chernin has conducted wide-ranging travel to remote areas of the FSU, which enabled him both to survey the far-flung communities of Subbotnik Jews existing today, and to form a well-grounded opinion with regard to the Jewishness of these groups. One result has been the enabling of immigration to Israel for those Subbotniks who choose that option. This fascinating Field Report enables the reader to acquire a geographical and cultural “map” of the Subbotniks, and thereby to gain respect and admiration for this courageous and worthy community.
יהודי קווקאז בדאגסטאן - זהות קולקטיבית והישרדות קהילתית
Translated Title: Caucasus Jews in Daghestan: Identity and Survival
Author(s): Bram, Chen
Date: 2006
Topics: Mountain Jews, Jewish Identity, Jewish Continuity, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: המחקר עוסק בקהילת יהודי ההר ברפובליקה האוטונומית דאגסטאן שבקווקז. לאחר שבשנות התשעים עלו רוב יהודי הקהילה לישראל או היגרו ליעדים אחרים, נותרו במקום יהודים המתמודדים עם שאלות הקשורות לזהות יהודית ולהישרדות הקהילה במצב החדש שנוצר. הדילמות הללו הן בעלות אופי ייחודי בשל המאפיינים הגאו-פוליטיים של האזור והשינויים שחלו בהם, ובשל מדיניות שלטונית ייחודית לפיה "יהודי ההר" נחשבים חלק מהעם הטאטי. אידיאולוגיה מקומית זו הקנתה ליהודי דאגסטאן נגישות לזכויות בתוך הרפובליקה, אולם יצרה דילמות הנוגעות לזהותם כיהודים ולקשר שלהם עם כלל ישראל.
Immigrant Jews of the Caucasus in New York and Moscow: Ethno-Cultural Identity and Community Organization
Translated Title: יהודי קווקאז כמהגרים בניו-יורק ובמוסקווה: זהות אתנו-תרבותית והתארגנות קהילתית
Author(s): Bram, Chen
Date: 2008
Topics: Diaspora, Mountain Jews, Jewish Identity, Jewish Culture, Jewish Community, Emigration, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: This article brings together two case studies from a larger research project on collective identity, ethnic categorization and community life among Jews of the Caucasus who migrated from their homelands to Israel, USA and Central Russia. It shows how this distinctive group of Jews strives to preserve its culture, language and social ties by building community organizations and forging new relationships with the surrounding majority and other Jewish groups. Specifically, the author focuses on the encounter between Jews of the Caucasus with Russian Jews that challenges the accepted binary oppositions between Mizrahi/Sephardic and Ashkenazi identities used in the Israeli and American Jewish discourse.