Sakha is a Hebrew word meaning "to look". In Hebrew the two words "Ya-sakha" mean "look to God" (Ya = God; sakha = look), implying "have trust in God. Maybe this name was originally Yasakha to turn eventually into simply Sakha.
Altogether, there are an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Subbotnik Jews spread throughout (as for 2016) the former Soviet Union, many of whom wish to make aliya. For nearly a century, the Subbotnik Jews were freely immigrating to Israel, until in 2005 the Jewish state’s vaunted bureaucracy shut down their aliya.
In the far north of modern Russia we find a region called Siberia. Once again, the root ‘iberia’ or ‘iberiu’ is prominent, indicating that many Hebrews may have migrated there. Notably, some historians place the Lost Tribes in the area of the Volga River in the Russian Steppes where it is likely that the inhabitants named their city Samara after their homeland Samaria. Additionally, their ruling aristocracy spoke fluent Hebrew. More than 700 inscriptions in the Crimea suggest Hebrew origins, and Hebrew burial tombs have been traced as far north as Sweden where 19 of 22 Hebrew tribal symbols have been found in the area occupied by Germanic tribes.
Yakut is an Arabic last name meaning ruby. Some Europeans & Jews also have it in the form Jaqut.
Bashkirs have Kipchak Turkish ancestry, but Ugrian & Iranian too. They mostly follow Sunni Islam.
Altogether, there are an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Subbotnik Jews spread throughout (as for 2016) the former Soviet Union, many of whom wish to make aliya. For nearly a century, the Subbotnik Jews were freely immigrating to Israel, until in 2005 the Jewish state’s vaunted bureaucracy shut down their aliya.
Historically there's a split within European Ashkenazi Jewry: Russian Jews & Eastern European Jews work easily together for one side, whereas western European Jews (German & Jews) do likewise with each other.
Rebbe & rabbi are overlapping words, almost synonymous, but rebbes are extremely closer to their followers than rabbis are.
In the far north of modern Russia we find a region called Siberia. Once again, the root ‘iberia’ or ‘iberiu’ is prominent, indicating that many Hebrews may have migrated there. Notably, some historians place the Lost Tribes in the area of the Volga River in the Russian Steppes where it is likely that the inhabitants named their city Samara after their homeland Samaria. Additionally, their ruling aristocracy spoke fluent Hebrew. More than 700 inscriptions in the Crimea suggest Hebrew origins, and Hebrew burial tombs have been traced as far north as Sweden where 19 of 22 Hebrew tribal symbols have been found in the area occupied by Germanic tribes.
Yakut is an Arabic last name meaning ruby. Some Europeans & Jews also have it in the form Jaqut.
Bashkirs have Kipchak Turkish ancestry, but Ugrian & Iranian too. They mostly follow Sunni Islam.
It's noteworthy that the main Chuvash god is called Tura, a name very similar to Thor, one of the main Viking gods, but also might have derived from the Torah.
Shtetls through the borderland of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine
"It has the kind of walls that keep in the cold of winter and the heat of summer," says Bershad Jewish community President Yephim Chaim Vigodner breathing a good-natured sigh as he surveys his 200 year-old synagogue. The roof and floor sag. A pair of old tefillin (leather phylacteries) grows mold in the rotting podium. Rusty matzah-making machines and decaying volumes of Talmud litter the women's balcony. Yet, miraculously and mysteriously, the synagogue exists, surviving the Cossacks, pogroms, Nazis and Communists. During World War II, the Jewish population of the ghetto surrounding the synagogue swelled to nearly 30,000, as the Rumanians, Moldovans and Ukranians shipped their Jews to this shtetl (Jewish village) seven hours from Kiev.
In the 1920’s, Zhmerinka had over 5000 Jews and nine synagogues. During World War II, the few thousand remaining Jews were concentrated within a ghetto, hundreds on this street. Many were forced laborers at Zhmerinka’s industrial hub - its railway station. The Rumanians, allied with the Nazis, controlled Zhmerinka during the War and sent 2000 Jews from the Zhmerinka ghetto to the Germans to appease Hitler and maintain control over the region.
The Purim spiel in Vinnitsya is a bawdy affair. Mordechai, pictured above in Hasidic garb, shocks elegant Esther with his indecent proposal. Cross dressing Jewish community officials, with gold teeth and uneven breasts, solicit young King Ahasuerus — who nonetheless chooses Esther for his queen. A Nazi costumed Haman loses his eye patch when he is tossed to the ground, spanked and ejected from the scene. Everyone sings, eats hamantashen and drinks vodka.
Yephim Chaim Vigodner (friends call him Pheema) Pheema trained as a shipbuilder in Odessa but returned to his hometown of Bershad, where he now works full-time for Chesed, a branch of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee distributing food and other necessities to approximately 150 indigent Jews in Bershad and several nearby villages (former Jewish shtetls).
Though Pheema’s older son lives in Israel – where the standard of living is much higher – Pheema feels he is needed in Bershad. “We don’t have any arguments with the Ukrainians, but we don’t make friends with them either,” Pheema explains. “We live separate lives, and must take care of ourselves.” But copper-headed Misha wants to go to Israel when he grows up. “At school, I’m not treated like the others, because they know I’m Jewish. One boy always hits me on the shoulder and says, ‘Zhid!’ (Jew!).” Misha explains, “I have a lot of books about Jewish history, culture and traditions, and I read them all, but there are no activities here – there are only seven 9-14 year-olds left in Bershad, and some are already leaving.” Misha is teaching himself some Hebrew for his upcoming bar-mitzvah and will attend a program sponsored by Chabad Lubavitch in Zhitomir, approximately six hours away.
increasing due to a major recession triggered by falling oil prices and sanctions resulting from the Ukrainian civil war. If you can believe it, Russian Aliyah is now increasing faster than Ukrainian Aliyah!
I served in the Russia Samara mission shortly after it opened in 1994-95. Lots of "believing blood" there resulted in lots of convert baptisms and strong members. You convincingly answered the question of how that "believing blood" got there.
The sea of Azov was called formerly Khizar, porbably taken Khazar, since this sea was in the Khazar territory.
The Paths of Migration of the Ten Tribes
A portion of the Exiles from Israel were taken in the Phoenician ships of Tyre and Sidon and those of the Philistines from Gaza and Ashdod to Spain, Gaul (France est.), the British Isles, and the North. Those who went to Spain later moved to Gaul or to Britain and Ireland.
The rest of the Exiles went to the north of the Assyrian Empire and there they became part of the Confederation of the "Children of Gomer" (Hosea 1).
In history they are referred to as the "Gimirri" (Cimmerians), Scythians and Goths. The Cimmerians invaded Europe and went westward. They adopted to themselves the culture of the Celts. In Gaul and Britain a section of them were considered as Galatians and known as Galaadi (i.e. Gileadi). The Scythians and the Goths moved from the Middle East to Russia and from there to the West, in wave after wave of "Barbarian" Invasions that conquered the Roman Empire.
The Khazars were part of the Ten Tribes, especially from Manasseh and Simeon. They remained in Russia and some of them converted and became Jews.
Apart from the British Isles and regions in the West small groups from the Ten Tribes were scattered throughout Europe. On the whole they remained separated from the people around them. Later most of them migrated to North America and to lands controlled by the Ten Tribes.
Descendants of Jews who were forced to change their religion or assimilated are to be found in many parts of the world. They will return in the Last Days and it would seem that their destiny is wound up with the return of the Ten Tribes.
Hasidism
Doctrines
Common to all forms of hasidism is the belief that the established institutions of orthodox rabbinic Judaism are not enough. It is significant, for example, that the Besht, founder of the Hasidic movement, was not himself a rabbi. His authority and that of his successors, known as tzaddikim ("Righteous ones") depended on charisma rather than learning. Through their special powers and gifts and their peculiar closeness to God (Hebrew devekut "cleaving") they inspired ordinary people to engage in zealous private prayer and meditation, both on their own and in their synagogues, in a way that went beyond and outside traditional Jewish practice. Aspects of hasidic prayer given special emphasis in addition to devekut, include simhah "joy", hitlahavut "enthusiasm" and shiflut "humility". Instead of the traditional orthodox prayer book, hasidic groups used their own more mystical, "Lurianic" prayer book, so-called because of its association with the famous kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572). The most significant innovation of hasidism within Jewish doctrine was the doctrine of the Tzaddik. Known to his followers as Rebbe "Master" to distinguish him from orthodox Rabbis, the Tzaddik was revered by his followers, almost to the point of worship. Much of the hasidic literature, which is written in Hebrew and Yiddish, consists of collections of wise sayings and marvellous stories about these saints and miracle-workers. There are considerable variations as between what one Tzaddik taught and another, so that it is hard to generalize about hasidic doctrine. The Lubavitchers, for example, following the distinctive teaching of their founder Rabbi Schneur Zalman (1745-1812), stress the priority of a type of intellectual meditation over the emotions. They focus on the three highest kabbalistic sefirot or emanations of the divine mind, hokhmah "wisdom", binah "understanding" and da'at "knowledge", and believe that prayer, especially reciting the Shema, should involve reflection onthe kabbalistic scheme of divine sefirot to the point of self-annihilation. This form of hasidism is called Habad from the Hebrew initials of the three sefirot. Their belief that there is in every Jew a divine spark which can be awakened by prayer and contemplation, has prompted among Habad hasidim a distinctive attitude towards fellow Jews marked by a mixture of puritanical pietism and evangelical zeal.
History
The first hasidim appear in accounts of the Maccabaean rebellion (167-163 BCE) where they are remembered as conspicuously pious Jews, willing to die as martyrs for their faith. In 12th-13th century Europe, a unique group of Jewish ascetics, influenced perhaps by mediaeval Christian monasticism, were known as the haside ashkenaz or "Saints of Germany". But as an important aspect of modern Judaism, the origins of Hasidism are to be traced to 18th century Poland and in particular to Israel Ben Eliezer or, as he came to be known, the Besht, an abbreviation of Baal Shem Tov ("Master of the Divine Name") (c.1700-1760). He was a powerful religious personality, with little education, right outside the main rabbinical tradition, but so thoroughly surrounded by stories about his dreams, mystical experiences and miracle-working that he commanded a huge following both in his own lifetime and down to the present day. His radical teachings, the noisy, ecstatic singing and dancing that accompanied hasidic worship, and his appeal to ordinary uneducated Jews, at first drew fierce opposition from the orthodox, among whom the great talmudist Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, known as "the Gaon of Vilna" (1720-1797), requires special mention.
As the hasidic movement spread throughout Eastern Europe, influenced by kabbalistic mysticism, memories of the "Saints of Germany" and remnants of more recent Shabbatean and Frankist groups, they were eventually accepted by orthodoxy. With a new focus on the personality of its leaders, called "Rebbes" (Yiddish for rabbis), dynasties were established each with its own following, and several varieties of hasidism evolved, of which the Lubavitchers are the best known and most active today. Their founder was Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyady (1745-1812), author of the first systematic work of hasidic theology and inventor of the Habad movement within hasidism. His son set up a center in Lubavitch in Byelorussia from which they received their name. Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneerson (1880-1950), sixth in the Schneur Zalman dynasty, was leader of Russia's orthodox Jews in 1917 and, after his expulsion from there in 1927, gave the Lubavitchers of Brooklyn, New York the high profile which they still retain. The seventh Habad Rebbe, Menahem Mendel Schneerson, was believed by many to be the Messiah but died in 1994 with such expectations unfulfilled. Other important varieties of hasidism include Bratslav Hasidism founded by the brilliant and influential Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1811), great-grandson of the Besht, and Gur (Hebrew Ger) Hasidism which originated in Poland in 1859 and of which Rabbi Mordecai Abraham Alter (1866-1948), leader of Europe's Orthodox Jews in Nazi Germany until he moved to Israel in 1940, is the best known exponent.
As the hasidic movement spread throughout Eastern Europe, influenced by kabbalistic mysticism, memories of the "Saints of Germany" and remnants of more recent Shabbatean and Frankist groups, they were eventually accepted by orthodoxy. With a new focus on the personality of its leaders, called "Rebbes" (Yiddish for rabbis), dynasties were established each with its own following, and several varieties of hasidism evolved, of which the Lubavitchers are the best known and most active today. Their founder was Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyady (1745-1812), author of the first systematic work of hasidic theology and inventor of the Habad movement within hasidism. His son set up a center in Lubavitch in Byelorussia from which they received their name. Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneerson (1880-1950), sixth in the Schneur Zalman dynasty, was leader of Russia's orthodox Jews in 1917 and, after his expulsion from there in 1927, gave the Lubavitchers of Brooklyn, New York the high profile which they still retain. The seventh Habad Rebbe, Menahem Mendel Schneerson, was believed by many to be the Messiah but died in 1994 with such expectations unfulfilled. Other important varieties of hasidism include Bratslav Hasidism founded by the brilliant and influential Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1811), great-grandson of the Besht, and Gur (Hebrew Ger) Hasidism which originated in Poland in 1859 and of which Rabbi Mordecai Abraham Alter (1866-1948), leader of Europe's Orthodox Jews in Nazi Germany until he moved to Israel in 1940, is the best known exponent.
Symbols
Hasidic groups, like some other ultraorthodox Jews, still wear the distinctive dress and hair-style of the18th century eastern European shtetl (Jewish town) communities where they originated. Men wear ankle-length black coats and wide-rimmed black hats, lavishly fur-trimmed on sabbaths and festivals. Men and boys traditionally leave their "side-curls" uncut. Women cover their hair in public with a headscarf or a wig (Yiddish Sheitel). The Lubavitchers brightly colored mobile education units known as "Mitzvah tanks" marked with the Star of David and an appropriate Hebrew inscription, are conspicuous in many cities.
Adherents
There are no statistics available to give the number of adherents of Hasidism.
Headquarters/Main Center Lubavitcher Headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11213
Ukraine's Survivors
The region around Vinnitsya, a city four hours southwest of Kiev, once boasted dozens of shtetls (Jewish villages) and hundreds of thousands of Jews. Today, those who survived the Cossacks, czars, Nazis and Communists -- and who chose not to emigrate to Israel or the United States -- number only several thousand.
After decades of Soviet-enforced atheism, few keep kosher or Shabbat and fewer read Hebrew -- but Jewish culture is beginning to thrive again.
"I only started observing Jewish holidays after the Soviet Union fell," says Yvgeny Zilbert, who runs Mishpakha, an organization devoted to rejunenating Vinnitsya's Jewish culture. "Now I´m making up for lost time," he says.
Zilbert's actions speak louder than his words. For example, around the Purim season every year, Zilbert reads the Book of Esther publicly more than a dozen times, making him the traveling celebration broker of the Vinnitsya region.
The Vinnitsya Jewish community shows particular enthusiasm for Klezmer music and Yiddish theater. Sasha Tsondekovich, a math teacher, manages a young Jewish theater group in his spare time. Tsondekovich's troupe performs Sholem Aleichem plays several times a month in former shtetls around the region.
One afternoon in early Spring, Tsondekovich visits an elderly woman living 100 miles south of the regional capital, in the small town of Bershad. She last attended a Jewish function when Tsondekovich's Chanukah play came to town.
"Oy vey, Maccabey!" shouts Vera Shvartsman Cheyved, 78, answering the door with a loving, toothless smile, unconcerned or unaware that the Maccabis pertain to Channukah, now long past.
"Oy," she repeats for emphasis, and the grin disappears momentarily as she says to Tsondekovich in Yiddish, "I've had a lot of bad things in my life."
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine an indignity she has been spared. She was ghettoized, orphaned, shot, starved, dressed in rags, left childless, torn from her husband, exiled, denied religious freedom and, more recently, stripped of adequate health care.
"But oh, how I love to sing!" Cheyved says, the light returning to her scarf-framed face as she clasps her chubby hands to her bosom like a little girl receiving a gift.
Cheyved props her enormous figure against the bed frame in her tiny flat. Playfully shaking in her massive blue housedress, she sings half a dozen romantic Yiddish songs.
Returning from Bershad, Tsondekovich remarks that Cheyved´s rosy demeanor is unsurprising. "Our sense of humor," he says of Vinnitsya´s Jews, "is how we survive."
Bryan Schwartz visited the remaining Jewish community of Ukraine’s Vinnitsya region in 2001 and presents its members in vivid text and photographs in his book with Jay Sand and Sandy Carter, Scattered Among the Nations.
Today, of Bershad's14,000 inhabitants, fewer than 100 are Jews. On Shabbat, 20 of those healthy enough among the remaining community kiss the centuries-old mezuzah on the synagogue doorframe and gather on the creaky benches before the original ark. The problem is that after decades of Communist repressions, no one in the community can read Hebrew or recollect Jewish prayers. The last rabbi left in 1956. One frigid Friday night, an out-of-town visitor occasions a larger crowd than usual. Huddling with them, he teaches ancient Jewish melodies without words –for some, it is the first service they have ever seen. The community and synagogue seem to shed layers of dust and for an instant, their voices rise to the sky. Ironically, it may have been that very same dust which enabled them to hide these many generations. As Yephim says, "Perhaps we were humble enough to be spared."
Today, the railroad tracks are eerily quiet. By the dawn of the new millennium, the railway station, still Zhmerinka’s biggest business, employed a Jewish President. Most of the remaining Jews are elderly. One young man reported that there were five fellow Jews with him in his fifth grade class, but by his high school graduation, there were none left. Nonetheless, since the community was reestablished in 1994, people have become more involved. At the beginning of the 21st century, community meetings were drawing 75 people at the town’s grandest building -the “State Cultural Center,” a former synagogue. The leaders work toward the restitution of one of their former synagogues, which they hope to open with foreign assistance. It will be the first functioning synagogue in Zhmerinka since the Communists shut down the last one in 1960.
“There was a hole in the ground, and we lived in it,” says Vera Shvartsman Cheyved, remembering how she survived the Holocaust in Bershad. She remembers singing Yiddish songs to the doctor in the hospital after she was struck by a bullet. Today, she is still singing whenever she receives visitors, like Brukha Feldman, another Bershad native.
Though Vinnitsya’s Jewish community has not recovered religiously from the Soviet-era prohibitions on Jewish practice, Jewish culture is undergoing a veritable revival. Jews and Ukrainians alike are keenly interested in Yiddish theater and Klezmer music, in particular. Holidays like Purim provide a perfect opportunity for showcasing community members’ talents, silliness – and resilience.
Yephim Chaim Vigodner (friends call him Pheema) Pheema trained as a shipbuilder in Odessa but returned to his hometown of Bershad, where he now works full-time for Chesed, a branch of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee distributing food and other necessities to approximately 150 indigent Jews in Bershad and several nearby villages (former Jewish shtetls).
Though Pheema’s older son lives in Israel – where the standard of living is much higher – Pheema feels he is needed in Bershad. “We don’t have any arguments with the Ukrainians, but we don’t make friends with them either,” Pheema explains. “We live separate lives, and must take care of ourselves.” But copper-headed Misha wants to go to Israel when he grows up. “At school, I’m not treated like the others, because they know I’m Jewish. One boy always hits me on the shoulder and says, ‘Zhid!’ (Jew!).” Misha explains, “I have a lot of books about Jewish history, culture and traditions, and I read them all, but there are no activities here – there are only seven 9-14 year-olds left in Bershad, and some are already leaving.” Misha is teaching himself some Hebrew for his upcoming bar-mitzvah and will attend a program sponsored by Chabad Lubavitch in Zhitomir, approximately six hours away.
SURGE IN RUSSIAN ALIYAH
Aliyah from Russia is rapidly
increasing due to a major recession triggered by falling oil prices and sanctions resulting from the Ukrainian civil war. If you can believe it, Russian Aliyah is now increasing faster than Ukrainian Aliyah!
In the past year, Aliyah from Russia rose by nearly 44%, while Aliyah from Ukraine increased by 34%, due to the continuing skirmishes and a bad economy. Both statistics remind us of the dreadful facts: The situation of Jews in both countries is foreboding. Overall, Aliyah from the former Soviet Union nations increased by about 36%. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, ICEJ supporters have been faithful in helping the former Soviet Jewry return home to Israel, and today our help is continuously needed! In many places in the Bible the Lord calls out to the Gentiles to help bring His people home. In Isaiah 49:22 we read: “See. I will beckon to the Gentiles, I will lift up my banner to the peoples; they will carry your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their shoulders.” Just as it was in the time of exodus from Egypt, the homecoming of the children of Israel is a witness to the world, and a testimony of the faithfulness of the one true God who keeps His promises.
Russian Reality
Today Russian Jews are moving to Israel in greater numbers mainly because of economic hardships. The Russian ruble is a “petro-currency” which means that as oil loses value on the market, so does the ruble. Since the slide began over a year ago, the Russian ruble has lost more than half of its value, which devalued everyone’s savings accounts by 50% or more. This also means every square meter of Russian real estate has lost more than half of its real value. Traveling abroad has become twice as expensive and foreign vacations have become out of reach for most Russians. One of the hardest hit sectors is commercial aviation, where costs are counted in dollars and euros because most of the airplanes are leased, but people’s income remains in rubles.
Wages and salaries have not increased in this period, so airline tickets and accommodations have doubled. This financial situation has also led some airlines to cancel or cut back on unprofitable flight routes. For instance, Israel’s main airline El Al canceled flights to St. Petersburg and Transaero, a major Russian airline, went bankrupt and ceased operations. All these factors have impacted not only the Jewry in this geographical region, but also the process of bringing them home to Israel. Arranging flights for Russian Jews to their homeland has become a challenge, as signing contracts for their Aliyah flights has become difficult. Another challenge is increasingly tighter baggage allowance policies, which is a critical element of every family’s journey.
Wages and salaries have not increased in this period, so airline tickets and accommodations have doubled. This financial situation has also led some airlines to cancel or cut back on unprofitable flight routes. For instance, Israel’s main airline El Al canceled flights to St. Petersburg and Transaero, a major Russian airline, went bankrupt and ceased operations. All these factors have impacted not only the Jewry in this geographical region, but also the process of bringing them home to Israel. Arranging flights for Russian Jews to their homeland has become a challenge, as signing contracts for their Aliyah flights has become difficult. Another challenge is increasingly tighter baggage allowance policies, which is a critical element of every family’s journey.
