Mountain Jews, who call themselves Juhuro, are the Jews of the eastern Caucasus, from the villages and towns of Azerbaijan and Dagestan. Descended from Persian Jews, they spoke Judeo-Tat, a Persian language of their own, and lived for centuries among the mountain peoples of the region. Most left the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, and the largest communities are now in Israel, with others in the United States, Russia and Azerbaijan, where the Red Village of Quba is the last all-Jewish town in the diaspora. They are counted among the Mizrahi communities. See also Iranian Jews, Georgian Jews and Bukharan Jews.
Origins
Mountain Jews descend from Jews of Persia who settled in the eastern Caucasus, most likely under the Sasanian kings (224–651), though the timing is uncertain; some historians think they came as military colonists guarding the frontier. Their language and many of their customs show their Persian roots, and genetic studies link them to other Jewish communities of the Middle East.
In the 17th and 18th centuries a cluster of Jewish villages near Derbent, the “Jewish Valley,” was semi-autonomous, with its center at Aba-Sava; it was destroyed late in the 18th century. The Russian Empire took the region from Iran under the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, and the community took on its modern shape under Russian rule.
Language
Judeo-Tat, or Juhuri, is a Southwest Iranian language, close to the Tat spoken by some of the Mountain Jews’ Muslim neighbors, with many Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic words. It was written in Hebrew letters until the early Soviet period, then in Latin and later mostly in Cyrillic. The first Judeo-Tat newspaper, Zakhmetkesh, appeared in 1928, and a Judeo-Tat theater worked in Dagestan. Today most Mountain Jews speak Hebrew, Russian or English, and Juhuri is endangered.
Soviet era and the Holocaust
- Soviet rule. Collectivization tied many Mountain Jews to collective farms, where they kept traditional crops and winemaking. Synagogues were closed in the 1930s, and by 1966 only six remained. Soviet authorities promoted the claim that Mountain Jews were Tats rather than Jews.
- 1942. When the German army reached the North Caucasus in 1942, it murdered Mountain Jews at Bogdanovka (472 people, August 1942) and Menzhinskoe (378, September 1942); between 1,000 and 1,500 were killed in all. In Nalchik, community leaders persuaded the German authorities that they were Tats, not Jews, and most of the community survived.
- Emigration. After the Soviet Union collapsed and the First Chechen War began, most Mountain Jews emigrated, chiefly to Israel, and many to the United States.
Religious life
Mountain Jews follow the customs of the Edot HaMizrach, the eastern communities, and pray in a Sephardi-influenced rite. Each town traditionally had a rabbi, who served as preacher, cantor, teacher and ritual slaughterer, and a dayan, the chief rabbi and judge. Kabbalah shaped many of their traditions. After Passover, communities gather for Govgil, a festive picnic.
The Red Village
Across the river from the town of Quba in northern Azerbaijan lies Qırmızı Qəsəbə, the Red Village, once called Yevreyskaya Sloboda (“Jewish quarter”). With about 3,500 residents, it is the largest Mountain Jewish settlement in the world and one of the few towns outside Israel whose population is almost entirely Jewish. Jews were allowed to settle there in the 1740s under the khans of Quba, and the village had about 18,000 residents in the Soviet era before emigration after 1991. Its synagogues include the Six-Dome Synagogue (1888) and the Gilaki Synagogue (1896), and the village also has a Museum of Mountain Jews.
Food
Mountain Jewish cooking blends Caucasian, Azerbaijani and Persian dishes, adapted to the laws of kashrut. Khoyagusht, a meat pie, is often called the community’s national dish, and rice pilaf, osh, accompanies many meals. See our Sephardic recipes.
The community today
Estimates of the worldwide population run from 150,000 to 270,000. Israel has the largest community, between 100,000 and 140,000, living in towns such as Hadera, Or Akiva and Sderot. About 11,000 Mountain Jews live in Azerbaijan, mostly in Quba and Baku, and between 10,000 and 40,000 in the United States, centered in Brooklyn. Smaller communities live in Russia, Canada and Austria. In the Caucasus, the community still worships at the Mountain Jews Synagogue in Baku and the Kele-Numaz Synagogue in Derbent.
Notable people
- Yekutiel Adam 1927–1982 · Tel Aviv IDF major general and deputy chief of staff, of a Mountain Jewish family; killed in Lebanon in June 1982.
- Yaffa Yarkoni 1925–2012 · Tel Aviv Israeli singer born to a Mountain Jewish family; known for performing for soldiers in every war from 1948 on.
- Gavriil Ilizarov 1921–1992 · Białowieża Soviet orthopedic surgeon who invented the Ilizarov apparatus for lengthening and repairing bones; his father was a Mountain Jew from Qusar.
- Albert Agarunov 1969–1992 · Baku Azerbaijani tank commander killed at Shusha in May 1992; named a National Hero of Azerbaijan.
Sources and further reading
- “Mountain Jews” and “Qırmızı Qəsəbə”, Wikipedia.
Published October 2026.
