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Are They Jews or Asians? A Cautionary Tale about Mountain Jewish Ethnography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Sascha L. Goluboff
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Abstract

In this article, Sascha L. Goluboff investigates the development of ethnographic knowledge about Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan to provide new ways of understanding who Mountain Jews are and to provoke scholars to reflect critically on empire, ethnicity, and religion in the Caucasus. Following Nicholas B. Dirks's recent call for anthropologists to pay attention to the “textual field that is the pretext to fieldwork,” Goluboff analyzes how the work of the first ethnographers of Mountain Jews—Yehuda Chernyi (1835-1880) and Il'ia Anisimov (1862-1928)—created an image of Mountain Jews as both “savage Asians” and “primordial Jews” and how subsequent scholarship has reinforced this dichotomy as modern “fact.” Goluboff believes that by paying more attention to the intersections among ethnic groups and refraining from making moral judgments, it is possible to open up new ground for creatively researching the relations between Islam and Judaism in the Caucasus.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , Spring 2004 , pp. 113 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2004

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References

This article developed from a paper I presented as part of the panel “Colonialism and the Jews,” organized by Joelle Bahloul and Andre Levy, at the American Anthropological Association, November 2000. A Glenn Grant from Washington and Lee University and a Mednick Fellowship from the Associated Colleges of the South funded the initial research, and a paid leave from Washington and Lee University afforded me the time to conduct subsequent investigations in Azerbaijan and pursue the library research necessary for revisions.

I am exceedingly grateful to Mikhail Iakovlevich Agarunov for inviting me to the International Symposium on Mountain Jews in April 2001 and to Leah Migdash-Shamailova for helping me with accommodations in Kuba. Boris Simanduev, the Nisanovs, and Rabbi Adorn and Miriam Davidov in Kuba deserve special thanks. Bruce Grant provided key contacts and support in the field, while Samira Karaeva in Baku played an essential role in shaping my research questions and helping me to acquire needed materials. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Dick Grefe and Elizabeth Teaff, of the interlibrary loan staff at Washington and Lee; Jennifer Taylor, Paul Friedrich, Bruce Grant, Timothy Lubin, Richard Marks, and Sarah Barrash Wilson for commenting on earlier drafts; and Adam Scales for encouragement. Finally, my thanks to Diane P. Koenker and the two anonymous readers at Slavic Reviewfor providing extremely valuable comments. All translations are my own.

1. In this study, I use Russian orthography for the town, rather than the Azeri, which would spell it as “Quba,” to be consistent with the focus on Russian-language investigations of Mountain Jewish life.

2. Azerbaijan is also home to 4,300 Ashkenazic and 700 Georgian Jews, and in the last twenty-five years, about 65 percent of Azerbaijani Jews have emigrated from the Caucasus. Mountain Jews now make up about 0.14 percent of the population of Azerbaijan. I obtained the figures for the Jewish population of Azerbaijan from Mikhail Agarunov, The Jewish Community of Azerbaijan, written in October 2001, posted at http://www.juhuro.com/pages/english/english_agarun.htm(last consulted 11 November 2003). According to the World Fact Book, the population of Azerbaijan is 7,830,764. I obtained this information at http://www.cia.gOv/cia/publications/factbook/geos/aj.html#People(last consulted 11 November 2003).

3. Russians referred to the Muslim groups in this area as Tatars. See Audrey, Altstadt, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule(Stanford, 1992)Google Scholar.

4. For more information on how this discourse has played out in Moscow, especially due to Russia's war with Chechnia (1994-1996 and 1999-present), see Golu, Sascha L. boff, Jewish Russians: Upheavals in a Moscow Synagogue(Philadelphia, 2003)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 4

5. Mikhail, Chlenov, “Chto takie—Eti ‘gorskie evrei'? Predislovie k knige ‘Gorskie evrei,'”in Valerii, Dymshits, ed., Gorskie evrei: Istoriia, etnografiia, kul'tura(Moscow, 1999), 7.Google Scholar

6. Chernyi's “Gorskie evrei” and “Gorskie evrei Terskoi oblasti” were republished in 1992 as Iz kul'turnogo proshlogo kavkazskikh exrreevwith an introduction by V. A. Khalebskii (Groznyi, 1992). In Gorskie evrei, Chernyi and Anisimov are listed among the “foundational sources of the history and ethnography of Mountain Jews.” Dymshits, ed., Gorskie evrei, 456. Anisimov's Kavkazskie evrei-gortsywas reissued in 2002 along with a companion volume about Anisimov himself entitled Gorsko-evreiskii elnograf: Il'ia Sherebetovich Anisimov.