The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem was quick to respond and generously sponsored luggage for many of the Jewish families needing assistance at this time. Additionally, the ICEJ increased its program “Aliyah through Finland,” which was in operation already in the 1990s, to relieve some of the pressure in traveling from Russia to Israel. For more than 25 years Finnish Christians have been inviting Russian Jews to come to Finland on their way to Israel. Today all of the expenses of this journey are paid by an organization in Finland led by the ICEJ. The sponsorship covers all travel costs, including the flight, up to three bags, bus transportation to the airport, and three nights in the homes of Finnish Christians.
The ICEJ has a base in St. Petersburg, which was established in the early 1990s for the purposes of Aliyah. This allows us to help not only the Jewish families in the northwestern region of Russia, but also in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus. Each year the ICEJ assists more than one thousand new immigrants from this region, and the numbers continue to increase.
The ICEJ has a base in St. Petersburg, which was established in the early 1990s for the purposes of Aliyah. This allows us to help not only the Jewish families in the northwestern region of Russia, but also in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus. Each year the ICEJ assists more than one thousand new immigrants from this region, and the numbers continue to increase.
Subbotnik Aliyah?
Altogether, there are in 2016 an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Subbotnik Jews spread throughout the former Soviet Union, many of whom wish to make aliya.
The Jews of the Former Shtetls in Vinnitsya Oblast, UkraineAltogether, there are in 2016 an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Subbotnik Jews spread throughout the former Soviet Union, many of whom wish to make aliya.
The region around Vinnitsya, a city four hours southwest of Kiev, once boasted dozens of shtetls (Jewish villages) and hundreds of thousands of Jews. Today, those who survived the Cossacks, czars, Nazis and Communists -- and who chose not to emigrate to Israel or the United States -- number only several thousand.
After decades of Soviet-enforced atheism, few keep kosher or Shabbat and fewer read Hebrew -- but Jewish culture is beginning to thrive again.
"I only started observing Jewish holidays after the Soviet Union fell," says Yvgeny Zilbert, who runs Mishpakha, an organization devoted to rejunenating Vinnitsya's Jewish culture. "Now I´m making up for lost time," he says.
Zilbert's actions speak louder than his words. For example, around the Purim season every year, Zilbert reads the Book of Esther publicly more than a dozen times, making him the traveling celebration broker of the Vinnitsya region.
The Vinnitsya Jewish community shows particular enthusiasm for Klezmer music and Yiddish theater. Sasha Tsondekovich, a math teacher, manages a young Jewish theater group in his spare time. Tsondekovich's troupe performs Sholem Aleichem plays several times a month in former shtetls around the region
One afternoon in early Spring, Tsondekovich visits an elderly woman living 100 miles south of the regional capital, in the small town of Bershad. She last attended a Jewish function when Tsondekovich´s Chanukah play came to town.
"Oy vey, Maccabey!" shouts Vera Shvartsman Cheyved, 78, answering the door with a loving, toothless smile, unconcerned or unaware that the Maccabis pertain to Channukah, now long past.
"Oy," she repeats for emphasis, and the grin disappears momentarily as she says to Tsondekovich in Yiddish, "I've had a lot of bad things in my life."
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine an indignity she has been spared. She was ghettoized, orphaned, shot, starved, dressed in rags, left childless, torn from her husband, exiled, denied religious freedom and, more recently, stripped of adequate health care.
"But oh, how I love to sing!" Cheyved says, the light returning to her scarf-framed face as she clasps her chubby hands to her bosom like a little girl receiving a gift.
Cheyved props her enormous figure against the bed frame in her tiny flat. Playfully shaking in her massive blue housedress, she sings half a dozen romantic Yiddish songs.
Returning from Bershad, Tsondekovich remarks that Cheyved´s rosy demeanor is unsurprising. "Our sense of humor," he says of Vinnitsya´s Jews, "is how we survive."
Around 20 million Levites among Russian & Ukrainian "gentiles"
About 12'5% & Ukrainian males have the Levite gene. As an average if we suppose that they are married to women with the smae origin & have about one child this means that there are about 5'5 million Ukrainians with Levitic origin (the Levites are only a minority among the Jews, so the number of ethnic Jews would be far larger) & about 14'5 million Russians with levitic origins, totalling 16 million people with Levitic origin.
In the Caucasus there are several ethnicities with Jewish origin as well. This doesn't count the ethnic groups with Khazar origin or the ones with Levite genes. The Khazars are usually regarded as Turkish converts to Judaism, but their physical features made them be regarded as Turkish Lost Israelites that rejoined their ancestors' lost religion. This means that there are at least about 20 million or more of gentiles with Israelite Khazar origin (plus the ones recognized as Cohen Levites, the ones regarded as having Jewish origin...) spread between Russian & Ukrainian gentiles & the minor ethnicities of the Russian Caucasus.
Indeed science says there's probably a genetic link between Jewish Ashkenazis & Slavs.
Gers and Subbotniks
"Ger" is the Hebrew term for a convert to Judaism. It literally means "stranger." The Subbotniks were/are a group of Russians who adopted Judaism. They were persecuted by the tsars (who wouldn't let them hire rabbis for their communities) like other groups of Jews, and were classified in official records as "Russians" instead of "Jews," which caused some trouble in the 1990s when many of them wanted to immigrate to Israel. The word "Subbotnik" is essentially something like "Sabbath-keeper."
An estimated 15,000 Subbotniks living in southern Russia and Siberia wish to return to the traditions of their ancestors and emigrate to Israel. Are they, in fact, Jews? Are they eligible for aliyah under the Law of Return? These questions are currently up before both the Israeli Supreme Court and the Chief Rabbinate.
Subbotnik Jews & Related Communitities
1. Subbotnik Jews & Related Communitities of the Voronezh Oblast
Today, the main place of residence of this group is the settlement of Vysoky in the Talovsk District of the Voronezh Oblast where they are still the majority despite the mass repatriation of the settlement’s population to Israel in the late 1990s – early 2000s. Cross marriages that became more frequent over the recent two or three decades did not result in the loss of ties of the population of Vysoky with the Jewish religious tradition, since children from cross marriages of Subbotnik Jews and Christians, brought up in Vysoky, are not baptized as a rule and are, de facto, integrated in the Jewish community.
There is a Jewish cemetery in the settlement and a Jewish burial society that carries out burials with strict observance of the traditional Jewish law. There is no Synagogue in Vysoky and there never has been one. Prayer services are done, as they were done in times past, as a rule, in private houses of families where mourning for the deceased is observed and the Kaddish has to be read. Prayer services are recited in the Ashkenazi style. Though the community still has a kosher Sefer Torah (the Torah scroll), the liturgical language today is Russian. In Vysoky, there is a Jewish Sabbath school and courses of Hebrew and Jewish religious tradition for adults.
Several smaller communities in other residential places are connected through family and historical ties to the settlement of Vysoky.
a) In two adjoining big villages of Gvazda and Klepovka in Novobuturlinski District of the Voronezh Oblast there is a small minority of Subbotnik Jews remaining loyal to the Jewish religion. They live among numerous orthodox Christians some of whom, former Subbotnik Jews, have not so long ago became apostate (the so called vykrests). In the village cemeteries there are small Jewish sections.
b) In the khutor (hamlet) of Shishlyannikov in the Talovsk District of the Voronezh Oblast Subbotnik Jews constitute an overwhelming majority of the population; there is a cemetery there, and the burials are carried out with observance of Jewish law.
c) In the village of Nikolskoye in the Talovsk District of the Voronezh Oblast there still exists a small group of Subbotnik Jews living among the Christian majority.
d) There are Subbotnik Jews in the stanitsa (Cossack village) Rodnikovskaya in the Kurganinsk District of the Krasnodar Krai. Ties between the Voronezh Subbotnik Jews and stanitsa Rodnikovskaya go back to the 1920s, when a group of Voronezh Subbotnik Jews moved to Kuban. They decided to settle in Rodnikovskaya where dating from the 19th century there existed a local community of Subbotniks. According to Karaite sources, old-time Subbotniks community in stanitsa Rodnikovskaya, as well as in stanitsa Mikhaylovskaya in the same District, was a community of Karaite Subbotniks. Even if those sources were right, the merger of the Voronezh and Kuban Subbotniks resulted in the prevalence of normative Judaism in the Rodnikovskaya community. Apart from its ties with Vysoky, the Rodnikovskaya community also has ties with the Mikhaylovskaya community, but the author has no information about what that community is like. The informants only say that “there are still people there who uphold Jewish faith.”
e) Up until recently, settlement Vysoky had had a most intimate relationship with the village of Ilyinka in the Talovsk District of the Voronezh blast where Subbotnik Jews were a majority group. However, almost all Jewish inhabitants of Ilyinka have repatriated to Israel and their houses were occupied by new migrants from different regions of the CIS. These days, only a well preserved cemetery regularly visited by the former residents of Ilyinka living in Israel reminds one of the Jewish past of the village. At the present time, several Ilyinka natives live in Vysoky.
f) In the town of Rasskazovo, a once large Subbotniks community ceased to exist due to assimilation processes. There are several families in Vysoky with one of the spouses (in the 50 to 60 age group) coming from the Rasskazovo community. Thanks to them, there are still some connections left with the few Subbotniks of Rasskazovo (mostly very old people) who maintain Jewish traditions.
g) Apart from their traditional places of residence, there exists quite a sizable diaspora from Vysoky and other communities of the Voronezh Oblast Subbotnik Jews. Their biggest groups live in Voronezh, the capital of the region, and in the district center Talovaya. Natives of Vysoky, after moving to towns, keep up close ties with their home village. It is worth noting that on the Lag BaOmer holiday when, according to a local tradition, it is common to visit the graves of parents, a lot of people from towns who were born in Vysoky come to the cemetery in the settlement. The total number of Subbotnik Jews of the local Voronezh group who remained to live in Russia is about 1500 people.
2. GERS AND SUBBOTNIKS OF PRIVOLNOYE
Privolnoye, a big village in Jalilabad District of Azerbaijan, was inhabited by two communities of Subbotniks who maintained their distinctiveness: Karaite-Subbotniks constituting about 60% of the population and Gers. Among the Gers there lived a small group of Mountain Jews who eventually merged with Gers. In the early 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, most of the residents of Privolnoye moved to Russia. A small group of the Privolnoye Gers, mostly those who had family ties with Mountain Jews, repatriated to Israel, and a few of them moved to Azerbaijani cities, for the most part, to Baku.
In Russia, Gers and Karaites of Privolnoye settled dispersedly. Sizable groups of them have been formed in the Stavropol Krai and the Volga region (in Volgograd and Togliatti, for the most part). By now, in Volgograd, the Gers of Privolnoye constitute the core of the local religious community which was founded and supported during the Soviet period by Gers-Subbotniks of the Kolotilin family.
It should be emphasized that it was a forced resettlement from Privolnoye. It resulted in the disintegration of the traditional communal system and led to a weakening of the religious identity of Gers and Karaite-Subbotniks and to propagation of assimilation processes among them. Nevertheless, in the new places of their residence, natives of Privolnoye still consider themselves a separate group different from the surrounding population. There are several nostalgic websites and forums devoted to Privolnoye. These days, there are only small groups of Gers and Karaite-Subbotniks left in the settlement (most of them are at retirement age now) living among the Azerbaijani who occupied the houses abandoned by forcibly displaced people. So far, a Jewish prayer hall is still functioning in Privolnoye and there is an outlet of the Hesed charitable foundation there. It is worthy of note that among the Azerbaijani Jewish community, Gers of Privolnoye are considered undoubted Jews, while Karaite-Subbotniks are virtually not.
The total number of Gers and Karaite-Subbotniks of Privolnoye in Russia and Azerbaijan exceeds five thousand people over half of whom are Karaite-Subbotniks.
3. ASTRAKHAN SUBBOTNIKS
A distinguishing feature of this local group of Subbotnik Jews is that they, unlike members of the aforementioned groups, preserve clear memories of the time (it was late 19th century) when their forefathers converted to Judaism. Astrakhan Subbotniks reside in small groups in several locations of the Limanovsci Disctrict in the southeast of Astrakhan Oblast, nowhere a majority. There are separate “Jewish sections” in local cemeteries. Natives of these village communities also live in Astrakhan. Words borrowed from Yiddish occur in the speech of elderly Astrakhan Subbotniks. Their traditional prayer services are in the Ashkenazi style. In the recent past, their children attended a Jewish Sabbath school operated in Astrakhan with financing from Jewish organizations. The Astrakhan rabbi, a Habad Jew from the U.S., is malevolent to Subbotniks and doesn’t consider them Jews. In this respect, he is very different from the Volgograd rabbi (also a Habad Jew but a Russian one) whose active parishioners are mostly Gers-Subbotniks (both former natives of Privolnoye and the local ones). The number of Astrakhan Subbotniks amounts to several hundred people.
4. BONDAREVO SUBBOTNIKS
The village of Bondarevo (or, as it used to be called, Iudino) is situated in the Beisk District of the Republic of Khakasia. Its population is roughly 2000 persons. The two main confessional groups who have long since lived in the village are Subbotniks (Judaizers) and the Molokane. Estrangement between these groups (including their adherence to strict endogamy) is still there. A substantial part of the youth from the Subbotniks community have left Bondarevo and, after obtaining a higher education, settled in cities (Abakan, Krasnoyarsk, etc.). In the village, primarily among the older generation of Subbotniks, Jewish religious traditions are still observed which includes prayer services, food restrictions, holidays and burial cer- emonies. However, the community’s youth settled in cities also maintain adherence to Judaism. Many of them take part in the activities of the local Jewish communities. The total number of Bondarevo Subbotniks is about 1500 people.
5. IRKUTSK OBLAST SUBBOTNIKS
The largest community of the Irkutsk Oblast Subbotniks is in the settlement of Staraya Zima where there still exists the building of a synagogue (expropriated by the Soviet authorities and not having been returned up to now) and a well-kept Subbotnik Jewish cemetery. Apart from that, Subbotniks also live in several zaimkas (small villages) of the District in some of which they constitute the majority of the population. There also exists a sizable diaspora of the Staraya Zima Subbotniks in the Eastern Siberia cities. Though the assimilation processes among the Irkutsk Subbotniks are well under way, in recent years a reverse trend of returning of a certain part of young people to the Jewish religious tradition is observed. There was an attempt made to officially register the Subbotnik Jews religious community in the settlement of Staraya Zima, but it failed because of lack of funds and refusal on the part of the authorities to return the synagogue building to the community. Some of the former natives of Staraya Zima have repatriated to Israel over the last twenty years. Although there are quite a few Irkutsk Subbotniks (no less than several thousand by estimate), it is hard to provide more exact figures because of lack of accurate information about the population of the Subbotniks zaimkas and also on account of numerous mixed marriage which, nevertheless, do not result in conversion to Christianity.
6. SUBBOTNIKS OF THE TOWN OF SEVAN
In times past, in the town of Sevan (Elenovka until 1935) in the west of Armenia, there existed a large community of Subbotnik Jews with their own synagogue. At present, because of emigration and assimilation there are only about ten Subbotniks left in the town. They are all elderly people. It may be assumed that the overall number of Subbotniks of Sevan, including young people who left the town but did not entirely lose their confessional identity, amount to about 100 people.
The Last of the Saturday People
SEVAN, ARMENIA — After 200 years, the Subbotniks are fading out of Armenia's history — ending another sorry chapter for a community that was often persecuted, rarely loved
A RUSTING FERRIS WHEEL stands sadly on the edge of Sevan, a Soviet-era city in the center of Armenia, an hour's drive from the capital, Yerevan. Not far away, on a parched knoll, is a small cemetery with a big gate decorated with a Star of David. A quick car ride away is Sevan's synagogue-turned-grocery store, which has seen far more shopping than praying as it was built in 1906.
There is no traffic to speak of as more than half of Sevan's one-time population of 30,000 has left in search of work. Lake Sevan, once a source of fish and tourist dollars, has receded three kilometers over the last 50 years; still the country's largest body of water, it has been shrinking steadily since an irrigation scheme went awry.
Among those remaining in Sevan are 23 elderly Subbotniks — the remnants of the mysterious "Saturday people" or "Sabbath people" who built the synagogue and the cemetery. But they, too, are not long for this place. "What kind of future do the Subbotniks have? The cemetery," says Mikhail Zharkov, who has already beaten the average Armenian male's life expectancy by 10 years. "I'm 72 years old. I'm glad to make it through the day."
When the last of this community dies off, it will mark the end of the Subbotniks' largely unhappy 200 years in Armenia — and another sorry chapter in the unfortunate saga of this unloved people, whose last 10,000 to 15,000 members are now dispersed, unlamented, in rural communities scattered elsewhere throughout the former Soviet Union.
The Subbotniks are the most prominent survivors of the "Judaizers," a collective term applied to Russians who, from the 15th century on, left the Russian Orthodox Church for Judaism, were persecuted and finally exiled to the far reaches of the Russian Empire. Because of their Slavic roots and rejection of the Talmud, the Subbotniks always remained outside mainstream, rabbinical Judaism with its intellectual traditions and institutions.
The Subbotniks' precise origins are obscure — even to members of the community themselves — partly because they never created their own yeshivahs or seminaries, and partly because the czarist authorities were eager to squelch and isolate a religious movement viewed as a threat to the state faith, Russian Orthodoxy. As for the Communist authorities, they were equally hostile to the very existence of independent religious movements of any kind, as to their study by ethnographers or historians.
On a recent weekday in an apartment here, about 10 of Sevan's remaining Subbotniks gather to reminisce, polish off three bottles of vodka and sing long mournful hymns based on a narrative from Genesis. Asked about their faith and history, they have little to offer. "We are Subbotniks. We celebrate all the Jewish holidays in full," is the best that Alexander Andreyev, 70, a retired electrician and acting leader of the community, can muster.
The 20th-century narrative is somewhat fuller, though. They do know that the Communist authorities seized the synagogue in the 1920s and turned it into a grocery store, that circumcisions were banned a few years later, that the last man who could read Hebrew died in the 1960s and that the last ritual slaughterer died in the 1970s.
Unable to muster a minyan of 10 men, they gave away their Torah scroll in 1993 to the 1,000-strong Jewish community in Yerevan. Nowadays, the 18 women and five men, all elderly, take turns hosting weekly informal prayer services. Everyone pays dues of 100 drams (18 cents) a month. Anna Andreyeva, 71, a retired accountant, usually leads the singing from a child's exercise book in which the dirge-like Subbotnik hymns are recorded, written in Russian with a blue ballpoint pen.
Russia's leading Subbotnik expert cannot add much more. Valery Dymshits, an ethnographer and folklorist who teaches at the European University in St. Petersburg, has been traveling since 1997 to Azerbaijan and southern Russia conducting interviews and filming Subbotniks in farming communities. "We are trying to find their communities and contact them," he says. "It is difficult because they were — and are — everywhere: Siberia, the Caucasus, on the Volga, in Ukraine."
There has never been systematic research, Dymshits explains. Before the Revolution, people who left the Russian Orthodox Church for Judaism were the No. 1 enemies of anti-Semitic czars, who cast themselves as defenders of Orthodox Christianity. The rituals and practices of Subbotniks went undocumented by researchers from czarist universities. After the Revolution, those people who defined themselves by religion were ignored by academic researchers working for a Soviet government that promoted atheism.
It seems reasonable to posit that Sevan's Subbotniks were likely exiled tothe southern edge of what was then the Russian Empire after 1830, when Czar Nicholas I decreed that Slavs refusing Russian Orthodoxy must not be allowed to "infect" the faithful masses. In exile, the Subbotniks had plenty of Russian-speaking company, including the Molokans (milk drinkers) and Dukhobors (spirit wrestlers), both non-Orthodox Christian groups.
They did not always get along. In Sevan, the Molokans viewed the Subbotniks as having sold out their Slavic Christian heritage. In neighboring Azerbaijan, Molokan "whites" clashed with Subbotnik "reds" during the Civil War that followed the Revolution.
NOW, with a still unresolved war between Armenia and Azerbaijan taking a huge toll on the Armenian economy, all of the working-age Subbotniks have resettled in Russia, as have an estimated 800,000 to 1.5 million other residents of Armenia, which had a population of 3.5 million people in 1989.
In Sevan, the elderly Subbotniks have average monthly pensions of about $8 and receive monthly food and medicine parcels from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. That makes them a good deal better off than their Armenian neighbors, who they say sometimes go door-to-door begging for bread.
Sevan's Subbotniks do not seem interested in — or even aware of — possible emigration to Israel, although it is an option, says Dymshits. "In principle, they have the right to go there under the Law of Return. But, in reality, the Israeli government puts up obstacles because they don't know what to do with them."
Armenia's sole rabbi, Gersh Meir Burshteyn, welcomes Subbotniks to his Yerevan synagogue and is grateful for the gift of their Torah, but says he does not count the men towards a minyan, mainly because they are uncircumcised and unschooled in rabbinical Judaism. The Yerevan-born rabbi notes that the Jewish population — most of whom arrived after the Subbotniks, in Soviet times, to escape anti-Semitism in Russia and Ukraine, and to work in Armenia's top-flight physics institute — is declining too, through attrition, aliyah and immigration to Russia.
Burshteyn, a Chabad (Lubavitcher) hasid, says he has made a point of searching out Subbotniks in his native Armenia. "I've even looked for them in a village near the Georgian border, but I only found Molokans." Sevan is the only place he's come upon Subbotniks, he says. Not long from now, there won't be any left there either.
Jews are a really a majority in Birobidzhan & the whole Jewish oblast altough a minority are counted as such
There are no figures available on how many of the region's current 210,000-strong population are Jewish, but most estimates put the number at only four percent. The most obvious non-Russian presence in the town is a group of itinerant Chinese traders hawking their goods in the market.
