Jerusalem Report - 01.12.2004

Jerusalem Report

Half a Haven

The Mountain Jews of Quba struggle to keep their 300-year-old shtetl alive

The town of Quba, a two-hour drive north of the Azeri capital of Baku, is split in half by the small Gudialchai River. The river is more than a physical divide, though. On one side of the Gudialchai’s steep banks live Shi’ite Muslim Azeris. On the other side live Mountain Jews, members of a unique Diaspora community that has lived in the rugged souther Caucasus for centuries and which speaks its own language, a dialect related to Persian leavened with Hebrew words.

A two-lane bridge spans the Gudialchai, statues of lions painted blue and white standing guard on either side of it. Quba is frequently described as one of the world’s “last living shtetls” and it is easy to understand why. Crossing the bridge and entering the Jewish side of town is like entering a time warp and being taken to a place out of a Roman Vishniak photograph – the Russian influence on the local architecture lending the place a more Eastern European than Central Asian flavor. Men wearing black kippot stand in front t of small grocery stores. Older women wearing colorful kerchiefs and long skirts walk the rutted lanes. Homes have ornamental metal gutters crowned with Jewish stars. Visible from most parts of town are the six ornate onion-domes of one of the synagogues, which has now been turned into a museum.

The Jews of Quba (pronounced “goo-bah”) have lived in their exclusive enclave for close to 300 years, after a local ruler named Fatali Khan established community in the 18th century as a haven for Jews in the area. Jewish life and practice have continued uninterrupted in Quba since then, weathering decades of oppression by the soviets, who changed the name of the Jewish part of town from Yevreskaya Sloboda – Jewish Settlement – to Krasnaya Sloboda, or Red Settlement.

Since Azerbaijan gained independence in 1991, Quba’s Jews have been free to practice their religion as they wish. But now there is another threat to their way of life. Although it sits on vast reserves of Caspian Sea oil, Azerbaijan has been struggling economically for the last decade. Incomes remain low and jobs are hard to find, forcing many to seek work elsewhere, particularly in Russia. The drive to Quba, through abandoned and rusting factory towns and past hardscrabble villages, tells the country’s present-day story. It is estimated that close to a quarter of Azerbaijan’s 8 million citizens currently work outside the country.

The Jewish community – like in other parts of the former Soviet Union – has been part of this exodus. Close to 40,000 of Azerbaijan’s 60,000 Jews have left since 1991, mostly heading to Israel, as well as the United States and Russia. Many of those left behind – in Quba, Baku and other places – are struggling economically, with international Jewish welfare organizations such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee now providing assistance. In Quba, the Jewish population, which numbered 18,500 in 1933, today stands at 4,000, mostly the elderly parents and the wives and children of young men who have gone off to Moscow and elsewhere to find work. “Even though today we celebrate all the holidays and festivals, we don’t feel the festive spirit, because of the absence of people,” says Boris Simanduyev, the community’s 70-year-old elected leader, wearing a black fedora and a mid-length black leather jacket. “The streets are not full and the houses are empty.”

Simanduyev, who has fair skin and bright blue eyes, the smell of aftershave hovering pleasantly around him, is sitting in the sanctuary of Quba’s last functioning synagogue, a 103-year-old dome-topped building. Benches upholstered in a green fabric are lined up against the large room’s walls, making a square. Colorful locally made rugs with bold patterns cover the floor. Sitting next to Simanduyev is Natan Ilyaguyev, a tailor and cap maker with hooded eyes and a front row of gold teeth who, 10 years ago, became the synagogue’s rabbi, a position held by his father for 40 years before him. “Before coming here, we had always been persecuted,” Simanduyev says, recalling the history of Quba’s Jews. “But here we could find shelter. We have always been protected here. We live in peace.”

How will the community cope with the continuing departure of its young men, Simanduyev is asked. The leader looks down at the floor. “They are not leaving here forever,” he answers, looking up. “Most are going away to find a job. This generation moves away to make a better living.

“We hope that in several years the economy of the country will improve and there will be more jobs, so that people can live here with their families,” he adds. “When my father married his daughter off, he wished that their husbands not be rich men, but when they go to work in the morning, it will be to a job that will allow them to come back at night to their wives and children. We hope that it will be like that here again.”

Behind a high cement wall, near the entrance to Quba’s Jewish area, sits the Nisimovs’ home. Three generations live in the house, serving as a living portrait of Quba’s past, present and, perhaps, future. The grandfather, 91-year-old Hillel, has lived to see the arrival and departure of the Soviets. His son, Nisim, 53, is a musician and the last remaining professional singer of Mountain Jewish songs in Quba, a place that was once filled with poets and musicians. Nisim’s 18-year-old daughter Radmila was recently engaged to a young Jewish man from a family that lives across the street and is planning on joining him in Moscow, where he works.