7. See, for example, Geraci, Robert P.and Michael, Khodarkovsky, eds., Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia(Ithaca, 2001)Google Scholar; Geraci, Robert P., Windoxu on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist Russia(Idiaca, 2001)Google Scholar; Brower, Daniel R.and Lazzerini, Edward J., eds., Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917(Bloomington, 1997)Google Scholar.

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9. Dirks, Nicholas B., “Castes of Mind,” Representations 37(1992): 56Google Scholar.

10. Ibid.

11. Dirks, Nicholas B., “The Crimes of Colonialism: Anthropology and the Textualization of India,”in Peter, Pelsand Oscar, Salemink, eds., Colonial Subjects: Essays on the Practical History of Anthropology(Ann Arbor, 1999), 153, 154Google Scholar.

12. Ibid., 177.

13. Dirks, “Castes of Mind,” 10.

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15. Igor’ Semenov writes that Mountain Jews “call themselves dzh u’ uror dzh i’ ur(among neighbors—dzh u ur). Dzhuuris the typical name for Jews in the Muslim east, and it is a word that comes from a distortion of iakhudi—Jews. The appearance of ‘r’ in the name dzh u’ u ur—is a consequence of rotatsizma, characteristic of all Iranian languages along the Caspian Sea and also of the dialect of Persian, which the Jews speak.” Igor’, Semenov, Kavkazskie taty i gorskie evrei: Nekotorye svedenii o nikh i problemy proiskhozhdeniia(Kazan', 1992), 3 Google Scholar.

16. Murzakhanov, Gorskie evrei, 3. Although some prerevolutionary pieces refer to kavkazskie evreiand gortsi-evrei, the majority of scholars call them gorskie evrei. For example, see I. Gakhengauz, “Mnogozhenstvo u kavkazskikh evreev,” Novyi Voskhod, no. 52 (30 December 1911): 23-24; and Eizenbet, I., “Vgostiakh u gortsa-evreia,” Voskhod 39(1903): 27-33 Google Scholar.

17. Michael, Zand, “Notes on the Culture of the Non-Ashkenazi Jewish Communities under Soviet Rule,”in Yaacov, Ro'iand Avi, Beker, eds., Jewish Culture and Identity in the Soviet Union(New York, 1991), 378-444 Google Scholar.

18. Susan, Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy(Cambridge, Eng., 1994), 12 Google Scholar.

19. I thank Paul Friedrich for pointing out how Tolstoi's depictions are “implicit critiques of the previous romances” and “highly valuable as ethnography.” See Friedrich's, “Tolstoy and the Chechens,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 29(2002): 1-32 Google Scholar.

20. David, Ransel, “Introduction,”in Olga Semyonova, Tian-Shanskaiaand David L.Ransel, , ed. and trans., Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia(Bloomington, 1993), xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

21. L., Sander Gi\ma.n, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews(Baltimore, 1986), 2-5.Google Scholar

22. Details of Chernyi's early life and death are taken from Dymshits, ed., Gorskie evrei, 20-21.

23. In Russian, the SPE is the OPE—Obshchestvo po rasprostraneniiu prosveshcheniia mezhdu evreiiami Rossii.

24. Dubnow, Simon M., History of the Jews in Russia and Poland from the Earliest Times until the Present Day(Philadelphia, 1918), 2:214Google Scholar.

25. Ibid., 2:124.

26. In 1884, the SPE published several of Chernyi's documents in Puteshestvie po kavkazu i zakavkazskomu kraiuin Hebrew. For a Russian language analysis of this book, see “Kavkazskie evrei”, G. -b. G., Voskhod 12(1884): 33-54 Google Scholar.

27. Yehuda, Chernyi, “Gorskie evrei,” Sbornik svedenii o kavkazskikh gortsakh, 1870, no. 3:1Google Scholar.

28. Ibid., 2.

29. Ibid., 9, 14.

30. Ibid., 9.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., 6.

33. Ibid., 5.

34. Ibid., 1.

35. Ibid., 2.

36. Ibid., 5.

37. Gilman, Jeitnsh Self-Hatred, 174.

38. Chernyi, “Gorskie evrei,” 6.

39. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 174.