The deputy regional governor, Valery Gurevich, denies the region is no longer Jewish. "Almost all of the population is Jewish, they just don't know it," he said in an interview in the local government building on Lenin Square. "There were many mixed marriages and, of course, a lot of anti-Semitism, so many people did not write down that they were Jewish in their (internal) passports," he said.This meant that later generations had no idea of their Jewish roots. Many of those who clung to their Jewishness in spite of the difficulties seized the opportunity of emigrating to Israel when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and travel restrictions were lifted.
Gurevich said the regional government was now trying to stem the flow. "People go because they have a better standard of living there. And of course we mind -- we're doing everything to keep people here," he said, adding that the region was hoping to discover oil under its southern marshes.
Travellers on the vast trans-Siberian railway, which links Moscow with the Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok, look twice when the train pulls into Birobidzhan station. A neon sign displays the town's name in Yiddish in large green letters.
All official signs are in Russian and Yiddish and one of the two local newspapers, the Birobidzhaner Shtern, is still published partly in Yiddish. Its editor, Ina Dmitrienko, said only about a fifth of the 5,000 people who buy the paper could read the Yiddish page. "I hope that figure will grow over time because many children are going to the Jewish state schools," she said. When she joined the paper 10 years ago as a reporter, the whole paper was written in Yiddish. Although many of the Shtern's writers died in Stalin's work camps, the paper was never shut down because, like all Soviet newspapers, it was an official organ of the Communist Party. Its masthead still carries a small Soviet badge.
The Khazar origin is maintained by the folklore of such groups as the Mountain Jews and Georgian Jews
Kevin Brooks in his Jews of Kazaria mentions that they like to give names associated with holidays like Pesach, for example. So do the Mountain Jews who might be the missing link in all this. If my theory is correct and the Kazars were of Israelite origins to begin with then the Mountain Jews who are their descendents and the Pashtun tribes of Israelite origin should have similar names.
The Khazar origin is maintained by the folklore of such groups as the Mountain Jews and Georgian Jews (They call themselves Ebraelebi, or Kartveli Ebraeli). There is little evidence in English-language literature to support these theories, although it is possible that some Khazar descendants found their way into these communities.
Non-Jewish groups who claim at least partial descent from the Khazars include the Kazakhs, Kumyks, and Crimean Tatars; as with the above-mentioned Jewish groups, these claims are subject to a great deal of controversy and debate.
The Russian Orthodox Catholic Cossacks of southern Russia and Ukraine, many of whom live in Russian krais that were once part of the former Khazaria, are sometimes said to be of partially Turkic origin, including Khazar as well as Tatar, Cuman, and Pecheneg, due to their tradition of calling themselves Khazars (Cossar or Cassar) in Russian, Cossarluge in Ukraininan), as well as their constitutions (such as the Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk) and aspects of their customs and lifestyle.
The Mishari, a group of Tatars, are said to be according to sources in Russian and Tatar languages. The Magyars who would later found Hungary also had lived in Khazaria for hundreds of years, and are also of partially Khazar origin themselves, as the Kabar subgroup of the Khazars joined the Magyars and was later absorbed by them, although they are a Uralic group otherwise apparently unrelated to the Turkic peoples.
SUBBOTNIKI ("Sabbatarians"):
One of the Russian rationalistic bodies known under the general name of "Judaizing sects" (The Russian Judaizing sects, in the same way that protestants rebelled against Rome, rebelled against Moscow, the third Rome. Both were descendents of Israelites [Not Jews], the Russian ones bein little remnants.). On the whole, the Subbotniki differ but little from the other Judaizing societies. They first appeared in the reign of Catherine II., toward the end of the eighteenth century. According to the official reports of the Russian government, most of the followers of this sect practise the rite of circumcision, believe in one God, do not believe in the Trinity, accept only the Old Testament portion of the Bible, and observe the Sabbath on Saturday instead of on Sunday. According to the same source, however, some of them, as, for instance, the Subbotniki of Moscow, do not practise circumcision; moreover, they believe in Jesus, but regard him as a saint and prophet and not as the son of God. Others await the coming of the Messiah as king of the earth. Some of them revere the New Testament; others place it on a lower level than the Old Testament.
However, the Russian official sources can not be trusted implicitly, since the Subbotniki, like other Judaizing sects, carefully conceal from the Christians their religious beliefs and rites. They do not act so guardedly toward the Jews; indeed, they even style themselves "Jews." The Russian government carefully isolates the Subbotniki from the followers of either religion, but whenever the opportunity offers itself the Subbotniki apply to the Jews for Hebrew religious books. Apart from practising the rite of circumcision, they also slaughtercattle according to the law of "sheḥiṭah," wherever they can learn the necessary rules. Moreover, they clandestinely use tefillin, ẓiẓit, and mezuzot, and pray in almost the same manner as the Jews; namely, in private houses of prayer, with covered heads, reciting their prayers from Jewish prayer-books with Russian translation. The cantor reads the prayer aloud and the congregants then pray silently; during prayers a solemn silence is observed throughout the house. On Saturdays readings are made from the Torah also. Of all the Jewish rites and traditions the Subbotniki observe the Sabbath most zealously, whence their name. They are careful on that day to avoid work altogether; and they endeavor not to discuss worldly affairs.
According to the testimony, private and official, of all those who have studied their mode of life, the Subbotniki are remarkably industrious; they read and write; they are very hospitable; and are strangers to drunkenness, poverty, and prostitution. Up to 1820 the Subbotniki lived for the most part in the governments of Voronej, Orel, Moscow, Tula, and Saratof. After that year the government deported those who openly acknowledged their membership in this sect to the foothills of the Caucasus, to Transcaucasia, and to the governments of Irkutsk, Tobolsk, and Yeniseisk, in Siberia.
In the reign of Alexander I., owing to that czar's personal tolerance, the Subbotniki enjoyed more freedom. Nevertheless the Russian clergy killed in Moghilef (Mohilev) about 100 Subbotniki and their spiritual leaders, including the ex-archbishop Romantzov, while the latter's young son was tortured with red-hot irons before being burned at the stake. The Subbotniki, however, succeeded in gaining a measure of peace by means of an agreement which they made with the Greek-Orthodox popes. In order that the latter might not be the losers from a material standpoint by the defection of the Subbotniki from their congregations, the members of the sect undertook to pay them the usual fee of two rubles for every birth and three rubles for every marriage. The czar then permitted the Subbotniki to profess their faith openly, but on the condition that they should not engage Jewish preachers and should not themselves proselytize among the Christians. These stipulations were not, however, fully complied with.
In the reign of Nicholas I. a feeling of unrest became apparent among the Subbotniki. Many of them wished to embrace Judaism; and some of their number were sent into the Pale of Settlement in order to become fully acquainted with the Jewish religion. On learning of this the Russian government sent among the Subbotniki a number of priests with the view of effecting their return to the Greek-Orthodox fold. But the religious disputations and the persuasion of the priests did not meet with success. The government then decided to suppress the Subbotniki by violent measures, and many of them were subjected to cruel treatment by the officials. The government then decided (1826) to deport those who had openly professed themselves Subbotniki to the above-mentioned regions in the Caucasus, Transcaucasia, and Siberia, at the same time, but for reasons quite opposite in the two instances, prohibiting the residence in their settlements of Jews and of members of the Greek-Orthodox Church.
It is impossible at present to determine the exact number of Subbotniki in Russia, the discrepancy between the government statistics and the actual numbers of this sect being so very wide. The official data represent the membership of the sect as numbering several thousand, while the traveler and writer Dinard, who has been in personal contact with the Subbotniki, states that there are 2,500,000. It may be that Dinard included in his figures all of the Judaizing sects. As regards dress, and mode of life apart from their religious rites, the Subbotniki do not in any way differ from the Greek-Orthodox Russians.
Khazaria: An Empire Gone
Between the 8th and 11th centuries there existed in Central Asia an empire powerful enough to rival that of the Byzantines, the Arabs, or the emerging Rus and European states. Khazar, a nation of Oghuric Turks, speaking a Chuvash dialect, played a pivotal role in history. They are described as “their complexions white, their eyes blue, their hair flowing and predominantly reddish...” (Koestler, p. 19).
The empire eventually decayed and its inhabitants scattered though it left behind a legacy stronger than any evidenced by political or military might. It brought forward the realization of a Jewish homeland amidst the diaspora The Khazars erupted from the Asian steppes around the 5th century under the dominion of the Hun empire. By the middle of the sixth century, with Attila's death and the subsequent collapse of the Hun empire, the Khazars found themselves subjugated yet again, this time by the West Turkish Empire, a confederation of tribes ruled by a leader. This empire represented one corner of a “triangle of power, “also consisting of Byzantium and Persia.
Gery (Gerami) and Subbotniks
- Talmudists and Karaimy Aleksandr L'vov
The object/subject of this work are the sects Iudeystvuyushchikh, which arose in Russia at the end KHVIII - beginning KHIKH of substances and which exist to this day.
In this religious motion, which covers predominantly peasants, they separate/liberate several directions. One of them they contradict usually against all rest as closest to normativnomu to Judaism or even coinciding with it. The sectarians of this direction are most frequently called Gerami, although are encountered other names: Hatters, Talmudists, Subbotniks (last term sometimes it is used as autonym, if next there are no other Iudeystvuyushchikh senses). Subsequently we will use for the designation of this direction term Gery. The sectarians of other directions ( Subbotniks ( Besshapochniki, Karaimity) ) differ from Gerov in its religious practice, which sometimes converge with Karaimskimi. We will call them Subbotnikami. In the literature, as a rule, is emphasized the proximity of Gerov to the Jews: Strictly speaking, one should and consider the sectarians: they - more accurate - confessors the executors/performers of the law Of Mosaic and Talmud, only Russians on the nationality.
It would seem, a question about the differences between Gerami and Subbotniks this is contained by. Only the one circumstance confuses: it is not entirely understandable that such ispovedniki and the executors/performers of the Mosaic Law and Talmud and what relation has this determination to the ethnography. Actually, both Gery and Subbotniks can call themselves Jews and is considered themselves the followers Mosaic Law: Saturday and Jewish holidays are observed, tyuey kashrut and the like. It's at the same time obvious that they make this differently, and to observers, by familiar not by hearsay with the life of Jewish religious community, this difference strikes.
Here, for example, as begins the description of religious the practitioner of Gerskoy community V. Dymshits: Net sense it is in detail to discuss, what precisely Judaic commandments and as fulfilled Gery , since the discussion deals with the complete observance of galakhi in entire volume and with all special features of ashkenazskogo ritual. I will stop only at some special features of ritual, which distinguish precisely Privolenskuyu Jewish community.
By very similar means described Gerov other authors, one way or another directly participating in the religious practice Gerov: S. An-ski, M. of el'kin, M. Merimzon in the beginning KHKH v., and, together with V. Dymshits, this author - at the end KHKH v. The structure of these descriptions is such: at first is proclaimed the belonging of Gerov with the Jewish of religion, then follows the developed description of the special features of Gerskoy community - deviations from normativnogo Judaism, which are examined now as the special features of this local Judaic community.
Descriptions, built according to this diagram, give the previously predictable result: if Gery from the very beginning are defined as Jews, their evreiskie. Signs/criteria will be noted and emphasized in the description, and everything else - are omitted or interpreted as Jewish: Ego eye and the nestrizhennaya beard they resembled about our people.In its view there were skorb' and fear, voice sounded it got tired and gentle, in it were visible the typical signs/criteria of Jew in Galute.
The identification of Gerov as Israelites, as svoix (fuego en ruso), occurs at the level faster emotional, than logical, and even gaps/spacings in the Jewish knowledge of peasants are received as their impressing evidence Jews. For example, staricok, that forgot blessings and is lost repeated the first word, causes in educated s.An-skogo something like the religious enthusiasm: I if only prayers reach the throne of Most High, then this lost "Borkhu" of old man- peasant surely caused the trembling of enthusiasm in all celestial spheres, and it was accepted by the Lord as the best gift of human heart.
V. Dymshits' attempt to find formal, but not emotional bases for the acknowledgement of Gerov by Jews appears by important step/pitch forward against the background of these religious enthusiasm. It is at the same time obvious that polnoe the observance of galakhi. By this base be cannot (at least, if we count, as now this accepted, to galakhu - by arch/summary of laws, by the enumeration of commandments). However - and this the authors cited above perceive well - Gery, in contrast to the Subbotniks, observe commandments in Yiddish .In other words, observers, more or less participating to the Jewish religious tradition, they are in this question faster informants (and in this quality of their evidence they possess for us undoubted value), than by ethnographers, is removed ob7ektivno by those describing strange culture.
Since the author places himself precisely in this category, he cannot rely on his own field observations and intuitions in a question about the difference between Gerami and Subbotniks: this difference is too obvious for it. Therefore appears the need for turning to the evidence of Russian ethnographers, missionaries and jurists, who wrote about of the Iudeystvuyushchikh in KHIKH v. and tested/experienced, on the contrary, serious difficulties in the description differences between the senses.
The merit of the discovery/opening the difference between Gerami and Subbotniks in the domestic ethnography belongs TO SV to Maximov, who described his visit s.free, by the Transcaucasian stoliqy. Iudeystvuyushchikh: Pri mutual concordant persuasion to follow the law Of Mosaic and Jewish customs, in one and the same settlement of two differences...this visible discord, which was seeming at first negligible, with further observations and questions proved to be very serious and essential. Seeckt Iudeystvuyushchikh actually it was decomposed into two senses. Let us note that to Maximov the difference between Gerami and Subbotniks did not seem by essential at first: indeed those, etc. follow Mosaic Law and itself (with some reservations) is considered Jews. Differences in the arrangement, in the stylistics of the observance of law, that strike to Jewish observers and having for them decisive importance, to Maximov are not simply visible. Its attempts to find the objective bases of this separation by the fact are more interesting for us.
The merit of the discovery/opening the difference between Gerami and Subbotniks in the domestic ethnography belongs TO SV to Maximov, who described his visit s.free, by the Transcaucasian stoliqy. Iudeystvuyushchikh: Pri mutual concordant persuasion to follow the law Of Mosaic and Jewish customs, in one and the same settlement of two differences...this visible discord, which was seeming at first negligible, with further observations and questions proved to be very serious and essential. Seeckt Iudeystvuyushchikh actually it was decomposed into two senses. Let us note that to Maximov the difference between Gerami and Subbotniks did not seem by essential at first: indeed those, etc. follow Mosaic Law and itself (with some reservations) is considered Jews. Differences in the arrangement, in the stylistics of the observance of law, that strike to Jewish observers and having for them decisive importance, to Maximov are not simply visible. Its attempts to find the objective bases of this separation by the fact are more interesting for us.
It is interesting that the differences in the rituals, about which Maximov much and it seems willingly tell his informants, ethnographer do not seem essential. Probably; therefore it is confused in the parts, first assigning to Geram the Subbotnitskiye strict laws of dirtiness, then asserting that Gery from these laws went away, since stali to deepen more in the moral essence of Jewish study and to grow cold to the trifles of rites. - In contrast to the Subbotniks, which vsemi by forces are caught for the rite and the legend. But, to Maximov's honor, it is necessary to note that the enumeration of the numerous and not always reliable in his account differences between Gerami and Subbotniks it begins from other: Otdelenie those, etc. was said, first of all, fact that Gerov have rabbi their and scientific: they troublesome search for such, which would be natural Jew and real rabbi. In Subbotniks the rabbi, whom they call r and binomial, also their, and besides the responsibility of teacher and svyashchennosluzhitelya can take upon himself anyone who knows how and laughs.
Not long before Maximov, in 1862 Sibidarski county assessor notified protoireya of Baku cathedral, which the Molokans, who name themselves Iudeystvuyushchimi, adhere to Talmud, and recognizing the sect of Karaites, they name themselves Subbotniks. Similarly explains to Maximov the difference between Gerami and Subbotniks one of his informants: My, Gery, pure/clean Talmudists; Subbotniks, must be assumed/set, they adhere to more than karaimskogo study. Nevertheless Maximov places as the chief concern not relation to Talmud, but preference in the selection of teachers - Rabbis.
Is actuality, for the ethnographer of determination like priderjivahts Talmud or cistye Talmudists. They are not explanation, but, it is faster, by a new question. Indeed the presence of the treatises of Talmud in the Iudeystvuyushchikh communities is not fixed. From other books, which relate to the Talmudicheskoy tradition, large part (sidury, treatise Pirke Of avot, the collections of aggady and the like in the transfers/translations into the Russian language) is used both by Gerami and by Subbotniks. From other books, which relate to the Talmudicheskoy tradition, large part (sidury, treatise Pirke Of avot, the collections of aggady and the like in the transfers/translations into the Russian language) is used both by Gerami and by Subbotniks. Another, smaller part (in essence this - galakhicheskiye codes without the transfer/translation) is encountered almost exclusively in Gerov, but, according to available to us data, these books in practice were not used and had for their owners -Gerov faster symbolic value. It is difficult to visualize that different relation to these nechitayemym books and to Talmud in particular served as base for the separation between priderjivahimis Talmud by Gerami and as its not recognizing Subbotniks. In all likelihood, the tendency of Gerov toward the possession by such books is the consequence of the already prevailing separation Iudeystvuyushchikh, but not by its reason.
Observation of Maximov, who connected this separation with the different relation to ravvinam. from prirodnyx Jews, it remains for us the only deserving attention (although needing refinement) hypothesis.
The contrast of Karaites and Talmudists, which exists in the Jewish of religion is already more than 1000 years, it proved to be that perceived by Russian peasants -iudestvuhimi. In all likelihood, it proved to be consonant to some to the internal, in the Russian traditional culture existing separation, which appeared in different relation to the out-of-town Jews. By what factors could be determined this relation?
First of all let us note that the personal qualities of Jews played far from most important role in the formation of these relations. Thus, for instance, formed Siberian Ger Of the moisey Of Koz'min notes: Vajna the task of training the Subbotniks fell out frequently in the fraction/portion of different rogues, exiled from Russia into Siberia, Jews damaged morally, who along the way stopped in the Subbotniks.<...> this repeatedly was necessary to test/experience to my father, who was especially hunter assume/take wanderer- Jews. As a result, writes Koz'min, Iudeystvuyushchiye poter4li any confidence in Jew, they ridiculed, they made fun him. And nevertheless in each strannike - Jew Gery were ready to see their teacher: nesmotr to such relations of Subbotniks to the Jews, the first cannot manage without the latter and they always use their services.
Another striking special feature of the relation Iudeystvuyushchikh to the Jews - these are frequently encountered determinations nasto and prirodny. Even for Gerov, which are received by Jews as svoi., the difference between nasto45imi by Jews and by Gerami preserves its high significance. This is how explains this difference one of the informants s. An-skogo:Nas with the Jews to compare something. We, Gery, must its position to remember <...> in the Bible as it's said: "I agreement concluded with the people by my by Israel". It means, the Lord concluded agreement to the eternal periods with the people of Israel. It gave to it to Thor on Sinaye, gave to it "613 precepts" - fulfill. Well, it is agreeable. Here is passed time - and the Lord sees: Israel does not carry out precepts. The Lord is distressed - yes nothing you will do. You will not destroy agreement.
It is concluded/included to the eternal periods. He here and tells Israel: "it is difficult to you to carry out all 613 precepts - guard although Easter and Yom-Kipur". But Israel this does not want, and that it does not carry out. Is distressed the Lord still more - yes nothing you will do. And he says: "although you no my precepts carry out, but nevertheless you my people Israel, and on you will rest the paradise of the ancestors of your, patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Yakov". Such a one it is here with Israel. Jew although does not carry out law, but he nevertheless remains Jew, and everyone knows that he is Jew. But Ger that? Thus far it carries out strictly all precepts, it Jew, and only it stepped back, today it did not pray, tomorrow it went with the peasant into the restaurant, day after tomorrow drunk got drunk and by bad word mouths its defiled, it no lonGer Jew. And everyone will say: "what it Ger - peasant drunk, is more than nothing!”.
Let us note that this reasoning is in certain contradiction with the galakhoy, according to which the descendants of Gerov (proselytes) are usual Jews, and Gery themselves, which passed once the procedure of giyura, can remain Jews, even disrupting commandments. Bases for another understanding. Gerstva. It is necessary to search for, obviously, not in galakhe, but in the Russian traditional culture. Let us look again to the cited text. Natural Jews. They are described in it by means of mythological identification with the Jews by biblical. Their Jews - nekonventsional'no , it is determined by the will of god, composes their internal essence and does not depend even on their own desires and efforts/forces: in any event.Everyone knows that he is Jew. A different matter is Gery, which are Jews on our own will, on the human, but not godly arbitrariness. Their Jews is conventional: it depends on the external signs/criteria (observance of commandments) and on the fact that precisely everyone will say.
Perception by Gerami of the incoming to them Jews explains well developed TB of Shchepanskoy the model of interaction of peasant community and wanderer, allotted by the functions of leader.It comes, it was, this settler- Jew, and that and lost appearance of Jew, plucked, torn, dirty, hungry and sick. - assert that he there is present natural Jew. For Iudeystvuyushchikh this assertion indicates the claim on sacral status, which can be placed in one row with the tradition of Russian political and religious imposture .Possession of one of the ritual specialties or at least by Jewish certificate gave to out-of-town Jews into the hands the collection of symbols with the sufficiently indeterminate value, where wanderer can put activity plan necessary to it. Thus, for Gerov, which recognized the authority of these strange leaders. Their direct substantiation religious practitioner occurred not the text of Bible, but oral of Thor, perceived from the identified with biblical Israel out-of-town Jews.
Subbotniks, in contrast to Gerov, insisted on the correctness of their customs; however, for them it is extremely important to obtain approval natural Jews to conquer them in the dispute. Here is, for example, the fragments of interview with the tutor of the community of Subbotniks, 1936 gr, written down in 2000 g. in Stavropol:
Inf.: Here is woman's Monthly occur in it. So in you as it is considered? But it's unclean?
SOB: Yes.
Inf.: It to sidit' separately?
SOB: No.
Inf.: But well and as this?
SOB: But in you separately, yes?