Sitting at a long table at the front of the one-story house, Hillel Nisimov, a World War II veteran and former history teacher, recalls the seven-decade period when Azerbaijan was part of the Soviet empire. The Soviets brought jobs and education, he says, but during that time, 10 of Quba’s 11 synagogues were closed down or destroyed and the use of Hebrew banned. In 1937, five rabbis were executed and others sent into exile with their families. “The anti-religious sentiment was strong, and our religious leaders were afraid, so it was difficult to maintain the tradition,” the elder Nisimov, dressed in a faded black fedora and in a dark suit over a brown cardigan, says in Russian.

When his first son was born, Hillel – at the time a Communist Party member – was so scared of the authorities’ anti-Jewish fervor that he tried to skip out in the child’s circumcision ceremony by pretending to go to work. The rabbi simply waited until he came back home before continuing, the old man recalls with a laugh.

While Nisimov speaks, his son is outside in the front yard collecting walnuts that had just been whacked out of a big, leafy tree with a long stick. When Nisim Nisimov comes in, the family moves to the living room for tea and cake. Nisim, who has an almost dour look on his face, leads a local folkloric ensemble (two of its eight members are Jewish) that has performed throughout the world.

Nisim plays the tar, a lute-like Central Asian instrument with 11 strings and a thin neck, inlaid with mother of pearl. Pulling it out of its case, he plays a haunting tune, a lament of a man singing to his beloved. The music is based on a classic Central Asian motif, but the words were written in the 1960s by a local Jewish poet. His hard expression breaks into something more tranquil. “There were professional musicians here, but they moved to the United States, to Israel,” Nisim, who started learning Mountain Jewish songs on his own as a child, says. “We had poets here too, but they all moved away.”

“Ten or 15 years ago, if you went to a music school, among 600 students, 50 or 60 were Jewish,” he adds. “Today, you wouldn’t find one.”

Sitting at the opposite end of the table, Radmila listens attentively, as her father plays. She has long, wavy dark hair and is dressed in all black, with jade green earrings dangling from her ears. In the living room’s vitrine is a photograph of her and her fiancée standing in front of a waterfall backdrop, holding a wine glass together.

While most wives used to stay behind in Quba when their husbands left to work, in the last few years they have started to move away with them. Radmila has mixed feelings about leaving Quba. While she says it will be difficult to leave her family’s home, part of her is ready to leave the confines of the tradition-bound, socially conservative town. “Most of the girls only study until 9th grade and then stay at home and get married early,” says Radmila, who – atypically – just graduated from music school. “They don’t get a chance to live their youth.”

Still, she maintains, most of Quba’s young people would stay if there were jobs. The connection to the town is hard to break. “One day, all of us will return to our motherland,” she says quietly.

In the meantime, many of Quba’s far-flung Jewish residents have been leading a sort of virtual return. With the money they have earned abroad, many residents have been building large homes in town. The city’s streets are now filled with lavish, newly built houses, some of them in garish shades of purple and green. They are homes built out of a sense of duty and loyalty (and perhaps the desire to show off a little), a place to stay while visiting. They are, in a way, very expensive vacation homes, for times such as Tisha Be’av, when thousands return from abroad to visit the graves of their parents and grandparents at the cemetery, located on a high hill that looks out over the Caucasus Mountains that rise behind it. Many stay through the High Holy Days, temporarily giving the town the lived-in feeling it lacks during the rest of the year.

The irony in Quba’s current situation is that while its social and economic situation may be difficult, religious life is probably much stronger than it has been in decades. In another part of the small town, for example, an old synagogue was refurbished and turned into community-run yeshivah five years ago. On a chilly, drizzly day, a group of some 20 kids in black kippot are gathered around a young teacher as he reads from the Talmud. The teacher – a 20-year-old local who studied for a time in a yeshivah in Israel – is explaining what constitutes a kosher sukkah. A lively discussion follows in Mountain Jewish, filling the room with the sounds of chatter. After the class, the teacher, Yitzhak Mordechaiev, heads into the kitchen to smoke a cigarette from a pack of Kents and drink tea from an electric samovar.

“Come on a Pesah or Shavuot or Rosh Hashanah, you won’t believe how many people you will see at the synagogue. It’s our way of life to keep our customs,” Mordechaiev says, speaking in fluent Hebrew with a Sephardi accent. “It comes from inside us.” Still, his prognosis for Jewish life in Quba is bleak. “Continuity depends on young people, but there’s nothing in front of us here. It’s either Israel or someplace else,” he says, taking a drag on his cigarette. “I don’t think there will be Jews here in the future.”

Mordechaiev is not ready to write off Quba’s future, though. The community has managed to survive hardship for centuries, he admits, and may yet pull through its current crisis. “This place is a miracle. Even we don’t understand how we’ve been able to keep our live here as Jews,” he says. “I believe this is a special place. It’s a little Jerusalem.”