40. Ibid., 174-76.

41. Yuri Slezkine, “Naturalists versus Nations: Eighteenth-Century Russian Scholars Confront Ethnic Diversity,” in Brower and Lazzerini, eds., Russia's Orient, 40. Anna Brodsky pointed out that this comment about the Mountain Jews’ unhygienic culinary habits could also be understood to reflect a growing class consciousness among the Russian urban elite, which was expressed in dieir shock at the poor conditions of peasant village life. See, for example, Anton Chekhov's story “A Day in the Countryside.” See Shadows and Light: Nine Stories by Anton Chekhov, selected and trans. Miriam Morton (Garden City, N.Y, 1968).

42. Chernyi, “Gorskie evrei,” 12.

43. Ibid., 13, 14.

44. Ibid., 13.

45. Ibid., 14.

46. Ibid., 20, 21.

47. Slezkine, “Naturalists versus Nations,” 42.

48. Chernyi, “Gorskie evrei,” 21.

49. Ibid., 25-26.

50. This information on Anisimov's biography comes from Murzakhanov, Iu. I., Gorsko-evreiskii etnograf(Moscow, 2002)Google Scholar.

51. Il'ia, Anisimov, “Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy,” Rassvet,no. 18(30 April 1881): 709-13Google Scholar; no. 24 (12 June 1881): 948-52.

52. Il'ia, Anisimov, Kavkazskieevrei-gortsy(Moscow, 1888), 1 Google Scholar.

53. Layton, Russian Literature and Empire.

54. Anisimov, Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy, 5.

55. Ibid., 7.

56. Ibid., 2.

57. Ibid., 3.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid. See also Valery, Dymshits, “The Eastern Jewish Communities of the Former USSR,”in Hetty, Berg, ed., Facing West: Oriental Jews of Central Asia and the Caucasus,2d ed. (Zwolle, 1999), 11 Google Scholar.

60. Anisimov, Kavkazskie evrei-gortsy, 3.

61. Ibid., 4.

62. Ibid., 4-5.

63. Ibid., 5.

64. Ibid., 39.

65. Ibid., 40.

66. Ibid., 58.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid.

69. Ibid., 138.

70. Ibid., 73.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid., 71.

73. Ibid., 97.

74. Ibid., 96,74.

75. Ibid., 147, 145.

76. Murzakhanov, Iu. I., Ocherk istorii etnograficheskogo izucheniia gorskikh evreev: XVIIInachalo XX v.(Moscow, 1994), 54 Google Scholar.

77. Ibid., 57.

78. The Assyrians, an ancient west Asian empire, brought an end to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which was made up of the ten tribes of Israel. The Assyrians deported many of Israel's inhabitants who later became known in Jewish folklore and legend as the “lost tribes. “

79. For more information on the debate about Mountain Jewish origins, see Arthur, Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage(New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Ikhilov, M. M., “Mountain Jews,”in Paul, Friedrichand Norma, Diamond, eds., Encyclopedia of World Cultures,vol. 6, Russia and Eurasia/China(Boston, 1994), 270-74Google Scholar; Murzakhanov, , Ocherk istorii; Kevin Alan, Brook, The Jews ofKhazaria(Northvale, N.J., 1999)Google Scholar.

80. Slezkine, “Naturalists versus Nations,” 43.

81. Semenov, Kavkazskie taty igorskie evrei, 12-13.

82. Miller, B., “Taty, ikh rasselenie i govory,” Izvestiia obshchestva obsledovaniia i izucheniia Azerbaidzhana 8, no. 7 (Baku, 1929)Google Scholar. Here, B. Miller discusses V. F. Miller's work in great detail.

83. Natalia G. Volkova, “Tats,” in Friedrich and Diamond, eds., Encyclopedia of World Cultures, vol. 6, Russia and Eurasia/China, 358.

84. Miller, “Taty, ikh rasselenie i govory,” 25.

85. Murzakhanov describes Miller's work in his Ocherk istorii, 36.

86. Kudrov, K. M., “Gorskie evrei Dagestana,” Russkii antropologicheskii zhurnal 23-24, no. 3- 4 (1905): 57Google Scholar.