Inf.: Yes. But why here in you not to sidyat'?! That you are more...as...present, radical. You are Jews![...] you all know this, they are familiar. But why here in you it...together khodyut, everything are done? It does not sit separately?
SOB: Well, are here so...such customs.Inf.:[ smiles ] Slukhay, fog! In them differently.
Inf.: I know; therefore and I ask. Differently. But why differently?!
SOB: However, Na, Vy knows
SOB: However, To n, Vy you know...With yerami [by Gerami] together they lived in the free. You saw, in them the same customs...
Inf.: But them who justified?! They rights y?! What so here...do not sit - they are right?! Them they did justify? But in the law...You do read law?[...] you read. But in the law as it is written? If woman is unclean...Yes? It must sit seven days, be cleaned. It is so written? But why it not sit- that?!
SOB: Well, it is possible differently to understand...
INF.: But because it is difficult! To sit - this is difficult! Children - small - to ist' request, they request to drink...It is here in to mine so 8 children were [...] must be prepared, it is necessary to weld, it is necessary to bake, it is must cho...It means, I will walk, I will not sit - it is certain, to me...it is easy!
As is evident, informant instead of telling about its culture as it is assumed .ie, answering questions of collector, it approaches to intercept initiative and to describe about its customs in the form of question- claims the culture of collector- Jew. Numerous conversations in this style are written down by expeditions of 1997 in s free and 2000 g.into Stavropol edge.
Stories about the disputes with the Jews compose the important part of folklore narrative of Subbotniks, for example: Real Rabbis arrived in us, and they were surprised even, as strictly we observe Mosaic law, and we could not us dispute. The more developed stories of such type are located also in the materials of last expeditions.
It is interesting that written down in the middle KHIKH v. the words can be to describe, obviously, and the given above fragment of the interview, where for the collectors it was necessary to play role real Rabbis...If Gery see in the Jew- wanderers of their teachers - in complete agreement with the concept TB of Shchepanskoy, then the ratio to them of Subbotniks makes it possible to assume existence in the Russian peasant culture of another model of behavior with respect to, to wanderers.Existence and traditionalism of this model indicates not only its use by the Subbotniks, which placed it into the base of its Etna- religious identity the same model of behavior - as individual, but not group characteristic - demonstrates Ger, one of the informants SA An-skogo: From the first two words it is evident that this is dialectician, who was tempted in the religious debates. Its speech showed multicolors by quotations from the Bible and the prophets. Even at me it arrived with the Bible and the catechism, accurately it was gathered to become involved with me in debate.
Almost all stories of this Gera represent by its person, who conquers in the dispute of their - always higher than it standing - ill-wishers. Caused for the exhortation, he tells the priest:. I only passed from your faith/belief in the faith/belief Christ's - it is more than nothing.- as so?...- Thus the Christ of what faith/belief was? Judaic? Here its faith/belief it passed. Priest recognizes his damage/defeat and writes so that they would send the nine additional priests in the aid.
But to me he says our hero to argue and to perekoryat'sya nevertheless with them, that honey to drink, because I strike them, we do not throw, but by in a word Bozhiim.31.Gendarme officer tells it: How do you do, Gide!- I thank obediently, answer.- for this name much suffered. And you did not offend me, but they praised. They judged and exiled it. Once it arrived for help at the fiscal rabbi and heard from it: You pass into the Judaic faith/belief, so that the Jews would help you. It left not which, but before, of course, he answered: No, the honorable rabbi. this your Jews pass into the orthodox faith/belief so that the rights are different to obtain yes tips. But Jewish faith/belief that can give, besides stitch abuses?.
Puantom (point) of these stories appears the disclosure/expansion of the intellectual and moral superiority of man from bottoms above the representative high culture. It is obvious that between the behavior of teller and the model of behavior, described in his stories, there is the same correspondence as between the stories of Subbotniks about the disputes by Rabbis and by the method of conducting the dialogue with the Jew- collectors. It...accurately was assembled to become involved with me in debate correctly it noted An-ski.
Finally, the same model of behavior man from the people directed toward the demonstration of superiority lower the culture above/high it became the collision of the very, probably known story of Vasiliy Shukshin. It cut off. In how its hero Gleb Kapustin it cut off/out-of-town Candidates of Sciences, and, which is more important, in its constant readiness to humble/notable guest is learned the model of behavior, which was being widely used by sectarians.
Of Gery, which assumed/took Jews as the teachers and followed their indications, deserved thus name Talmudists.
It is possible to assume that the disputes of Subbotniks with the out-of-town Jews were received by the latter as the negation to oral Tori/Torr and attempt to teach galakhu from the writing which in the Jewish tradition is associated first of all with the study of Karaites. Jews, possibly, named/called Subbotniks Karaites - and they explained by them, who such Karaites. In any case, in 1870- X years. the Subbotniks Of the Tsarevskogo district of Astrakhan province reported to out-of-town orthodox missionary about their attempt to meet with the Karaites and to borrow their rites: To us it is desirable to be drawn together with the Karites we are close to them in our rites. Recently we sent our into Kerch to the Karaites to learn about their orders in the faith/belief and the praying and requested them to write our rules of faith/belief for us. But Karaites could not carry out our request: they do not know well our language, and our ambassadors do not know Jewish. .It is obvious that to these Subbotniks about existence of Karaites it was known, before they attempted with them meeting - and learned about the Karaites they, most likely, from the Jews. The difficulties of the intercourse of Subbotniks with the Karaites proved to be surmountable. In 1893 Astrakhan missionaries revealed/detected that Prishibinskiye Subbotnik- Karaites acquired transfer/translation from the Jewish text to the Russian language of the book "order of prayers for the Karaites" and printed in The Tsaritsynskoy printing house. The printing of prayer books gave courage to tell Subbotniks that their faith/belief was approved by government. It turned out that on the relation with the Moscow censorial committee the transfer/translation of prayer-book was permissible to the publishing in Moscow 18- GO of April of 1882.35.this, as far as we know, the earliest transfer/translation of karaimskogo prayer-book into the Russian language bilingual. Voice of Iakova, until now, that appearing basic prayer book in Subbotniks, was published into Vil'no in the beginning KHKH v It would be interesting to compare the relation of Subbotniks k. to real Rabbis. With their relation to real Karaites. But, unfortunately, no straight/direct evidence about their contacts we thus far have available.
Report at the Ninth International Conference on Iudaike, Moscow, February 2002
The Euro-Asian Jewish Yearbook has already touched upon the issue of the Judaizers. An article by Alexander Lvov published three years ago, was devoted, first and foremost, to the spiritual culture and the history of formation of that unique sub-ethnic group. In the article published in the present issue of the Yearbook the Israeli researcher Velvl Chernin reviews the current state of the communities that still exist in the post-Soviet space.
In the late 18th century, when the partitions of Poland resulted in the Russian Empire taking territories with a numerous Jewish Ashkenazi population that formed the culture-historical community of people which is usually designated as Russia’s of Russian Jewry, Russian Subbotniks already represented a separate confessional group. The 19th century saw intensive rapprochement between the religions practices of Subbotniks and normative Judaism and the forming of two quite clearly defined confessional groups among the Subbotniks: Gers (Talmudists and Kippah-wearers) and Karaite-Subbotniks. While the former went all the way to Orthodox Judaism in its Ashkenazi version, the latter didn’t accept the Talmud and attempted to find in the traditional Jewish world an example to follow in the form of the Karaite sect of Judaism.
The most distinctive feature of the Karaites-Subbotniks was that they retained a clearly defined Russian ethnic self-awareness combined with an equally distinct appreciation of their belonging to the “Jewish faith”. Their contacts with the Crimean and Lithuanian Karaites, who, to a degree, exemplified for them “a Jewish model to be imitated”, were occasional and never formally arranged since, in particular, normative Karaism denied the acceptance of proselytes and regarded the very existence of a community of Karaites of non-Jewish origin senseless.
Quite different was the situation with the Gers-Subbotniks who strove for the closest possible rapprochement with “indigenous Jews”. Members of this group actively used Hebrew in worship, sent their sons to yeshivahs and invited Ashkenazi Jews to serve as melameds, rabbis, cantors and shochets.
Over many generations, there have been marriages between Gers-Subbotniks and the Ashkenazi and Mountain Jews. According to the Russian Encyclopedia of the World’s Peoples and Religions, “Gers-Subbotniks have virtually merged together with Jews”.
The April 17, 1905, Czar’s Manifesto on Freedom of Worship technically terminated the persecution of Subbotniks which had lasted over a century. It also permitted official registration of their communities. Nevertheless, it must be particularly noted that since Russia’s local administrations tended to reckon Subbotniks as Jews (“new Jews” in terms of confession), there were attempts to use restraining statutes directed against Jews. To address this matter, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a circular explaining that Subbotniks had equal rights with the indigenous population and that restraining statutes directed against Jews (regarding the pale of settlement, in particular) shall not apply to them. However, the above practice persisted and in 1909, the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued another letter of like tenor.
This alone shows that on the part of government officials, confusing “new Jews” and “indigenous Jews” was quite a steady trend. Among Gers-Subbotniks, due to the ethno-confessional nature of Jewish religion, there gradually began to form Jewish self-awareness, both confessional and a quasi-ethnic one. And the process persisted despite the fact that Gers-Subbotniks continued to steadily use Russian as their everyday language (and, partly, as the language of religious practice) and even though most groups of Gers-Subbotniks remained well aware of their initially non-Jewish origin. In was as early as at the end of the 19th century that Gers-Subbotniks began repatriating to Eretz Israel where they played a significant role in the advance of the settlers’ farming. Even though the repatriation was religiously motivated, it coincided with and was, to a degree, inspired by the Jewish national movement committed to the reconstruction of the ethnic motherland of Jewish people. After the establishment of the Soviet power, thousands of Gers-Subbotniks became, partly through the Ozet (Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land) and Komzet (Committee for the Settlement of Toiling Jews on the Land) activities, members of Jewish kolkhozes.
With sovietization and the decreasing role of religion in society, two factors contributed to the growth of Jewish self-awareness among Gers-Subbotniks: entering the Jewish ethnicity in Soviet passports for a part of the Gers-Subbotnik population; and the fact that thousands of members of their community fell victims to the Holocaust. The term “Subbotnik” was perceived in many of the local communities (though by no means in all) as an offensive one and challenging their Jewishness.
Nowadays, we can consider Subbotnik Jews as a specific sub-ethnic group within the Jewish people. Ethnicon “Subbotnik Jews” is a novelty that appeared in writing only in the beginning of the 21st century3. It is not prevalent in everyday verbal practice either among members of this group or among their neighbors of different ethnicities or faiths. The term “Subbotnik Jews” undoubtedly comes from an attempt to place the descendants of Russian proselytes (who have, over many generations, formed into a separate ethno-confessional group) among other sub-ethnic groups of the Jewish people in the post-Soviet space, such as the Ashkenazi, Mountain, Georgian, Bukhara and Krimchak Jews.
It will be noted again that the afore term is not an established one; it is conventional, to an extent, and is neither a self-designation nor an exonym of the ethno-confessional group under review which is actually a continuum of considerably different local subgroups that were, virtually, not in contact over a long period of time. As self-designation, local subgroups of Subbotnik Jews use terms “Jews” (in the Voronezh Oblast), “Gers” (in Azerbaijan) and “Subbotniks” (in Siberia). As exonyms, bookish terms “Judaizers” or “Judaizing sects” and popular terms “Jews”, “Gers”, “Subbotniks” and “Zhids” are used.
The usage of all these terms is geographically and situationally specific. Russia’s Gers-Subbotniks, who gave birth to the community of Subbotnik Jews, from the very start drew the attention of Jewish researchers, writers and public figures. They were regarded positively and even enthusiastically.
In his notes of journey, a renowned Jewish writer, ethnographer and public figure S. Ansky (Rappoport, 1863-1920)4 passionately and with affection wrote about Gers-Subbotniks. Doctor Hillel Yaffe (1864-1936), chairman of the Hovevei Zion movement in Eretz Israel, in his memoirs, wrote about Subbotnik Jews in the context of the critical situation the first Jewish farming colonies found themselves in during the Ottoman rule. Here is how he described the contribution of Subbotnik Jews to the stabilization of the situation: “It was the Gers who retrieved the situation. Owing to their hard work and insistence, modesty in demands and firmness, they attained success. Gers are very good Jews, fervently committed to religion, ready to dissolve among other Jews and to live and die in this land”5.
However, despite the longstanding interest in Gers-Subbotniks on the part of Jewish intellectuals, significant research works devoted to Subbotniks have appeared only recently. The first worthy of mention among these works is the aforementioned article by Alexander Lvov who consistently delved into the history and spiritual culture of this ethno-confessional group6.
Likewise, worthy of mention is a substantive and outstanding, in many respects, paper by Valery Dimshits devoted to the ethnographic description of Gers living in the village of Privolnoye in Azerbaijan7. Contrary to such sub-ethnic groups of the Jewish people as Ashkenazi, Mountain and Bukhara Jews (also known as Tadjiki Jews), Subbotnik Jews, also a sub-ethnic group, lack their own specific spoken language. Traditionally, Subbotnik Jews have used and still use Russian (less commonly Ukrainian) as their spoken language. However, a number of local groups of Subbotnik Jews include in their speech vocabulary borrowed from Yiddish (or from Hebrew via Yiddish) to designate realities of traditional Jewish ways of life. There have been identified group-specific Jewish religious folklore works in the Russian language.
Traditional onomasticon of Subbotnik Jews rests on Biblical names found in the Russian translation of the Bible or on Biblical names as used by the Ashkenazi Jews. Also encountered are specific Ashkenazi non-Biblical names. Surnames of Subbotnik Jews are Russian. However, strictly limited sets of surnames and their geographic specifity allow members of a given group to identify the name-bearers as “ours” or “not ours”. For instance, for Subbotnik Jews of Ilyinka, the Voronezh Oblast, “our” surnames are Kozhokin, Matveev and Karpov, while for Subbotnik Jews of the settlement of Vysoky, the Voronezh Oblast, “our” surnames are Gridnev, Chernykh, Puzankov, Voronin, Konchakov and Yuryev. Several surnames are common among different local groups of Subbotnik Jews and are perceived as “ours” in geographically distant communities: such are Shishlyannikov and Zhabin. Also encountered are surnames showing that their bearers descend in the male line from the Ashkenazi (the Lyubarovs from the settlement of Vysoky) and Mountain (the Yunusovs, the settlement of Vysoky; the Khanukaevs from the Azerbaijani village of Privolnoye) Jews. For the Israeli, (for the man in the street), specifically “Subbotnik-like” surnames indicating the descent of their bearers from long-ago Subbotniks-repatriates are such surnames as Kurakin, Dubrovin and Matveev.
The fact that in the territory of Russia (USSR, CIS) Subbotnik Jews have survived as a separate group who, to a certain degree, retain in memory their descent from the proselytes genetically related to Russians, brought about specific novelties as to their self-identification during the Soviet period when the role of religion as an identification factor had considerably weakened under the influence of atheistic propaganda. This resulted, on the one hand, in complete negation, by a part of the members of this group, of their descent from the proselytes, and on the other, in attempts, by some researchers, to set apart ethnic and religious identification and to describe Subbotniks as “Rus sian people of the Jewish faith”. Attempts by the outer society to bring back to Subbotnik Jews a Russian ethnic self- awareness had been repeatedly undertaken over generations. Most indicative in this respect is the booklet Judaism as religion of the Russians published in Voronezh in 2003. This publication devoted to Subbotnik Jews of the Voronezh Oblast includes texts by several authors among whom there are Subbotnik Jews and non-Jews. The title of the book, Judaism as religion of the Russians, had been suggested by one of the authors, the Russian historian N. Sopelkin froVoronezh. Whats interesting is that among all the texts written by Subbotnik Jews you wont find one where the author names himself Russian.
The repatriation of Subbotnik Jews to Eretz Israel in the late-nine-teenth and early-twentieth-century, has long been a part of the Zionist epos. Such pioneer-settlers’ surnames as the Kurakins and the Dubrovins are an inalienable part of the history of today’s Israel revival. However, the descendants of Subbotnik Jews that repatriated in the days of the Ottoman rule and the British Mandate have lost their ethnic specifity, dissolved among the Hebrew-speaking population of Israel and became an inalienable part of its Ashkenazi section. A further point here is that the majority of the descendants of the first-waves-of-aliyah repatriated Subbotniks bear not the initial Russian surnames but the Hebraized ones (Yaakoby, Shmuely, Dror, etc,).
Carefully read memoirs of pioneers Zionists suggest that Russian Gers were not just an exotic additive to the Ashkenazi repatriates of the first, second and, to a degree, of the third aliyah, but, rather, one of the core factors that formed Jewish farming colonies of the non-kibbutz type (moshavot and moshavim). This was detemined by the high religious motivation of Russian Gers combined with many generations’ experience in farming. There were also other groups possessing the same experience: Mountain Jews, fellahs Musta’arabi from ancient old communities of Peki’in and South Lebanon and, to a degree, Kurdistan Jews. Members of these have also made a notable contribution to the development of new Jewish settlement farming. However, Subbotnik Jews possessed three additional qualities rendering them even more attractive in the eyes of the Zionist leadership, as a means for building a new Jewish society in Eretz Israel.
1. They spoke Russian, the language most of the Zionist functionaries in Eretz Israel of the time knew as their second or even their first tongue.
2. Subbotnik Jews didn’t have their own religious and political elite which could anywhere near compete with the Ashkenazi Zionist elite.
3. Subbotnik Jews were perceived as Gers, that is, as proselytes, and therefore, strived to merge with the Ashkenazi Jewry rather than
retain their communal purity.
It was these peculiarities of Subbotnik Jews that led the first waves of their immigrants towards complete assimilation into the society of Ashkenazi Jews. Further still, descendants of Subbotnik Jews embodied the vision of courageous, strong and self-confident Jews tilling the ancient land of their forefathers.
The inspiring appearance of offspring, born in Eretz Israel and Hebrew-speaking, of Russian peasants, differed strikingly from the stereotypical image of a shtetl Jew from the pale of settlement. That appearance was in harmony with the concept setting the New Yishuv in Eretz Israel against Galut, and it was instrumental in forming an idealized vision of a new Palestinian Jew, a farmer and a warrior.
One way or another, by that time, when in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a considerable number of Subbotnik Jews living in North Caucasus ( In the early 1960s, in Adygea, a group of young Subbotnik Jews families organized a woodcutters' artel (cooperative) which they considered as a kibbutz. The members of the artel, several dozens of families from the North Caucasus and from other part of the USSR who came there to join the group, studies Hebrew, kept i`n touch with Israel's embassy and were getting ready to repatriate to Israel. Saturdays and Jewish holidays were days of rest in the artel. After the Six-Day War, the artel was liquidated and its members were subjected to reprisals. Subsequently, in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the former members of the artel repatriated to Israel. Beginning in the 1990s, members of the group comprise the greater part of the population of the kibbutz Itav in the Jordanian Valley. The history of this group of Subbotnik Jews hasn't been told so far and is worth of becoming a subject of a separate article.) and the Voronezh Oblast began publicly to struggle for repatriation from the USSR, the process of the assimilation of this sub-ethnic group in Israel had actually reached completion, even though the remembrance of the pioneers-Gers is still vivid both at the family and national levels. This is why, today, only the groups of Subbotnik Jews who still live in their traditional places of residence in the CIS and those who repatriated from the USSR/CIS to Israel beginning in the 1970, can be considered a separate sub-ethnic group. At present, the total number of Subbotnik Jews maintaining, to a greater or less degree, their ethno-confessional identity amounts , in accordance with preliminary evaluation data, to about 10 to 15 thousand people. While part of them (about 2 thousand people) live in Israel, the rest stay in the territory of the CIS in several local groups undergoing gradual dissolution but still retaining their specificity.
The dissolution of the local Subbotnik Jews groups is accounted for by their assimilation and migration, the processes that have gathered momentum in the post-Soviet time. A distinction should be made between the assimilation of Subbotnik Jews into the non-Jewish society to which they are exposed together with the rest of the CIS Jewish population, and their integration in Russian (Russian-speaking) Jewry which is facilitated by the present ethnolinguistic situation, when Yiddish ceased to be the mothertongue of most of the Jews in Russia and the bordering countries and when the former linguistic contraposition between Eastern European Ashkenazi and Subbotnik-Jews (accordingly, between Yiddish and Russian) became irrelevant.
The preservation of the ethnocultural and identification-related specificity of Subbotnik Jews is facilitated by noticeable social differences between them and the rest of the CIS Jews. While most of the CIS Jews are not only strictly city dwellers, but, increasingly, dwellers of the largest cities, Subbotnik Jews remain, for the most part, living in hinterland villages or have left them only recently keeping up their contacts with the village. Another distinctive feature of this sub-ethnic group, amid prevailing Russian-speaking modern Jewry, is the role of Jewish religion being the most important factor for maintaining its Jewish identity.
No ethno-sociologic studies of Subbotnik Jews were performed. Therefore, the data on their total number and the extent of their adherence to the religious tradition is far from being complete. However, basing on available data from field research in some of the regions where there are communities of Subbotnik Jews and from exploratory trips to other such regions, we were able to identify the following local groups that still exist: Subbotnik Jews of the Voronezh Oblast and communities related to them; Ger and Karaite-Subbotniks of the village of Privolnoye in Azerbaijan; Subbotniks of Astrakhan; Subbotniks of the village of Bondarevo (Khakasia); Subbotniks of the Irkutsk Oblast; and Subbotniks of the town of Sevan (Armenia).
There were, to be sure, more such local groups in the recent past, but some of them ceased to exist due to assimilation processes, though in particular cases, even the assimilated offspring of Subbotnik Jews keep in memory their ancestry from “people of Jewish faith”. Following is the description, relying on available incomplete data, of local groups of Subbotnik-Jews that survived to the present day.
1. SUBBOTNIK JEWS OF THE VORONEZH OBLAST
(AND COMMUNITIES REL ATED TO THEM)
Today, the main place of residence of this group is the settlement of Vysoky in the Talovsk District of the Voronezh Oblast where they are still the majority despite the mass repatriation of the settlement’s population to Israel in the late 1990s – early 2000s. Cross marriages that became more frequent over the recent two or three decades did not result in the loss of ties of the population of Vysoky with the Jewish religious tradition, since children from cross marriages of Subbotnik Jews and Christians, brought up in Vysoky, are not baptized as a rule and are, de facto, integrated in the Jewish community.
There is a Jewish cemetery in the settlement and a Jewish burial society that carries out burials with strict observance of the traditional Jewish law. There is no Synagogue in Vysoky and there never has been one. Prayer services are done, as they were done in times past, as a rule, in private houses of families where mourning for the deceased is observed and the Kaddish has to be read. Prayer services are recited in the Ashkenazi style. Though the community still has a kosher Sefer Torah (the Torah scroll), the liturgical language today is Russian. In Vysoky, there is a Jewish Sabbath school and courses of Hebrew and Jewish religious tradition for adults.
Several smaller communities in other residential places are connected through family and historical ties to the settlement of Vysoky.
a) In two adjoining big villages of Gvazda and Klepovka in Novobuturlinski District of the Voronezh Oblast there is a small minority of Subbotnik Jews remaining loyal to the Jewish religion. They live among numerous orthodox Christians some of whom, former Subbotnik Jews, have not so long ago became apostate (the so called vykrests). In the village cemeteries there are small Jewish sections.
b) In the khutor (hamlet) of Shishlyannikov in the Talovsk District of the Voronezh Oblast Subbotnik Jews constitute an overwhelming majority of the population; there is a cemetery there, and the burials are carried out with observance of Jewish law.
c) In the village of Nikolskoye in the Talovsk District of the Voronezh Oblast there still exists a small group of Subbotnik Jews living among the Christian majority.
d) There are Subbotnik Jews in the stanitsa (Cossack village) Rodnikovskaya in the Kurganinsk District of the Krasnodar Krai. Ties between the Voronezh Subbotnik Jews and stanitsa Rodnikovskaya go back to the 1920s, when a group of Voronezh Subbotnik Jews moved to Kuban. They decided to settle in Rodnikovskaya where dating from the 19th century there existed a local community of Subbotniks. According to Karaite sources, old-time Subbotniks community in stanitsa Rodnikovskaya, as well as in stanitsa Mikhaylovskaya in the same District, was a community of Karaite Subbotniks. Even if those sources were right, the merger of the Voronezh and Kuban Subbotniks resulted in the prevalence of normative Judaism in the Rodnikovskaya community. Apart from its ties with Vysoky, the Rodnikovskaya community also has ties with the Mikhaylovskaya community, but the author has no information about what that community is like. The informants only say that “there are still people there who uphold Jewish faith.”
e) Up until recently, settlement Vysoky had had a most intimate relationship with the village of Ilyinka in the Talovsk District of the Voronezh oblast where Subbotnik Jews were a majority group. However, almost all Jewish inhabitants of Ilyinka have repatriated to Israel and their houses were occupied by new migrants from different regions of the CIS. These days, only a well preserved cemetery regularly visited by the former residents of Ilyinka living in Israel reminds one of the Jewish past of the village. At the present time, several Ilyinka natives live in Vysoky.
f) In the town of Rasskazovo, a once large Subbotniks community ceased to exist due to assimilation processes. There are several families in Vysoky with one of the spouses (in the 50 to 60 age group) coming from the Rasskazovo community. Thanks to them, there are still some connections left with the few Subbotniks of Rasskazovo (mostly very old people) who maintain Jewish traditions.
g) Apart from their traditional places of residence, there exists quite a sizable diaspora from Vysoky and other communities of the Voronezh Oblast Subbotnik Jews. Their biggest groups live in Voronezh, the capital of the region, and in the district center Talovaya. Natives of Vysoky, after moving to towns, keep up close ties with their home village. It is worth noting that on the Lag BaOmer holiday when, according to a local tradition, it is common to visit the graves of parents, a lot of people from towns who were born in Vysoky come to the cemetery in the settlement. The total number of Subbotnik Jews of the local Voronezh group who remained to live in Russia is about 1500 people.
2. GERS AND SUBBOTNIKS OF PRIVOLNOYE
Privolnoye, a big village in Jalilabad District of Azerbaijan, was inhabited by two communities of Subbotniks who maintained their distinctiveness: Karaite-Subbotniks constituting about 60% of the population and Gers. Among the Gers there lived a small group of Mountain Jews who eventually merged with Gers. In the early 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, most of the residents of Privolnoye moved to Russia. A small group of the Privolnoye Gers, mostly those who had family ties with Mountain Jews, repatriated to Israel, and a few of them moved to Azerbaijani cities, for the most part, to Baku.
In Russia, Gers and Karaites of Privolnoye settled dispersedly. Sizable groups of them have been formed in the Stavropol Krai and the Volga region (in Volgograd and Togliatti, for the most part). By now, in Volgograd, the Gers of Privolnoye constitute the core of the local religious community which was founded and supported during the Soviet period by Gers-Subbotniks of the Kolotilin family.
It should be emphasized that it was a forced resettlement from Privolnoye. It resulted in the disintegration of the traditional communal system and led to a weakening of the religious identity of Gers and Karaite-Subbotniks and to propagation of assimilation processes among them. Nevertheless, in the new places of their residence, natives of Privolnoye still consider themselves a separate group different from the surrounding population. There are several nostalgic websites and forums devoted to Privolnoye14. These days, there are only small groups of Gers and Karaite-Subbotniks left in the settlement (most of them are at retirement age now) living among the Azerbaijani who occupied the houses abandoned by forcibly displaced people. So far, a Jewish prayer hall is still functioning in Privolnoye and there is an outlet of the Hesed charitable foundation there15. It is worthy of note that among the Azerbaijani Jewish community, Gers of Privolnoye are considered undoubted Jews, while Karaite-Subbotniks are virtually not.
The total number of Gers and Karaite-Subbotniks of Privolnoye in Russia and Azerbaijan exceeds five thousand people over half of whom are Karaite-Subbotniks.
3. ASTRAKHAN SUBBOTNIKS
A distinguishing feature of this local group of Subbotnik Jews is that they, unlike members of the aforementioned groups, preserve clear memories of the time (it was late 19th century) when their forefathers converted to Judaism. Astrakhan Subbotniks reside in small groups in several locations of the Limanovsci Disctrict in the southeast of Astrakhan Oblast, nowhere a majority. There are separate “Jewish sections” in local cemeteries. Natives of these village communities also live in Astrakhan. Words borrowed from Yiddish occur in the speech of elderly Astrakhan Subbotniks. Their traditional prayer services are in the Ashkenazi style. In the recent past, their children attended a Jewish Sabbath school operated in Astrakhan with financing from Jewish organizations. The Astrakhan rabbi, a Habad Jew from the U.S., is malevolent to Subbotniks and doesn’t consider them Jews. In this respect, he is very different from the Volgograd rabbi (also a Habad Jew but a Russian one) whose active parishioners are mostly Gers-Subbotniks (both former natives of Privolnoye and the local ones). The number of Astrakhan Subbotniks amounts to several hundred people.
4. BONDAREVO SUBBOTNIKS
The village of Bondarevo (or, as it used to be called, Iudino) is situated in the Beisk District of the Republic of Khakasia. Its population is roughly 2000 persons. The two main confessional groups who have long since lived in the village are Subbotniks (Judaizers) and the Molokane. Estrangement between these groups (including their adherence to strict endogamy) is still there. A substantial part of the youth from the Subbotniks community have left Bondarevo and, after obtaining a higher education, settled in cities (Abakan, Krasnoyarsk, etc.). In the village, primarily among the older generation of Subbotniks, Jewish religious traditions are still observed which includes prayer services, food restrictions, holidays and burial cer- emonies. However, the community’s youth settled in cities also maintain adherence to Judaism. Many of them take part in the activities of the local Jewish communities. The total number of Bondarevo Subbotniks is about 1500 people.
5. IRKUTSK OBLAST SUBBOTNIKS
The largest community of the Irkutsk Oblast Subbotniks is in the settlement of Staraya Zima where there still exists the building of a synagogue (expropriated by the Soviet authorities and not having been returned up to now) and a well-kept Subbotnik Jewish cemetery. Apart from that, Subbotniks also live in several zaimkas (small villages) of the District in some of which they constitute the majority of the population. There also exists a sizable diaspora of the Staraya Zima Subbotniks in the Eastern Siberia cities. Though the assimilation processes among the Irkutsk Subbotniks are well under way, in recent years a reverse trend of returning of a certain part of young people to the Jewish religious tradition is observed. There was an attempt made to officially register the Subbotnik Jews religious community in the settlement of Staraya Zima, but it failed because of lack of funds and refusal on the part of the authorities to return the synagogue building to the community. Some of the former natives of Staraya Zima have repatriated to Israel over the last twenty years. Although there are quite a few Irkutsk Subbotniks (no less than several thousand by estimate), it is hard to provide more exact figures because of lack of accurate information about the population of the Subbotniks zaimkas and also on account of numerous mixed marriage which, nevertheless, do not result in conversion to Christianity16.
6. SUBBOTNIKS OF THE TOWN OF SEVAN
In times past, in the town of Sevan (Elenovka until 1935) in the west of Armenia, there existed a large community of Subbotnik Jews with their own synagogue17. At present, because of emigration and assimilation there are only about ten Subbotniks left in the town18. They are all elderly people. It may be assumed that the overall number of Subbotniks of Sevan, including young people who left the town but did not entirely lose their confessional identity, amount to about 100 people.
Apart from the afore-specified groups of Subbotnik Jews in respect of whom there are verified (though frequently far from being complete) data, there are a lot of local groups of Subbotniks about the present circumstances of which we know, virtually, nothing. Though it has been known that in the recent past sizable groups of Subbotniks existed in the rural districts of the Volgograd Oblast, no certain information on their current status is available.
Neither is there any credible information about the Subbotniks of Bessarabia and Ukraine, even though there is evidence that there were whole villages of them in the region and that fragmentary data according to which they are still there appear once in a while. Obscure is the fate of a small community of Subbotniks that existed during the Soviet period in Turkmenia.
The review we are offering for the attention of the reader is by no means complete. And its very incompleteness strongly suggests that it is necessary to undertake a broad range of ethnographic and sociological studies of the current state of Subbotnik Jews.
For instance in memoirs of Zvi Segal (one of the 1968 activists for the revival of the Hebron Jewish community) about his roaming around Bessarabia and Transnistria there slips a phrase: "Whole villages of Subbotniks, who are so close to the Jewry and are very good people are in the neighborhood of Krizhopol". The author of these lines had an opportunity to personally meet in the Crimea in late 1970s Gers-Subbotniks of Ukrainian origin.
Some 200 years ago, in the early 19th century, under the rule of Czar Alexander I, tens of thousands of mostly Russian peasants converted to Judaism. Many studied in some of the great yeshivas of Lithuania, while thousands more immigrated to Israel during the “2nd Aliyah” in the early 1900s. The name “Subbotnik” comes from their love of the “Subbot,” Russian for Sabbath.
However, in 2003, Israeli bureaucracy began putting obstacles in the path of the remaining approximately 15,000 Subbotnik Jews wishing to make aliyah, questioning their Jewish background and requiring them to convert again before considering their application.
The Subbotnik Jews are now scattered through the former Soviet Union, in particular in the Far East and Siberia. However, the most critical need is with the 500-600 members of the community in Visoky, many of whom have been separated from their families living in Israel.
The Subcarpathian Rus (Ruthenia) is a region with an unusual history. Populated mostly by Slavic-speaking Rusyns, whose language is similar to both the Russian and Ukrainian, the area had belonged to Hungary until the World War I, when it became a part of Czechoslovakia. In 1945 it was annexed by the Soviet Union and became a part of Soviet Ukraine, known as the Transcarpathian Region (Oblast’), and in 1991 it became the most western province of Ukraine, separated from the rest of the country by the Carpathian Mountains. Prominent Jewish communities, such as Munkatsch (Mukachevo) and Ungwar (Uzhgorod) emerged here in the 19th century. Much less is known about originally non-Jewish groups converting to Judaism in the region. While the communities of Gerim exist in Romania, including neighboring Transylvania, another part of historical Hungary, and in Ukrainian Crimea, little is known about such communities in the Subcarpathian Rus.
During the field trip to the region in august 2008, organized by the Moscow Center for Jewish Studies “Sefer”, we were informed by the head of the Mukachevo synagogue Mr. Abraham Leybovich, about several Rusyns from neighboring villages, who were interested in converting into Judaism. According to Mr. Leybovich, there is an entire village with 200 Subbotniks (Observers of the Sabbath). Our informers mentioned the village of Ilnitsa, a couple of miles from the town of Irshava as the place where the Subbotniks live. Visiting the village, however, indicated that local residents call “Subbotniks” Christian Adventists, a congregation counting more than 300 members. According to their leader, Mr. Ivan Kapitan, the Adventist community was established in 1912 in the mostly Greek Catholic village by a local resident who served in Austrian army and got acquainted with the tenets of the Adventism. Several decades later a small group of dissidents with their leader Pilipko broke away from the community, forming today a community of 50-60 members. Our informers insisted that the group is still Christian. When asked about Subbotniks who do not recognize Jesus, they mentioned a small group of “Jewish” Subbotniks (of Rusyn origin) mostly in the neighboring village of Dishkovitsy. We did not have an opportunity to visit Dishkovitsy and talk to the group, however, we interviewed a member of the group who attends services in the Mukachevo synagogue. According to our informants; the Jewish Subbotnik community of Dishkovitsy includes several dozens of families and was formed about 10 years ago. The matter requires further investigation.
The Subbotniks of Zima want to emigrate to Israel
During the tsarist regime, this Russian sect was called the "Jewish Heresy"
In the city of Zima (Зиме. Зиме or Zima means winter in Russian. This Siberian city of 42,000 was founded in 1743 as "Staraya Zima." The town lies about 155 miles to the northwest of Irkutsk near the world's largest fresh water Lake Baikal and is a stop on the Trans-Siberian Railroad about 3050 miles or 80 hours from Moscow. Local industries include lumber-woodworking, plastics, and anthrax production. It is the birthplace of the renowned poet, novelist, essayist, film director, movie actor, photographer Yevgeny A Yevtushenko - a fourth-generation descendant of Ukrainians exiled to Siberia. In 1961 Yevtushenko published “Babi Yar,” a poem against anti-Semitism, which inspired the great Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovitch to write his Symphony No. 13.) in the Irkutsk region circulate the legends about the old residents they call Solomony. The stories indicate that these people adhere to a strange faith. On one hand they are Russians, but they practice circumcision like the Jews. Solomony do not work on Saturdays. They bury their dead in a separate cemetery. And in earlier days, they had a large round prayer house which was called molel'nym. The Solomony lived in the old part of Zima essentially on two streets located along the banks of the Oka River. There are a lot of people of this faith living in Zima, only about 500, yet they are all of only three surnames: Potapov, Shishlyannikov and yes, Pyatigorsky.
The square round house (Perhaps this paradox can be explained by the fact that traditional Orthodox places of worship with round yet this sectarian prayer house was not.)
Zima - wooden city. Among the neighborhood of not so remarkable structures sits an ancient mysterious house which is now deserted and locked. This is the sectarian [non-Orthodox] prayer house, only it is not round, but quite square.
The casual passer-by confirms: “Yes, this is the large round house.” “But it square?!” “Well yes, square. But in general it is round.” “Do Solomony live around here? "I do not know of any Solomony, but there are Subbotniks here.”
History does not tell us who began to call Subbotniks Solomony; Subbotniks themselves consider this nickname insulting. The name "Subbotniks" is a more appropriate in describing their religious practice: People who regard Saturday as the Sabbath - therefore Subbotniks.
Yakov Pyatigorsky, an old resident of Zima, is from a Jewish family while wife his Nina is from a Subbotnik family. His grandfather Yakov Davidovich was a Polish Jew who was banished to Siberia for being a participant in the Polish Revolt. The Tsar saw it as a duty to protect the Slavs against all external threats. The effect of Western liberalism and nationalism which resulted in the Polish revolt 1831 is an example of this. It was ruthlessly suppressed and resulted in the abolition of many important elements of Polish national identity. The Polish constitution was withdrawn, the universities closed and the Russian language was more vigorously imposed in Polish public life.
In those times, thousands of Poles were exiled to Siberia, and those Polish Jews who settled along the Moscow-Siberia road brought with them the beginning of the appearance here of Subbotniks.
Yakov Pyatigorsky says that the exiled Jews were concerned about the well being of the other shackled prisoners they met on their journey, so they shared extra food, drink and clothing with them. As a result of their kindness, some of these {non-Jewish} exiles converted to Judaism.
However, this account of the appearance of Subbotniks in Siberia is not unique. Russians, who accepted Judaism, existed even during Ivan the Terrible’s lifetime. They were severely oppressed by the Orthodox Church for thinking differently, but they were not completely eliminated. Later under Tsar Alexander I, the adherents of the Jewish Heresy (as it was called in those days) were also exiled also to the Caucasus and into Siberia.
According to Irahmielja Nemzer, the representative of the Congress of the Jewish Religious Communities and Associations of Russia, the Jewish Heresy has always been present in Russia but has very little in common with Judaism in this context - in essence the members of the sect did not work on Saturdays but did not observe other Judaic laws.
They wished to fight the Kolchaka (Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak (Александр Васильевич Колчак) 1874- 1920 a Russian naval commander during the Russo-Japan War and later head of part of the anti-Bolshevik White forces during the Russian Civil War which was fought between 1918 and 1922.) in Zima.
The exiles of Zima sided with the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. According to Jacob Pyatigorsky, his grandfather was given a staff position in a local army group, and his father, Moisey, became the deputy commander.
“Kolchak wished to come here, in Zima.” tells Jacob Davidovich. “We tried to remove him from his train and shoot him. But Kolchak's command arrived from Irkutsk to protect him. Then the commander of this rebel group, Novokshonov, placed a guerrilla in the dome of the train car that followed Kolchak and protected him all the way to Irkutsk. And now there is a monument to this enemy of the Russian people — the people who made it have no conscience.”
With the establishment of the Soviet regime, the prayer house of Subbotniks in Zima was closed. It became too complicated for them to observe Saturday Sabbath.
“They worked on Saturday so as not go against the system.” says Yakov Pyatigorsky. “They no longer held any services in the prayer house. I have dedicated my life to sports. I was the coach of the hockey and football teams. In 1966 our team became the champion of region having beaten all the others from Slyudyanka up to Taishet. During Soviet times, it was difficult to observe our traditions, but we tried. We did not go to the cemetery or bury our dead on Saturday. New Years was always observed in September and Parents Day in July. There was a separate cemetery for us - Jewish. There it is pure. It was kept clean, and it had a watchman.
Whether Subbotniks can emigrate to Israel
Recently, the Jewish Agency began to process any emigration applications from Zima. And during June of last year, a special commission was directed to the Siberian city.
After securing use of a movie camera, the representative of the Jewish Agency, the envoy of Jewish Agency in Israel and the representative of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities were directed to Zima with the mission to find out what relationship Subbotniks have to Judaism and how they observe Judaic traditions.
Irahmielju Nemzer, a participant in the expedition, does not know what conclusions were made by the Jewish Agency. However from her understanding of religious law, it was not possible to prove that these Subbotniks are a part of Judaism.
“We have collected information from the old men, looked around the payer house and cemetery and made an entire film about the life of Subbotniks. All of which were sent to Moscow. But we have not found any hard evidence of the existence of a Jewish culture in Zima.” says Nemzer. “Neither marriage contracts nor letters about the divorces nor prayer-books. Nothing. Old men said that this existed once but had disappeared during the Soviet time. The only proof so far that the Subbotniks of Zima belong to the Jews is that their burial places are in the Jewish cemetery.
In the entire Irkutsk region there is a total of nearly nearby 7000 Subbotniks (or those who consider themselves as such) according to Irahmielja Nemzer. The primary surnames of their people are Shishlyannikov and Potapov.
The Subbotniki: Secret Jews of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California
Some forty years ago, while walking on the grounds of the Home of Peace Cemetery on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, after having officiated there, I came across a series of unusual grave markers which bore Russian names, but not Russian Jewish names. Recently, with my friend Jason Weaver, I went to see them again.
Off and on over the years I have wondered about the people represented by these markers. Who were they? What was their Judaism like? Was it possible they were not Jewish? And if they were not Jewish, what were they doing there, lying dead in a Jewish cemetery?
On another visit that I made to those tombstones, I met a man by the name of Aronov. [This name is not on our cemetery list but given that author states below that his interview notes became "illegible over time", the name is most likely Androff, a family that was instrumental in arranging for Subbotniki to be accepted for burial at Home of Peace Cemetery.] That was the only identification he would give me. Though his name sounded Eastern European Jewish, his accent and appearance belied that. He identified himself as one of the Subbotniki.
We Jews have to look out for each other and stick together despite our differences or we are lost. In the Midrash Rabbah, 100 [investigation of the Hebrew Bible], there is an expression "A clan and a family resemble a heap of stones. Take one stone out and the whole heap tumbles." Chavurah oomishpachah do-meen l’cheepaht avonim — like a pile of stones."
There was a time when the dominant German Jewish community in the United States acted alone. Then the Eastern European Jewish community became dominant, and it tended to deny a significant role to other Jews when it could. Right here in Los Angeles the Jews of Boyle Heights did not acknowledge that there was another Jewish community in their very midst.
It was the Subbotniki. Boyle Heights Jewry did not reach out to these Subbotniki. They became a stone pulled out of the heap. Fortunately, the structure of Los Angeles Jewry did not collapse, but it is less today because there was no out-reach, or in Boyle Heights there was no in-reach.
Aronov told me a little. I took notes that have become illegible over time, but I had begun, in earnest, my search for the Subbotniki. There were very few resources to aid me. I checked the records of Wilshire Boulevard Temple from the period when it was known by its corporate name of Congregation B'nai B'rith. It owns the cemetery. Also, three decades or so ago, I inquired of the late Nathan Malinow, of the then Malinow and Simon Mortuary. Later I was to consult Morton Silverman who had been the funeral director at some of the Subbotniki interments.