87. Kudrov, K. M., “Gorskie evrei Shemakhinskago uezda, Bakinskoi gub.,” Russkii antropologicheskii zhurnal 30-31, no. 2- 3 (1912): 87-99 Google Scholar.

88. Kudrov, “Gorskie evrei Dagestana,” 86.

89. Ibid., 87.

90. S. A. Vaisenberg writes that much of the confusion over the anthropological typology of the Jews relates to a vagueness about the distinction between race (rasa) and people (narod). A people “are estimated not by the shape of their skulls or noses but by their ideology, by the instructions they give to all humanity.” Vaisenberg, “Ob antropologicheskom tipe evreev,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, 1914, no. 1-2:284.

91. Magomedov, R. M., “K voprosu o tatakh,”in Simchenko, Iu. B.and Tishkov, V. A., eds., Tatyfol'klor(Moscow, 1994), 157 Google Scholar. Whether Jewish Tat and Muslim Tat are “dialects” of Persian or separate languages is still being debated.

92. Amaldan Kukullu, personal communication, 1996.

93. Beniaminov, I., “Religiia gorskikh cvreev,” Antireligioznik 1(1932): 30 Google Scholar.

94. Ibid.

95. Ibid., 31.

96. Ibid.

97. Dymshits, ed., Gorskie evrei, 25.

98. Ikhilov, M. I., “Bol'shaia sem'ia i patronimiia u gorskikh evreev,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1950, no. 1:188Google Scholar.

99. Feliks, Shapiro, “Gorskie evrei,” Feliks L'vovich Shapiro: Sbornik statei i materialov(Jerusalem, 1983), 74 Google Scholar.

100. Ibid., 75.

101. Ibid., 81.

102. Murzakhanov, Iu. I., Sowemennaia sem'ia u gorskikh evreev Kabardino-Balkarii(Moscow, 1996)Google Scholar.

103. Parts of Bezhanov's study were reissued as Egorova, S. P., ed., Skazaniia gorskikh evreev Kavkaza(Kazan', 1993)Google Scholar.

104. Igor’, Semenov, “O rannikh kontaktakh vostochnokavkazskikh evreev i khazar,”in Materialy methdunarodnogo nauchnogo simpoziuma “Gorskie evrei kavkaza”(Baku, 2002), 36-37 Google Scholar.

105. Ibid., 42-43.

106. I. Musukaev, “K nekotorym voprosam etnicheskikh osobennostei gorskikh evreev: Sootnoshenie obshchego i spetsificheskogo,” in Materialy mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo simpoziuma, 57.

107. Ibid., 61.

108. R. Melikov, “O poiavlenii evreev na territorii drevnego azerbaidzhana,” in Materially mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo simpoziuma, 69.

109. M. Bekker, “O proiskhozhdenii gorskikh evreev,” in Materialy mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo simpoziuma, 92.

110. Ibid.

111. Musukaev, “Knekotorym voprosam,” 62.

112. Ibid., 92-93.

113. Murzakhanov, Gorsko-evreiskii etnograf, 3. In the winter of 2003, a Jewish activist in Baku told me that she believed Anisimov's patronymic had recently been published as Sherebetovich instead of Sherbetovich due to the latter's resembling the word sherbet.

114. Bruce, Grant, review of Farideh, Heyat, Azeri Women in Transition: Women in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan(London, 2002)Google Scholaron H- Gender-MidEast Discussion Netzuork, 27 Feb ruary 2003, see http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=145471049306632(last consulted 11 November 2003).

115. For scholarship on interrelations between Islam and Judaism, see Brinner, William M.and Ricks, Stephen D., eds., Studies in Islamic and Judaic Traditions II(Atlanta, 1989)Google Scholar, and Wasserstrom, Steven M., Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam(Princeton, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116. Firouzeh Mostashari, “Colonial Dilemmas: Russian Policies in the Muslim Caucasus,“ in Geraci and Khodarkovsky, eds., Of Religion and Empire, 249.

117. Farideh, Heyat, Azeri Women in Transition: Women in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan(London, 2002), 8 Google Scholar.

118. Mark, Saroyan, Minorities, Mullahs, and Modernity: Reshaping Community in the Former Soviet Union(Berkeley, 1997), 34 Google Scholar.

119. Seteney, Shami, “Islam in the Post-Soviet Space: Imaginative Geographies of the Caucasus and Central Asia,” Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies 1, no. 1 (1999): 181-95Google Scholar.