Silverman indicated to me that in the early 1930s, the Subbotniki in Los Angeles had a core group of thirty or forty families. Their prayers were in Russian with an occasional Hebrew word, he remembered. He said that the men wore head covering. He felt that they were isolated pretty much by choice. "They knew", he said, "that the Eastern European Jews of Boyle Heights didn't think of them as Jews."(1)
Silverman told me that Rabbi Abe Maron of Congregation Mogen David, in West Los Angeles, had done funerals for them. I then spoke to the now late Rabbi Maron who told me that the group had no rabbi of its own, only lay leaders. He didn't remember having been called on to do weddings for them, only funerals. He had no doubts about their being Jewish, but in their own way. Neither Rabbi Maron nor anyone I spoke to over the years remembered any bar mitzvahs [confirmations] being performed for the group. Rabbi Maron also told me that the men were circumcised; he presumed by traditional mohelim [circumciser, see mohel]
From Silverman, I learned that at the Home of Peace funerals the Subbotniki would have hymn singing in Russian for up to two or three hours. The women principally did this. Cemetery attendants, whom I interviewed way back then, told me that the hymn singing "was beautiful but eerie." I learned the Subbotniki sometimes brought food to the cemetery grounds. Silverman told me that it was usually kosher lamb when meat was part of the fare.
In the 1911 Annual Report of Congregation B'nai B'rith, I found that Kaspare Cohn "brought up the question of a certain Russian sect who claim to be Jews, but about them there are doubts in the minds of many as to whether they are Jews or not. It was decided that the President [Dr. David Edelman] appoint a committee to investigate and report at the next monthly meeting of officers.(2) Kaspare Cohn was the leading philanthropist of the Jewish community and a distinguished banker who founded the Union Bank of Los Angeles.
Following investigation, the congregation concluded that the Subbotniki were sufficiently Jewish to qualify for Jewish burial. The tombstones are the best evidence. Certainly approval by the very Reform congregation was no proof of halachic [by Jewish law] Jewishness, however it should be noted that Rabbi Abe Maron was considered Orthodox.
Albert Parry, a journalist, visited some of the Subbotniki in Los Angeles during the 1920s. He indicated that they spoke to him "in the harmonious accents and inflections of the Central Russian moujik [muzhik: Russian peasant]."(3) Among the names of Subbotniki that he visited he recalled Pivovaroffs, Potapoffs, Yurins and Yurkoffs. Weaver observed that in their section of the cemetery Subbotniki names included Gregorief, Konnoff, Bagdanov, Urov and the name Pivovaroff which was also noted by Parry.(4)
Parry learned from the Subbotniki that they came from Transcaucasia, but that their ancestors were originally from the Tamboff [Tambov] and Voronezh provinces of Central Russia. They said that they had been exiled there because their ancestors refused to "eat bacon, worship icons, and accept the Greek Orthodox Priests."(5)
They told Parry that one of the first teachers was a Jew whose name they vaguely remember as "Skharia." Parry identified him as Zachary Skara from Kiev. An 1889 Jewish Newspaper account said that Zechariah was "a Jew prominent for his learning who publicly preached against the trinity and the divinity of Christ. As Jew and scholar, Zechariah appealed to the common sense and to the critical judgment and soon gathered many adherents." He was said to have compiled a catechism of sayings from the Talmud [discussion of Jewish law].(6)
Zechariah's followers were regarded as Subbotniki, Sabbath-Keepers or Sabbatarians who were "Genuine Russian Jews." This was true despite their lack of knowledge of the Hebrew language and literature.(7) They were likely antecedent to the Subbotniki of Boyle Heights, who also evidenced no knowledge of Hebrew. In Boyle Heights there were two Russian groups who evidenced Jewish practices. One was the Molokans [Dukh-i-zhizniki]who accepted the divinity of Jesus and the other was the Subbotniki.
They both kept Shabbat [day of rest] and some form of kashrut [kosher: ritually correct diet]. The Molokans were called "the milk people" because they favored dairy foods. They did not claim to be Jewish. They were Sabbatarians like the Seventh Day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists. Interestingly, the Russian Government, in 1914, practiced "Anti-Semitism" against Seventh Day Adventists "because their faith is closely allied to that of the Jews!"(8) Aronov told me that the number of Subbotniki had decreased because of intermarriage with the Molokans [Spiritual Christians] with whom they were so culturally similar.(9)
I believe it was in the 1950s that I remember a Molokan Church [Dukh-i-zhiznik prayer hall] in Los Angeles located in the downtown area off Olympic Blvd. In 1905, some of the Los Angeles Molokans [Pryguny] moved across the Mexican border to the village of Guadalupe in Baja California. They were described as dressed "in the simple peasant costume of the their ancestors, the bearded men and shawled women."(10)
In my archival material, I found a 1913 newspaper article.(11) It described a community of "thirty families of Caucasian Jews" who were regarded as something of a "lost tribe." They were the Subbotniki of Boyle Heights. The reporter described them as, "A strange Jewish colony practicing queer customs and peculiar rites." He indicated that they knew no Hebrew because "their antecedents lived for a long time in Russia where the government forbids them being taught the language of their birth.
The Examiner asked Rabbi Rudolf Farber of Sinai Congregation in Los Angeles to comment. He indicated that the Subbotniki were "people adhering to the Russian style of dress and speaking the Russian language, [and] who have lived quietly on Gless and Utah Streets for the past several years." He said that they observed the Sabbath, the Holidays, and were "strict in the observance of the dietary laws. He noted that they married at an early age usually before twenty and that they only marry within their group and in marriage practice tarahat mishpacha.(12)
As I write this, it is the year 2002 and it has been more than a quarter of a century since I spoke to any of the Subbotniki. When I did I was told that they had a "little Jewish church" of their own. They called it the "Subbotniki Synagogue of Yiddish Jews." Silverman told me that he heard that they had mainly hymn singing there. [This contradicts the report by Alex Tolmas: In 1971 Subbotniki Dissolve ... ]
There is no indication that the Subbotniki reached out to the organized Jewish community except in matters of circumcision, death and interment. Over the years they intermarried, abandoned their unique traditions, or simply died out. Unfortunately, something of what the Jewish community might have been also died with them.
In 1993, responding to a column I had written on the Subbotniki for The Guardian, a publication of The Jewish Home for the Aging, I received a letter from Rose Gousman, a Los Angeles resident. She indicated that in 1928 she lived on Boyle Ave. near a section called "Russian Town" on Gless Street. She said that she attended Roosevelt High School as did some of the Subbotniki boys according to my informants.
They were very handsome, and the Jewish girls were not allowed to date them. Only on Saturdays did I see the Subbotniki women walking on the street, dressed in long white skirts and blouses with fancy aprons on top. They were the only people who dressed this way. I could never figure out who they were or what their religion was but I was told that they were Russians. Their looks and mannerisms were typically Russian, as opposed to looking like the Jewish people. They used to observe tile Jewish Holidays, but we didn't know why. My parents used to say that they had a synagogue of their own, but nobody ever saw it. (13) [This describes most of the varieties of Spiritual Christians who immigrated from Old Russia.]
There is much in the Jewish and general press these days about crypto-Jews who are turning up after generations of secret identity. For example, among Mexican Americans in the Southwest, some are outwardly Catholic, but have learned at puberty that they had a silent Jewish heritage. I wonder if there are Subbotniki crypto-Jews among Russian gentiles in California who will come out of their Christian closet.
We Jews are a pile of stones. One Stone is labeled German Jew, another Russian, another Ethiopian, and so on. Today we are missing a stone called "Subbotniki" because there was no reaching out. We have to be careful because we can't afford to spare any more stones.
JUDAIZING HERESY (ZHIDOVSTVU-YUSHCHAYA YERES), or JUDAIZING CHRISTIANS
A Christian heresy which first made its appearance in Novgorod during the reign of Grand Duke Ivan Vassilyevich III. (second half of the fifteenth century), and from there spread to Pskov and Moscow.
From the work of the priest Josif Volotzki, entitled "Prosvyetitel," etc. (The Enlightener, or the Detection of the Judaizing Heresy), it is evident that the first propagator of the heresy was the influential Jew Skhariyah (Zechariah) of Kiev, "who had studied astrology, necromancy, and various magic arts." He came to Novgorod (1471) in the suite of Prince Michael Olelkovich, probably as his commercial agent, and was soon followed by the Lithuanian Jews Osif, Shmoilo, Skargei, Moisei, and Chanush. Skhariyah at first converted the priest Dionis and the archpriest ("Protopapas") Aleksei, and through the latter many other clergymen of Novgorod and Pskov. The doctrine of the sect, as given by Volotzki and other Russian church historians, was as follows: The belief in the only one God and the negation of the divinity of Jesus Christ and of the Trinity. Christ, according to their belief, has not yet appeared, and when he does so, he will not appear as the son of God in substance, but through his benefactions, "like Moses and the Prophets." Until the arrival of Christ the laws of Moses should be strictly followed, since the evangelistic writings are all erroneous. Furthermore, they condemned images and strongly censured monasticism.
The Russian historian Ilovaiski is of the opinion that the essential principles of the heresy had little in common with Judaism, and were rather the outcome of the rationalistic ideas of the Reformation, which reached Novgorod from western Europe. But Luther's predecessor, Johannes von Goch (1400-75), recognized the authority of the Church and the monastic orders; and Erasmus of Rotterdam was not born till 1467 or 1469.
In the beginning the heresy was kept secret, its adherents remaining within the Greek Orthodox Church. In 1480, when Grand Duke Ivan Vassilyevich visited Novgorod, Aleksei and his friend Dionis found favor with him. He took them both to Moscow and placed them at the head of the Churches of the Assumption and of the Archangel Michael respectively, and here they commenced an active propaganda. Aleksei, enjoying the confidence of the grand duke in a high degree, soon succeeded in converting his secretary, Feodor Kuritzyn; the archimandrite Zossima; the monk Zechariah; the princess Helena, daughter-in-law of the grand duke; and many other prominent personages. The grand duke soon became familiar with the doctrine of the heresy, and seemed to be favorably disposed toward it.
The existence of the heresy was officially denounced in 1487, when a few intoxicated clergymen of Novgorod openly blasphemed against the Orthodox faith and were accused before the archbishop Gennadi. One of the accused priests, Naum, repented and told the archbishop all about the heresy, and that some of the merchants of Moscow, among them Ivashka Chorny and Ignashka Zubov, had been circumcised and had escaped to Lithuania (1487). Gennadi then became the chief opponent of the heresy, but found little support in the higher courts, both civil and ecclesiastical, since the grand duke favored the leaders of the heresy and the metropolitan Geronti was personally antagonistic to Gennadi. The latter then called a council of the bishops (1488), which decreed execution of the impenitent heretics, "who glorify the Jewish faith and abuse the Greek Orthodox religion." In 1491, when Zossima was appointed metropolitan, Gennadi convened another council, which condemned the chief heretics among the clergy, pronounced an anathema against them, and imprisoned them in a monastery. In Novgorod, by Gennadi's orders, the heretics were punished in a very cruel manner.
With all his influence and power, however, Gennadi did not succeed in suppressing the heresy; for the sectarians were favored by the grand duke, and, with the help of Kuritzyn, one of the sect, Kassian, was appointed Archimandrite of Novgorod. Gennadi then secured the aid of Joseph Volotzki, who by his accusations forced Zossima to resign (May 17, 1494). The grand duke's daughter-in-law also took the part of the heretics, and with the accession of her son to the throne the sectarians hoped that the persecution of the heresy would cease.
In 1490 the Church council passed a resolution against the heretics, many of whom were tortured to death in the prison of Novgorod. The majority of the Judaizers, however, continued their teachings and converted many of the masses directly to Judaism. By the machinations of Gennadi, Helena and her son Dimitri were imprisoned in a monastery (1502), and Vassili, the younger son of the grand duke, was proclaimed successor to the throne. The attitude of the government in regard to the heresy then changed. The council convoked by the grand duke opened its sessions Dec. 27, 1504, and condemned some of the heretics to capital punishment. The deacon Volk Kuritzyn (Feodor's brother), Ivan Maximov, and Dimitri Konopliov were burned in cages at the stake, while other members of the sect, including the archimandrite Kassian, were burned at the stake in Novgorod. Some of the heretics were imprisoned; others were sent to monasteries.
From this blow the heresy could not recover, although the doctrines of the sect continued to spread secretly. Kostomarov believes that the sect of the Molokans derived its origin from the Judaizers.
In a letter to the Metropolitan of Moscow, Gennadi sends a collection of speeches, delivered before the czar by the Russian ambassador to Spain, concerning the way in which the King of Spain had outrooted heretics. He further relates the story of the baptized Jew Daniel, who had lately traveled from Kiev to Moscow and had heard from the Jews of Kiev that the grand duke had destroyed all the churches in Moscow, owing to the spread of the heresy, with which the grand duke seems to have sympathized.
For the defense of the Orthodox faith against the Judaizers, Dimitri Gerasimov, translator at the ambassadors' court, translated from the Latin the following works:
(1) Nicholas de Lyra's work on "The Infidelity ofthe Jews"; (2) "Conviction of the Jews"; (3) the work of the baptized Jew Joseph on "The Jews Who Were Baptized in Africa."
But little is known of the fortunes of the Judaizing sects during the period intervening between the reign of Ivan III. and that of Alexander I. It is known only that Ivan the Terrible would not admit in 1550 Jewish merchants from Poland, for the reason that they brought "poisonous herbs to Russia and led the Russians away from Christianity".
It would seem, however, from the legislative measures passed from time to time, that the government still regarded the Judaizing sects as a real menace to the supremacy of the Greek Orthodox Church. The fact that little is known of the Judaizing sects during that period may be due to the care exercised by the sectarians in keeping their beliefs secret, and to the disinclination of the Jews of Russia in the making of proselytes.
During the reign of Emperor Alexander I. the sectarians, encouraged by his liberal attitude, gathered new life, and many began openly to announce their principles. They were then called in the Russian official documents "heretics" and "Sabbatarians," who followed certain Jewish dogmas and rites, e.g., the observance of the Sabbath and circumcision. The first official reports about them appeared in 1811, almost simultaneously from the governments of Tula, Voronezh, and Tambov. The Archbishop of Voronezh reported that the sect owed its origin, in 1796, to some Jews who had settled among the Christian inhabitants of those governments, and that its doctrines had taken root in six villages of the districts of Bobrov and Pavlov. In 1818 some of the farmers of the government of Voronezh sent a formal complaint to the emperor Alexander against the oppression by the local civil and ecclesiastical officials of those who confessed the Mosaic faith. Upon the strength of this complaint a strict investigation was ordered concerning bribes which had been accepted by some of the officials. At the same time the secretaries of worship and of the interior were ordered to make a report to the emperor concerning the Judaizing Christians.
From the investigation it became apparent that the Judaizing heresy had spread to the governments of Orel, Tula, and Saratov. About 1,500 members confessed it openly, and many more kept their belief secret. The sect, according to the opinion of the metropolitan, was not a distinctly Old Testament cult, but was characterized by the observance of certain Jewish rites, e.g., the celebration of the Sabbath, circumcision, contracting marriages and dissolving them at will, peculiar burial ceremonies, and manner of assembling for prayer. The sectarians declared that they did not condemn the Christian faith, and, therefore, did not consider themselves apostates; and they insisted that they never had been Christians, but had only adhered to the faith of their fathers, which they would not forsake.
The measures which were taken against the spread of the Judaizing heresy had sad consequences for the Jews. While the leaders of the sect were sent into the army or deported to Siberia, the officials considered it useful to themselves to call the sect in official documents a Jewish sect, and to announce that the sectarians were Jews. They claimed that the name "Sabbatarians" would not convey to the Russian masses a correct idea of the nature of the sect. Its members were intentionally called "Jews" in the statutes so as to expose them to the contempt of the people. Finally a ukase was issued by the synod July 29, 1825 ordering the expulsion of all Jews from those districts in which the Sabbatarians or Judaizing Christians were to be found.
As late as 1880 Jews were expelled from districts where adherents of the sect were supposed to exist.
Karelians
The Karelians, sometimes also Karels, East Karelians or Russian Karelians (Karelian: karjalaižet) are a Baltic-Finnic ethnic group living mostly in the Republic of Karelia and in other north-western parts of the Russian Federation. The historic homeland of the Karelians includes also parts of present-day Eastern Finland (North Karelia) and the formerly Finnish territory of Ladoga Karelia. In a process starting during the 17th century and culminating after the Second World War, the ethnic Karelians in Finland have been linguistically and ethnically assimilated with the closely related Finnish people and are included in the wider group of Finnish Karelians, who are considered to form a sub-group of the ethnic Finns.
The separation between the Finnish Karelians and the East or Russian Karelians has been created and maintained by different religions, dialects and historical experiences. The Karelians in Russia have lived for centuries under the Slavic cultural influence, adopted the Russian Orthodox religion and have been to some extent assimilated by Russians.
Over the centuries the Karelians living in Russia have become dispersed in several distinct subgroups. The largest groups are North Karelians living in Republic of Karelia and the South Karelians in the Tver, Novgorod and in the Leningrad Oblast of Russian federation. The subgroups of South Karelians, the Tikhvin Karels and Valdai Karels numbered between 90,000-100,000 are considered assimilated and speak Russian as their first language. The North Karelians include the Olonets and the Ludes, speakers of Olonets Karelian language and Ludic language live in the Russian Republic of Karelia.
The name Karelia first occurs in Scandinavian sources in the 8th century. In the mid-12th century Karelia and the Karelians are mentioned in Russian chronicles, referred to as Корела (Koryela), кореляне (koryelyanye). The Karelians are the original Baltic-Finnic tribe in the area between Lakes Ladoga and Onega. However, the Finns from Finnish Karelia have also been called Karelians, although they speak a Finnish dialect. The Izhorians are of the same origin as the Karelian people.
Since the 13th century the Karelians have lived in the tension between the East and the West, between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism, later Lutheranism. Some Karelians were Christianized and subdued by Sweden, others by Novgorod or Russia. Thus Karelia was divided between two different and often hostile realms, and the Karelian population was split politically and religiously, after a while also linguistically and culturally.
The Kingdom of Sweden held Western Karelia and Karelian Isthmus but the so-called East Karelia was under the Russian rule. In 1617, the regions of Ladoga Karelia and North Karelia were annexed by Sweden. In the 17th century the tension between the Lutheran Swedish government and Orthodox Karelians triggered a mass migration from these areas into the region of Tver in Russia, forming the Tver Karelians minority. People from Savonia moved to Karelia in large numbers, and the present-day Finnish Karelians are largely their descendants. In 1721, Russia reconquered Ladoga Karelia, joining it to the new Grand Duchy of Finland in 1812.
During the 19th century Finnish folklorists including Elias Lönnrot traveled to North, Central and Eastern Karelia to gather archaic folklore and epic poetry. The Orthodox Karelians in North Karelia and Russia were now seen as close brethren or even a sub-group of the Finns. The ideology of Karelianism inspired Finnish artists and researchers, who believed that the Orthodox Karelians had retained elements of an archaic, original Finnish culture which had disappeared from Finland.
When Finland gained its independence in 1917 only a small fraction of the Orthodox Karelians lived in the Finnish Karelia, and in three villages of Oulu province. This region was mainly populated by Finnish Karelians of Lutheran background. Finland lost most of this area to the Soviet Union in World War II, when over 400,000 people were evacuated over Finland's new border from the Karelian Isthmus, Ladoga Karelia and, to a lesser degree, from the main part of East Karelia that had been held by Finland 1941–1944. 55 000 Orthodox Karelians were included among the people Finland evacuated from Ladoga Karelia. These were mainly Karelian-speaking, but they and their descendants soon adopted the Finnish language after the war. Many of the evacuees have emigrated, mainly to Sweden, to Australia and to North America.
The Russian Karelians, living in the Republic of Karelia, are nowadays rapidly being absorbed into the Russian population. This process began several decades ago. For example, it has been estimated that even between the 1959 and 1970 Soviet censuses, nearly 30 percent of those who were enumerated as Karelian by self-identification in 1959 changed their self-identification to Russian 11 years later.
The Karelian language is closely related to the Finnish language, and particularly by Finnish linguists seen as a dialect of Finnish, although the variety spoken in East Karelia is usually seen as a distinct language.
The dialect spoken in the South Karelian region of Finland belongs to the South Eastern dialects of the Finnish language. The dialect spoken in the Karelian Isthmus before World War II and the Ingrian dialect were also part of this dialect group. The dialect that is spoken in North Karelia is considered to be one of the Savonian dialects.
Religion
The Russian Karelians are Eastern Orthodox Christians. Most Finnish Karelians are Lutherans.
Demographics
Significant enclaves of Karelians exist in the Tver oblast of Russia, resettled after Russia's defeat in 1617 against Sweden — in order to escape the peril of forced conversion to Lutheranism in Swedish Karelia and because the Russians promised tax deductions the Orthodox Karelians mass migrated there. Olonets (Aunus) is the only city in Russia where the Karelians form a majority (60% of the population).
Karelians have been declining in numbers in modern times significantly due to a number of factors. These include the low birthrates (characteristic of the region in general) and especially Russification, due to the predominance of Russian language and culture. In 1926, according to the census, Karelians only counted for 37.4% of the population in the Soviet Karelian Republic (which at that time did not yet include territories that would later be taken from Finland and added, most of which had mostly Karelian inhabitants), or 0.1 million Karelians. Russians, meanwhile, numbered 153,967 in Karelia, or 57.2% of the population. By 2002, there were only 65651 Karelians in the Republic of Karelia (65.1% of the number in 1926, including the Karelian regions taken from Finland which were not counted in 1926), and Karelians made up only 9.2% of the population in their homeland. Russians, meanwhile, were 76.6% of the population in Karelia. This trend continues to this day, and may cause the disappearance of Karelians as a distinct group.
Yakuts or Sakhas
Yakuts (Sakha: Саха, Sakha. I propose the name Yakut to derive from Yaakov, Jacob, with a suffix added & Sakha from iSaaC, like with the Sakas & Isaacsons of old.), are a Turkic people who mainly inhabit the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic.
The Yakut or Sakha language belongs to the Siberian branch of the Turkic languages. Yakuts mainly live in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the Russian Federation, with some extending to the Amur, Magadan, Sakhalin regions, and the Taymyr and Evenki Autonomous Districts.
The Yakuts are divided into two basic groups based on geography and economics. Yakuts in the north are historically semi-nomadic hunters, fishermen, reindeer breeders, while southern Yakuts engage in animal husbandry focusing on horses and cattle.
Yakuts originally lived around Olkhon and the region of Lake Baikal. But beginning in the 13th century they migrated to the basins of the Middle Lena, the Aldan and Vilyuy rivers under the pressure of the rising Mongols, where they mixed with other northern indigenous peoples of Russia such as the Evens and Evenks.
The northern Yakuts were largely hunters, fishermen and reindeer herders, while the southern Yakuts raised cattle and horses.
In the 1620s Russia began to move into their territory and annexed it, imposed a fur tax, and managed to suppress several Yakut rebellions between 1634 and 1642. Russian brutality in collection of the pelt tax (yasak) sparked a rebellion among the Yakuts and also Tungusic-speaking tribes along the River Lena in 1642. The voivode Peter Golovin, leader of the Russian forces, responded with a reign of terror: native settlements were torched and hundreds of people were tortured and killed. The Yakut population alone is estimated to have fallen by 70 percent between 1642 and 1682.
In the 18th century the Russians reduced the pressure, to yakutsk chiefs were given some privileges, while there occurred Orthodox missions and spreading the knowledge of agriculture. The discovery of gold and, later, the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway, brought ever-increasing numbers of Russians into the region. By the 1820s almost all the Yakuts had been converted to the Russian Orthodox church, although they retained, and still retain, a number of Shamanist practices. Since the end of the 19th century arise yakut literature and in early 20th century occurred a national revival.
In 1922, the new Soviet government named the area the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The last conflict of the Russian Civil War, known as the Yakut Revolt, occurred here when Cornet Mikhail Korobeinikov, a White Russian officer, led an uprising and a last stand against the Red Army.
In the late 1920s through the late 1930s, Yakut people were systematically persecuted, when Joseph Stalin launched his collectivization campaign. It's possible that hunger and malnutrition resulting from the period resulted in a decline in the Yakut total population from 240,500 in 1926 to 236,700 in 1959. By 1972, the population began to recover.Geo
Currently, Yakuts form a large plurality of the total population within the vast Sakha Republic. According to the 2010 Russian census, there were a total of 466,492 Yakuts residing in the Sakha Republic during that year, or 49.9% of the total population of the Republic.
According to the 2010 census, some 87% of the Yakuts in the Sakha Republic are fluent in the Yakut language, while 90% are fluent in Russian. The Sakha/Yakut language belongs to the Northern branch of the Siberian group of Turkic languages. It is most closely related to the Dolgan language. Slightly less closely related languages include Tuvan and Shor.
The cuisine of Sakha consists predominantly of traditional drink kumis, dairy products of mare and reindeer milk, sliced frozen salted fish (strogaanina), loaf meat dishes (oyogos), venison, frozen fish, thick pancakes, and salamat - a millet porridge with butter and horse fat. Kuerchekh or kierchekh, a popular dessert, is made of mare milk or sour cream with various berries. Indigirka is a traditional fish salad. This cuisine is only used in Yakutia.
Mordvins
The Mordvins also Mordva, Mordvinians, Mordovians (Erzya self name Erzya: эрзят/Erzyat, Moksha self name Moksha: мокшет/Mokshet, Tatar: мухшилар/Muhshilar, Russian name for Moksha and Erzya Russian: мордва/Mordva, for Qaratai Russian: каратаи/Karatayi) are the members of a people speaking a Mordvinic language of the Uralic language family and living mainly in Mordοvia republic and other parts of the middle Volga River region of Russia One of larger indigenous peoples of Russia. The Mordvins identify themselves as separate ethnic groups: the Erzya and Moksha, besides the smaller subgroups of the Qaratay, Teryukhan and Tengushev (or Shoksha) Mordvins who have become fully Russified or Turkified during the 19th to 20th centuries.
Less than one third of Mordvins live in the autonomous republic of Mordovia, Russian Federation, in the basin of the Volga River. The rest are scattered over the Russian oblasts of Samara, Penza, Orenburg and Nizhny Novgorod, as well as Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Bashkortostan, Central Asia, Siberia, Far East, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and the United States.
The Erzya Mordvins (Erzya: эрзят, Erzyat; also Erzia, Erza), who speak Erzya, and the Moksha Mordvins (Moksha: мокшет, Mokshet), who speak Moksha, are the two major groups. The Qaratay Mordvins live in the Kama Tamağı District of Tatarstan, and have shifted to speaking Tatar, albeit with a large proportion of Mordvin vocabulary (substratum). The Teryukhan, living in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast of Russia, switched to Russian in the 19th century. The Teryukhans recognize the term Mordva as pertaining to themselves, whereas the Qaratay also call themselves Muksha. The Tengushev Mordvins live in southern Mordovia and are a transitional group between Moksha and Erzya.
The western Erzyans are also called Shoksha (or Shoksho). They are isolated from the bulk of the Erzyans, and their dialect/language has been influenced by the Mokshan dialects.
The name Mordva is thought to originate from an Iranian (Scythian) word mard meaning "man". The Mordvin word mirde denoting a husband or spouse is traced to the same origin. This word is also probably related to the final syllable of "Udmurt", and also in Komi: mort and perhaps even in Mari: marij.
Udmurtian girl
'Erzya' is thought to derive from the Persian: arshan - man. The first written mention of Erzya is considered to be in a letter dated to 968 AD by Joseph the Khazar khaqan in the form of arisa, and sometimes thought to be in the works of Strabo and Ptolemy called as Aorsy and Arsiity respectively. Estakhri from the 10th century has recorded among the three groups of the Rus people the al-arsanija whose king lived in the town of Arsa. The people have sometimes identified by scholars as Erzya, sometimes as the aru people and also as Udmurts. It has been suggested by historians that the town Arsa may refer to either the modern Ryazan or Arsk In the 14th century the name Erzya is considered to be mentioned in the form of ardzhani by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, and as rzjan by Jusuf, the Nogaj khan In Russian sources the ethnonym Erza first appears in the 18th century.
'Moksha' is thought to derive from the name of the Moksha River (an Iranian hydronym in origin, cognate to Sanskrit: moksha "releasing, causing to flow"). The earliest written mention of Moksha in the form of Moxel is considered to be in the works of a 13th-century Flemish traveler William of Rubruck and in the Persian chronicle Rashid-al-Din who reported the Golden Horde being in war with the Moksha and the Ardzhans (Erzia). In Russian sources 'Moksha' appears from the 17th century.
Ethnic structure
The Mordvins are divided into two ethnic subgroups and three further subgroups
Erzya women of Penza Oblast dressed in traditional costumes.the Erzya people or Erzyans, (Erzya: Эрзят/Erzyat), speakers of the Erzya language. Less than half of the Erzyans live in the autonomous republic of Mordovia, Russian Federation, Sura River and Volga River. The rest are scattered over the Russian oblasts of Samara, Penza, Orenburg, as well as Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Bashkortostan, Siberia, Far East, Armenia and USA.
Moksha girls in traditional costumesThe Moksha people or Mokshans, (Moksha: Мокшет/Mokshet), speakers of the Moksha language. Less than half of the Moksha population live in the autonomous republic of Mordovia, Russian Federation, in the basin of the Volga River. The rest are scattered over the Russian oblasts of Samara, Penza, Orenburg, as well as Tatarstan, Siberia, Far East, Armenia, Estonia, Australia and USA.
the Shoksha or Tengushev Mordvins constitute a transitional group between the Erzya and Moksha people and live in the southern part of Republic of Mordovia, in the Tengushevsk and Torbeevsk region.
The Karatai Mordvins or Qaratays live in the Republic of Tatarstan. They no longer speak a Volga-Finnic language but have assimilated with Tatars.
The Teryukhan Mordvins live near Nizhny Novgorod had been completely Russified by 1900 and today unambiguously identify as ethnic Russians.
Mokshin (1991) concludes that the above grouping does not represent subdivisions of equal ethnotaxonomic order, and discounts Shoksha, Karatai and Teryukhan as ethnonyms, identifying two Mordvin sub-ethnicities, the Erzya and the Moksha, and two "ethnographic groups", the Shoksha and the Karatai.
Two further formerly Mordvinic groups have assimilated to (Slavic and Turkic) superstrate influence:
The Meshcheryaks are believed to be Mordvins who have converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity and have adopted the Russian language.
The Mishars are Mordvins who came under Tatar influence and adopted the language (Mishar Tatar dialect) and the Sunni Muslim religion.
Appearance
The 1911 Britannica noted that the Mordvins although they had largely abandoned their language, had "maintained a good deal of their old national dress, especially the women, whose profusely embroidered skirts, original hair-dress large ear-rings which sometimes are merely hare-tails, and numerous necklaces covering all the chest and consisting of all possible ornaments, easily distinguish them from Russian women."
Britannica (1911) described the Mordvins as having mostly dark hair and blue eyes, with a rather small and narrow build. The Moksha were described as having a darker skin and darker eyes than the Erzya, while the Qaratays were described as "mixed with Tatars".
Latham (1854) described the Mordvins as taller than the Mari, with thin beards, flat faces and brown or red hair, red hair being more frequent among the Ersad than the Mokshad.
James Bryce (1876) described "the peculiar Finnish physiognomy" of the Mordvin diaspora in Armenia, "transplanted hither from the Middle Volga at their own wish", as characterised by "broad and smooth faces, long eyes, a rather flattish nose".
Cultures, folklores and mythologies
According to Tatiana Deviatkina: although sharing some similarities no common Mordvin mythology has emerged and therefore the Erza and Moksha mythologies are defined separately.
In the Erza mythology the superior deities were hatched from an egg. The mother of gods is called Ange Patiai, followed by the Sun God Chipaz who gave birth to Nishkepaz, to the earth god Mastoron kirdi and the wind god Varmanpaz. From the union of Chipaz and the Harvest Mother Norovava was born the god of the underworld Mastorpaz. The thunder god Pur’ginepaz was born from Niskende Teitert, the daughter of the mother of gods Ange Patiai. The creation of the Earth is followed by the creation of the Sun, the Moon, the humankind and the Erza. The man was created by god Chipaz who molded the humankind from clay while in another version of the legend the man is made from soil.
In Moksha mythology the Supreme God is called Viarde Skai. According to the legends the creation of the world went through several stages: first the Devil moistened the building material in his mouth and spat it out. The piece that was spat out grew into a plain, which was modeled uneven by creating chasms and the mountains. The first humans created by Viarde Skai could live for 700–800 years and were giants of 99 archinnes. The underworld in Mokshan mythology was ruled by Mastoratia.
Latham (1854) reported strong pagan elements surviving Christianization. The 1911 Britannica noted how the Mordvins still preserve much of their own mythology, which they have adapted to the Christian religion. According to some authorities, they have preserved also, especially the less russified Moksha, the practice of kidnapping brides, with the usual battles between the party of the bridegroom and that of the family of the bride. The worship of trees, water (especially of the water-divinity which favours marriage), the sun or Shkay, who is the chief divinity, the moon, the thunder and the frost, and of the home-divinity Kardaz-scrko[dubious – discuss] still exists among them; and a small stone altar or flat stone covering a small pit to receive the blood of slaughtered animals can be found in many houses. Their burial customs seem founded on ancestor-worship. On the fortieth day after the death of a kinsman the dead is not only supposed to return home but a member of his household represents him, and, coming from the grave, speaks in his name.
They are also masters of apiculture, and the commonwealth of bees often appears in their poetry and religious beliefs. They have a considerable literature of popular songs and legends, some of them recounting the doings of a king Tushtyan who lived in the time of Ivan the Terrible.
Demographics
Latham (1854) quoted a total population of 480,000. Mastyugina (1996) quotes 1.15 million. The 2002 Russian census reports 0.84 million.
According to estimates of Tartu University made in late 1970s,[citation needed] less than one third of Mordvins lived in the autonomous republic of Mordovia, in the basin of the Volga River.
Others are scattered (2002) over the Russian oblasts of Samara (116,475), Penza (86,370), Orenburg (68,880) and Nizhni Novgorod (36,705), Ulyanovsk (61,100), Saratov (23,380), Moscow (22,850), Tatarstan (28,860), Chuvashia (18,686), Bashkortostan (31,932), Siberia (65,650), Russian Far East (29,265).
Populations in parts of the former Soviet Union not now part of Russia are: Kyrgyz Republic 5,390, Turkmenistan 3,490, Uzbekistan 14,175, Kazakhstan, (34,370), Azerbaijan (1,150), Estonia (985), Armenia (920).
Mari people
The Mari (Mari: марий, Russian: марийцы), are a Finno-Ugric ethnic group, who have traditionally lived along the Volga and Kama rivers in Russia. Almost half of Maris today live in the Mari El republic, with significant populations in the Bashkortostan and Tatarstan republics. In the past, the Mari have also been known as the Cheremis in Russian and the Çirmeş in Tatar.
Maris have traditionally practiced a pagan faith that closely connected the individual with nature. According to their beliefs, nature exerts a magical influence over people. They relate to it as a sacred, powerful, and living being outside of which man can not exist. Nature serves as a source of absolute good who always helps man as long as he does not harm or oppose it.
The Mari Traditional Religion also possesses a pantheon of gods who reside in the heavens, the most important of whom is known as the Great White God (Ош Кугу Юмо, Osh Kugu Yumo). Other lesser gods include the god of fire (Тул Юмо, Tul Yumo) and the god of wind (Мардеж Юмо, Mardezh Yumo). The Mari also believe in a number of half-men, half-gods (керемет, keremet) who live on earth. The most revered of these gods is Chumbulat (Чумбулат), Kubrat or Chumbylat (Чумбылат), a renowned leader and warrior.
Christianity was adopted by the Mari in the 16th century after their territory was incorporated into the Russian Empire during the reign of Ivan IV "the Terrible". Adoption of Christianity was not universal, however, and many Mari today still practice Paganism in syncretic forms, or purer forms adhering to organized Neopagan Mari Traditional Religion organizations. Pagans constitute a significant minority of 25 to 40% of the Mari. Most Mari are members of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Sunni Islam is practiced by 5% of Mari people.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the situation in Mari El first improved, then declined to the point where the ethnic Mari people are undergoing forced Russification and cultural suppression. The ethnically Russian former Communist Head of State Leonid Markelov has led or allowed a widespread attack on Mari culture and identity. Under his leadership, the government ordered many Mari language newspapers to close. Many ethnic Mari activists live under fear of violence. The Mari activist and chief editor Vladimir Kozlov was badly beaten after he published criticism toward Leonid Markelov's politics. Other Mari leaders have been the subjects of violence, legal persecution and intimidation In addition, a proposal to raise water levels in the [Cheboksary Reservoir] would flood even larger areas of land inhabited by Mari in the western part of Mari El.
Mari native religion
The Mari religion is based on the worship of the forces of nature, which man must honor and respect. Before the spread of monotheistic teachings amongst the Mari, they worshipped many gods (the jumo, a word cognate to the Finnish Jumala), while recognising the primacy of a "Great God", Kugu Jumo. In the 19th century, influenced by monotheism, the Pagan beliefs altered and the image of a Osh Kugu Jumo, literally "Great God of Light", was strengthened. Who could be the "Great God of Light"other than Jehovah?
The word Mari is clearly derived from the Hebrew name Miriam. The origin of the Hebrew: , Modern Miryam, Tiberian Miryām is not clear. It may mean "wished-for child", "bitter", "rebellious" or "strong waters". Alternatively, bearing in mind that many Levite names are Egyptian, it might be derived from an Egyptian word myr "beloved" or mr "love".
The Udmurts are a people who speak the Udmurt language. Through history they have been known in Russian as Chud Otyatskaya (чудь отяцкая. Chude could be derived from the Slavic word tjudjo ['foreign' or 'strange' & why not Djudeo, similar Jew in Spanish.] which in turn is derived from the Gothic word meaning 'folk'), Otyaks, or Votyaks (most known name), and in Tatar as Ar.
The name Udmurt probably comes from *odo-mort 'meadow people,' where the first part represents the Permic root *od(o) 'meadow, glade, turf, greenery' (related to Finnish itää 'to germinate, sprout') and the second part (Udmurt murt 'person'; cf. Komi mort, Mari mari) is an early borrowing from Indo-Iranian *mertā or *martiya 'person, man' (cf. Urdu/Persian mard). This is supported by a document dated Feb. 25, 1557, in which alongside the traditional Russian name otyaki the Udmurts are referred to as lugovye lyudi 'meadow people'.
Most Udmurt people live in Udmurtia. Small groups live in the neighboring areas: Kirov Oblast and Perm Krai of Russia, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and Mari El.
The Udmurt language belongs to the Uralic family.
The Udmurt population is shrinking; the Russian census reported 637,000 of them in 2002, compared to 746,562 in 1989.
Anthropologists relate Udmurts to the Urals branch of Europeans. Most of them are of the middle size, often have blue or gray eyes, high cheek-bones and wide face. The Udmurt people are not of an athletic build but they are very hardy, and there have been claims that they are the "most red-headed" people in the world. Additionally, the ancient Budini tribe, which is speculated to be an ancestor of the modern Udmurts, were described by Herodotus as being predominantly red-headed.
The Udmurts have a national epic called Dorvyzhy.
Volga Tatars
A great part of their ancestry is Alan (Israelite). Volga Tatar ethnogenesis was completed upon the arrival of the Kipchaks, Cumans and Mongols.
The Volga Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group, native to the Volga-Ural region, Russia. They are in turn subdivided into various subgroups. They compose 53% of population in Tatarstan.
Volga Tatar subgroups
Kazan (Qazan) Tatars
The majority of Volga Tatars are Kazan Tatars. They form the bulk of the Tatar population of Tatarstan.
During the 11th-16th centuries, numerous Turkic tribes lived in what is now Russia and Kazakhstan. The present territory of Tatarstan was inhabited by the Volga Bulgars. The Bulgars settled on the Volga River in the 8th century and converted to Islam in 922 during the missionary work of Ahmad ibn Fadlan. After the Mongol invasion of Europe from 1241, Volga Bulgaria was defeated, ruined, and incorporated into the Golden Horde.
Volga Tatar women: Alsou, Irina Shayk & Aliya Mustafina
Mishars
Mishars (or Mişär-Tatars) are a ethnographic group of Volga Tatars speaking Mishar dialect of the Tatar language. They are descendants of Cuman-Kipchak tribes who mixed with the Burtas in the Middle Oka River area and Meschiora. Nowadays, they live in Chelyabinsk, Ulyanovsk, Penza, Ryazan, Nizhegorodskaya oblasts of Russia and in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Mordovia.
Qasím Tatars
The Qasím Tatars have their capital in the town of Qasím (Kasimov in Russian transcription) in Ryazan Oblast. See "Qasim Khanate" for their history. Today, in Kasimov live 1100 Qasím Tatars. There is no reliable information about their number elsewhere.
Noqrat Tatars
Tatars live in Russia's Kirov Oblast and Tatarstan. Their number in 2002 was around 5.000 people.
Perm (Ostyak) Tatars
Kazan Tatars live in Russia's Perm Krai. Some Tatar scholars (as Zakiev) name them Ostyak Tatars. Their number is (2002) c.130.000 people.
Keräşens
Many Kazan Tatars were forcibly Christianized by Ivan the Terrible during the 16th century, and later, during the 18th century.
Volga Tatar men: Mrat Izmailov & Ruslan ChagaevSome scientists suppose that Suars were ancestors of the Keräşen Tatars, and they had been converted to Christianity by Armenians in the 6th century while they lived in the Caucasus. Suars, like other tribes which later converted to Islam, became Volga Bulgars, and later the modern Chuvash (who are mostly Christian) and Kazan Tatars (mostly Muslims).
Keräşen Tatars live all over Volga-Ural area. Now they tend to be assimilated among Chuvash and Tatars. Eighty years of Atheistic Soviet rule made Tatars of both faiths not as religious as they once were. Russian names are largely the only remaining difference between Tatars and Keräşen Tatars.
1921–22 famine in Tatarstan
The famine deaths of 2 million Muslim Volga Tatars in Tatar ASSR and in Volga-Ural region in 1921-1922 was catastrophic as half of Volga Tatar population in USSR died. This famine is also known as "terror-famine" and "famine-genocide" in Tatarstan. The Soviets settled ethnic Russians after the famine in Tatar ASSR and in Volga-Ural region causing the Tatar share of the population to decline to less than 50%. All-Russian Tatar Social Center (VTOTs) has asked the United Nations to condemn the 1921 Tatarstan famine as Genocide of Muslim Tatars. The 1921–1922 famine in Tatarstan has been compared to Holodomor in Ukraine. It was another holocaust against Israelites.
In the 1910s, they numbered about half a million in the area of Kazan. Nearly 2 million Volga Tatars died in man-made 1921–22 famine in Tatarstan by Joseph Stalin. Some 15,000 belonging to the same stem had either migrated to Ryazan in the center of Russia (what is now European Russia) or had been settled as prisoners during the 16th and 17th centuries in Lithuania (Vilnius, Grodno, and Podolia). Some 2,000 resided in St. Petersburg. Volga-Ural Tatars number nearly 7 million, mostly in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union. While the bulk of the population is found in Tatarstan (around 2 million) and neighbouring regions, significant number of Volga-Ural Tatars live in Siberia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Outside of Tatarstan, urban Tatars usually speak Russian as their first language (in cities such as Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Ufa, and cities of the Ural and Siberia).
They also have a good diaspora as other Israelites.
Israel – wives or husbands of Jews (1990s)
Tribes Associated with the Khazars
The Sabirs were part of the Khazars. They were also known as "Manse" i.e. Manasseh. Sabirs conquered the Akatziri (Agathyrsi) who re-emerged as the Khazars in partnership with the Sabirs. Other groups may have included the Bashkirs, Hephtalites-Naphtalites, Ugrian-Turcae. Some Bolgars (known as Tartars) associated with Khazars which led to a confusion between the two. Basils may have been remnants of the Royal Scythians. The Alans were prominent in the Khazar federation as well as making a name for themselves in Western Europe including Scotland.
The Massagetae, Ten Tribes, and Russia.
Roman sources often equated the Goths with the Massagetae. The name Massagetae is often explained as meaning Greater Getae and the term Getae was often applied to the Goths and their offshoots.
British Israel sources explain the name Massagetae to be compounded from Manasseh and Gad. This is not far-fetched since elements from both Gad and Manasseh were in the same region as that of the Massagetae. The very name Goth is a Biblical Hebrew alternative pronunciation for the name Gad.
Israelite Tribes were in this region and so were other groups. Names of different peoples were switched around frequently due to one nation having dwelt in the area previously, or having been conquered by another, or accepted rulership from another, etc, and then moving on merging with other peoples and bestowing the borrowed name on them as well, etc.
I am not exaggerating. This confusion of and interchanging of names is the rule rather than the exception in those regions. In addition different peoples had similar names and they often met up with each other and their names were switched around either in their own tongues or in the reports of foreigners.
The forces of Gog were in the region. A clan of Reuben was also known as Gog! The Goths and Massagetae were identified with Gog. The Ten Tribes were also equated with Gog and Magog.
Anyway it seems that the terms Massagetae and Goth were applied to different groups. One section was of Israelite origin and the other not. Those who were not were probably descended from Gog and in the future will help form the forces of Gog and Magog.
A search engine query indicates that aspects of Gog and Magog have been discussed about 120 times on the Brit-Am web-site. In general we identify Gog and Magog with Russia and nations from the east including Korea which was once part of a kingdom known as Gogarei and appears to have been referred to as Gog in Tibetan records.
We do not think the Russians in general are descended from the Ten Tribes but rather from non-Israelite nations. Nevertheless, as shown in our book, The Tribes, a good portion of the Ten Tribes did at some stage or other sojourn in the regions of Russia and its neighbors.
Very many descendants of the Ten Tribes as well as of the Jews may have been assimilated amongst the Russian and related peoples. Somehow or other they will all return as described in Isaiah ch.66.
18 ...It shall be that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see My glory. 19 I will set a sign among them; and those among them who escape I will send to the nations: to Tarshish and Pul and Lud, who draw the bow, and Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands afar off who have not heard My fame nor seen My glory. And they shall declare My glory among the Gentiles. 20 Then they shall bring all your brethren for an offering to the Lord out of all nations, on horses and in chariots and in litters, on mules and on camels, to My holy mountain Jerusalem,' says the Lord, 'as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. 21 And I will also take some of them for priests and Levites,' says the Lord [Isaiah 66:18-21].
The Cossack Israelites
Cossack is a Turkish word with the same origin than Kazakh. The Cossacks were groups of military free men, many of them escaping serfdom in the Russian Empire. They became border keeping armed people.
The Cossacks had a democratic system of government. There were some Cossack republics.
The Cossacks are very conservative like American Rednecks & usually follow the Orthodox or Old Believer churches.
In the Russian civil war they formed the core of the White Army that fought the Red Army. Because of that they suffered the Decossackization & the Holodomor (this was aimed against Ukrainians & other peoples.). Outside the ex Russian Empire these are amongst the least known crimes that the Communists performed in the Evil Red Empire. The Decossackization & the Holodomor were anti-Cossack genocides
Amongst Cossacks there was antisemitism at times, but there were Cossack Jews as well & Cossacks that adopted Jewish children. Thee Ukrianian Cossackss were the most philosemitic. If one nation can claim the Cossack inheritance that is Ukraine more than Russia.
Some comments on the Khazars from Yair Davidy
The title “Chakan”, or “Cagan”, was originally the Hebrew “COHEN” and means “priest” or “officiate”. [In the Ukraine today the western "h" is still pronounced like a "g"]. More information concerning the Khazars comes from a letter sent some time between 954-961 to Ibn Hasdai who was the Jewish physician and foreign minister to the muslim king of Cordoba in Spain. The letter is from a King Joseph of Khazaria. There are two versions of this letter but both contain important information from early sources. From the letter(s) we learn that: King Joseph was the 13th king of Khazaria; Previously, in the time of the 11th monarch, King Benjamin, all the surrounding kings had been at war against the Khazars except for the King of the Cossacks and the King of the Alans.
By “King of the Cossacks”, the Don Cossacks are intended. The Don Cossacks were a mixed people amongst whom in historical times were a few isolated families who practiced Judaic customs and some of whom converted to Judaism. These individuals had the notion that they were descended from Dan, son of Israel, after whom the Don River was named (Casdoi).
Crimean Tatars (Crimean Tatar: Qırımtatarlar or Qırım, Qırımlı, Russian: Крымские татары, Ukrainian: Кримськi татари) are a Turkic ethnic group native to the Crimean Peninsula, which constituted the largest population in the peninsula from the time of its ethnogenesis in the 15th century until 1864, and the relative largest ethnic population until the end of 19th century. They have a great diaspora.
In 1944 Crimean Tatars were targeted for mass deportation under Soviet rule. In the late 1980s they were allowed to return to their motherland, where they constitute a 12% minority today. There remains a large diaspora of Crimean Tatars in Turkey and Uzbekistan.
In the latest Ukrainian census, 248,200 Ukrainian citizens identified themselves as Crimean Tatars with 98% (or about 243,400) of them living in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. An additional 1,800 citizens (or about 0.7% of those that identified themselves as Crimean Tatars) live in the city of Sevastopol, also on the Crimean peninsula, but outside the border of the autonomous republic.
About 150,000 remain in exile in Central Asia, mainly in Uzbekistan. The official number of Crimean Tatars in Turkey is 150,000 with some Crimean Tatar activists estimating a figure as high as 6 million. The activists reached this number by taking one million tatar immigrants to Turkey as a starting point and multiplying this number by the birth rate in the span of the last hundred years. Crimean Tatars in Turkey mostly live in Eskişehir Province, descendants of those who emigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the Dobruja region straddling Romania and Bulgaria, there are more than 27,000 Crimean Tatars: 24,000 on the Romanian side, and 3,000 on the Bulgarian side.
Sub-ethnic groups
The Crimean Tatars are subdivided into three sub-ethnic groups:
the Tats (not to be confused with Tat people, living in the Caucasus region) who used to inhabit the mountainous Crimea before 1944 (about 55%), the Yalıboyu who lived on the southern coast of the peninsula (about 30%), the Noğay (not to be confused with Nogai people, living now in Southern Russia) – former inhabitants of the Crimean steppe (about 15%).
Historians suggest that the inhabitants of the mountainous parts of Crimea lying to the central and southern parts (the Tats), and those of the Southern coast of Crimea (the Yalıboyu) were the direct descendants of the Pontic Greeks, Armenians, Scythians, Ostrogoths (Crimean Goths) and Kipchaks along with the Cumans while the latest inhabitants of the northern steppe represent the descendants of the Nogai Horde of the Black Sea nominally subjects of the Crimean Khan. It is largely assumed that the Tatarization process that mostly took place in the 16th century brought a sense of cultural unity through the blending of the Greeks, Armenians, Italians and Ottoman Turks of the southern coast, Goths of the central mountains, and Turkic-speaking Kipchaks and Cumans of the steppe and forming of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group. However, the Cuman language is considered the direct ancestor of the current language of the Crimean Tatars with possible incorporations of the other languages like Crimean Gothic.
Another theory suggests Crimean Tatars trace their origins to the waves of ancient people Scythians, Greeks, Goths, Italians and Armenians. When the Golden Horde invaded Crimea in the 1230s, they then mixed with populations which had settled in Eastern Europe, including Crimea since the seventh century: Tatars, but also Mongols and other Turkic groups (Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, and Kipchacks), as well as the ancient.
The Crimean Tatars emerged as a nation at the time of the Crimean Khanate, an Ottoman vassal state during the 15th to 18th centuries and one of the great centers of slave trade to the Ottoman Empire. The Turkic-speaking population of the Crimea had mostly adopted Islam already in the 14th century, following the conversion of Ozbeg Khan. By the time of the first Russian invasion of Crimea in 1736, the Khan's archives and libraries were famous throughout the Islamic world, and under Khan Krym-Girei the city of Simferopol was endowed with piped water, sewerage and a theatre where Molière was performed in French, while the port of Gözleve stood comparison with Rotterdam and Bahçesarai, the capital, was described as Europe's cleanest and greenest city.
Flag of the Crimean Tatar people
Until the beginning of the 18th century, Crimean Tatars were known for frequent, at some periods almost annual, devastating raids into Ukraine and Russia. For a long time, until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East which was the most important basis of its economy. One of the most important trading ports and slave markets was Kefe. Slaves and freedmen formed approximately 75% of the Crimean population.
Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 2 million people were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate. On the other hand, lands of Crimean Tatars were also being raided by Zaporozhian Cossacks, armed Slavic horsemen, who defended the steppe frontier – Wild Fields – against Tatar slave raids and often attacked and plundered the lands of Ottoman Turks and Crimean Tatars. The Don Cossacks and Kalmyk Mongols also managed to raid Crimean Tatars' land. The last recorded major Crimean raid, before those in the Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) took place during the reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725) However, Cossack raids continued after that time; Ottoman Grand Vizier complained to the Russian consul about raids to Crimea and Özi in 1761. In 1769 one last major Tatar raid, which took place during the Russo-Turkish War, saw the capture of 20,000 slaves.
The Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) resulted in the defeat of the Ottomans by the Russians, and according to the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) signed after the war, Crimea became independent and the Ottomans renounced their political right to protect the Crimean Khanate. After a period of political unrest in Crimea, Russia violated the treaty and annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783. After the annexation, the wealthier Tatars, who had exported wheat, meat, fish and wine to other parts of the Black Sea, began to be expelled and to move to the Ottoman Empire. Further expulsions followed in 1812 for fear of the reliability of the Tatars in the face of Napoleon's advance. Particularly, the Crimean War of 1853–1856, the laws of 1860–63, the Tsarist policy and the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) caused an exodus of the Tatars; 12,000 boarded Allied ships in Sevastopol to escape the destruction of shelling, and were branded traitors by the Russian government.[22] Of total Tatar population 300,000 of the Taurida Governorate about 200,000 Crimean Tatars emigrated.[30] Many Crimean Tatars perished in the process of emigration, including those who drowned while crossing the Black Sea. Today the descendants of these Crimeans form the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.
Ismail Gasprali (1851–1914) was a renowned Crimean Tatar intellectual, influenced by the nationalist movements of the period, whose efforts laid the foundation for the modernization of Muslim culture and the emergence of the Crimean Tatar national identity. The bilingual Crimean Tatar-Russian newspaper Terciman-Perevodchik he published in 1883–1914, functioned as an educational tool through which a national consciousness and modern thinking emerged among the entire Turkic-speaking population of the Russian Empire. His New Method (Usul-i Cedid) schools, numbering 350 across the peninsula, helped create a new Crimean Tatar elite.[citation needed] The educated "Crimean Tatars" during this period refused the appellation of "Tatars" given to them by the Turks (which however in earlier times had also been used natively). They wished to be known simply as "Turks", and their language as "Turkish" (the Crimean Tatar language had indeed been substantially influenced by Ottoman Turkish).
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 this new elite, which included Noman Çelebicihan and Cafer Seydamet proclaimed the first democratic republic in the Islamic world, named the Crimean People's Republic on 26 December 1917. However, this republic was short-lived and asbolished by the Bolshevik uprising in January 1918.
During Stalin's Great Purge, statesmen and intellectuals such as Veli Ibraimov and Bekir Çoban-zade (1893–1937), were imprisoned or executed on various charges.
Soviet policies on the peninsula led to widespread starvation in 1921. More than 100,000 Tatars, Russians, Ukrainians and other inhabitants of the peninsula starved to death, and tens of thousands Tatars fled to Turkey or Romania. Thousands more were deported or slaughtered during the collectivization in 1928–29. The government campaign led to another famine in 1931–33. No other Soviet nationality suffered the decline imposed on the Crimean Tatars; between 1917 and 1933 half the Crimean Tatar population had been killed or deported.
Some modern researchers argue that Crimea's geopolitical position fueled Soviet perceptions of Crimean Tartars as a potential threat. This belief is based in part on an analogy with numerous other cases of deportations of non-Russians from boundary territories, as well as the fact that other non-Russian populations, such as Greeks, Armenians and Bulgarians were also removed from Crimea.
All 240,000 Crimean Tatars were deported en masse, in a form of collective punishment, on 17–18 May 1944 as "special settlers" to Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and other distant parts of the Soviet Union This event is called Sürgün in the Crimean Tatar language; the few who escaped were shot on sight or drowned in scuttled barges, and within months half their number had died of cold, hunger, exhaustion and disease. Many of them were re-located to toil as indentured workers in the Soviet GULAG system.
Although a 1967 Soviet decree removed the charges against Crimean Tatars, the Soviet government did nothing to facilitate their resettlement in Crimea and to make reparations for lost lives and confiscated property. Crimean Tatars, having definite tradition of non-communist political dissent, succeeded in creating a truly independent network of activists, values and political experience. Crimean Tatars, led by Crimean Tatar National Movement Organization, were not allowed to return to Crimea from exile until the beginning of the Perestroika in the mid-1980s.
Today, more than 250,000 Crimean Tatars have returned to their homeland, struggling to re-establish their lives and reclaim their national and cultural rights against many social and economic obstacles. In 1991, the Crimean Tatar leadership founded the Qurultay, or Parliament, to act as a representative body for the Crimean Tatars which could address grievances to the Ukrainian central government, the Crimean government, and international bodies. Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People is the executive body of the Qurultay.
Since the 1990s, the political leader of the Crimean Tatars and the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People is a former Soviet dissident Mustafa Abdülcemil Qırımoğlu.
Following news of Crimea's planned referendum on March 16, 2014, the Tatar population voiced concerns of renewed persecution, as commented by a US official before the visit of a UN human rights team to the peninsula.
On March 18, It was announced that Crimean Tatars will be required to relinquish land that they hold and be given land elsewhere in Crimea. Crimea stated it needed the relinquished land for "Social purposes", since part of this land is occupied by the Crimean Tatars without legal documents of ownership. The situation was caused by the inability of the USSR (and later Ukraine) to give back to the Tatars the land owned before deportation, once they or their descendants returned from Siberia. As a consequence, Crimean Tatars settled in squatters, occupying land that was and is still not legally registered.
Some Crimean Tatars fled to Lviv, Ukraine due to the Crimean crisis.
In April 2014, Crimean Tatars were made an official ethnic group of Ukraine by the Parliament.
On 29 March 2014, an emergency meeting of the Crimean Tatars representative body, the Kurultai, voted in favour of seeking "ethnic and territorial autonomy" for Crimean Tatars using "political and legal" means. The meeting was attended by the Head of the Republic of Tatarstan and the chair of the Russian Council of Muftis. Decisions as to whether the Tatars will accept Russian passports or whether the autonomy sought would be within the Russian or Ukrainian state have been deferred pending further discussion.
Common Origin of Croats, Serbs and Jats
Their relation with Pastuns, Isars...& their ancestry makes some Balkanic Slavians as Israelites. I suggested the Israelite origin of Jats too. No to forget that there's a subethnic group in the Balkans called Kuchi as there's another Kuchi in Afpak area.
Croats as Hrvati, Haravaitii, Arachosians or Sarasvatians, descendants of the ancient inhabitants of the Harauti province & the Haravaiti or Sarasvati River. Their mention on legendary inscriptions of Darius the Great. Croatian flag based on the chessboard, Croatian religion derived from primordial Iranic Sun-worship. Common origin of Croats and Serbs. Their relations with the Sarmatians, Saura Matii or Surya Madas, the Solar Medes. False claims of The Indian Express refuted. Scythian or Saka origin of Jats. Consequent commmon origin of Jats, Croats and Serbs. Genetic proof for the same is presented.
It is unfortunate that Dr. Sahib Singh Verma, Union Labour Minister, was not allowed to attend the recent World Jat Conference in Belgrade ("Sahib Singh wanted to visit Serbia to meet fellow Jats, PM put his foot down and spiked his bonding-in-Belgrade plans", Indian Express, 21/9/2003). Sad indeed, because there actually do exist strong connections between Jats, Serbs and Croats. Several historians view these communities as sharing a common ethnic origin as is evident from a study of the following submissions.
Philology: Croats as Hrvatis
Let us commence our investigation with the Croats. The science of linguistics provides several connections with Iran. Thus, the Croats of Croatia call themselves "Hrvati" and their country "Hrvatska", whence the Croatian domain name on the internet is .hr. The name "Hrvati" is derived from the Avestan province "Harahvaiti" (Greek: "Arachosia"). The scientific philological argument for the identification of the Croats with the Haravatis is given in (Sakac 1955, pp. 33-36; Sakac 1949, 1937)
As Dvornik notes, "P.S.Sakac thinks that he discovered the name 'Croats' in Darius' inscriptions from the sixth century B.C. There an old Persian province and people are mentioned, called Harahvaitai, Harahvatis, Horohoati..." Further, the Roman leader Ammanius Marcellinus mentioned that two cities arose in ancient Persia called Habroatis and Chroates. In this regard, Prof. Mandic writes, "The Croats of the Don, then had to come in ancient times from Iran. On a stone inscription of the King Darius (522-486 B.C.) the nation of the Haruavat-is appears among the 23 subject nations. The Persian sacred books of the Avesti (Vendidad) call that nation the Harahvaiti. The provinces settled by that nation encompassed in those times the southern half of modern south Afghanistan, the whole of Baluchistan and the eastern part of modern Iran. In that ancient province ought we to look for the paleo-fatherland of the modern Croats."
Furthermore, the name of the Croatian capital, Zagreb, is related to the Zagros mountain range of Iran. The Dinara mountains in Dalmatia and the Dinar currency may be connected to Mount Dinar (Dene) of Iran. The name Serbia is similar to the Seropi or Surappi River in Elam. Moreover, certain authorities note that the name of the Carpathian mountains is derived from Croatia: "Here the Iranian Croats mingled with the numerous local Slavic tribes and adopted the Slavic language from them. Meanwhile after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire the Croats organized the local Slavs into a state and gave them their national name. Before the invasion of the Avars ca. 560 the White or Western Croats created along with the Antes a great state extending north of the Carpathians from the upper Elbe to the upper Dniester. R. Heinzel is of the opinion that the Carpathians of the old Germanic Hervarsaga took their name from the Croats who called them the Harvate mountains i.e. Croatian mountains.
Indeed, philologists trace the migration of the Croats from Harahvati (Arachosia, Sarasvati) in the following manner using fossil place-names along the path of migration:
Harahvaiti and Harauvati in Iran and Afghanistan. Hurravat and Hurrvuhe in Armenia and Georgia. Horoouathos in Azova and the Black Sea.
Present day Croats Horvati and Hrvati along the Adriatic
It is important to note that the Avesta - the sacred scriptures of the ancient Aryan Zoroastrians - mentions the lands settled by the Iranic peoples. Hapta-Hindawa (ie. the Punjab, "Sapta-Sindhu" in Prakrit) is mentioned in the Avesta amongst the Irano-Aryan lands. Even today, the Punjab is the primary home of the Jats. Since the Croats are named after the Harahvaiti or Sarasvati River, and the Jats are the present-day inhabitants of the lost Harahvaiti, it would appear that Jats and Croats would be very closely related indeed.
Vexillology
Further compelling evidence comes from vexillology (the scientific study of flags). Thus, the Croatian flag is based on the chessboard, whence many Croatian historians consider Croats as eponymic descendants of the Sassanid chess master & minister Bozorgmehr, just as the Kambojas are eponymic descendants of Cambyses and Georgians are viewed as the eponymic descendants of King George II. In this regard, Prof. Mandic notes,
"Ancient Croatian folk art bears eastern and Iranian traces, particularly the Croatian "troplets". The Croats also brought over from Iran their national coat of arms with its 64 red and white checkers. "The organization of the state among the southern Croats with the king, bans and zupans at its head similar to that of the northern Croats; in addition the religion, national customs, dress and arts of the southern Croats bear Iranian traces, just like the Croats in the north. "
Indeed, a total of 120 Croat and non-Croat university professors and several academics have published 249 research works elaborating the Old Iranic origin of Croats.
Folklore
A researcher notes similarities in folklore as well, "There are old Croatian customs and national poems that have been cited as evidencing lingering traces of the fire and sun worship of the Iranians. Fire, the essence of human origin, the sun, and the great boiling cauldron around which the warriors spring in the age old kolo or circle dance, all these are ingredients in the national lore of the Croatian nation. The Croat vilas or fairy witches resemble the peris of Iranian mythology. Then there is the legendary Sviato zov, the personification of strength, a being almost too huge for the earth to bear. He is strongly reminiscent of the "elephant-bodied" Rustum of Persian legend."
Research studies on Croatian clothing reveals similarities with Sassanian and other Iranic styles both in terms of male and female clothing.
White Croatia, Red Croatia, Green Croatia
The Iranic origin of Croats is in fact the only way one can comprehend the traditional distinction existing between White Croatia, Red Croatia and Green Croatia: "After the Iranian fashion the ancient Croats ascribed a specific colour to each of the four cardinal points of the compass in the territory which they inhabited. The colour white designated the west, red the south, green the east, and black the north.Hence White or West Croatia, Red or South Croatia and Green or East Croatia"
"It should be noted that only the thesis of the Iranian origin of the Croats can explain the name "Horvath", the title of a Croat dignitary Banus, the names "White" and "Red Croatian", and the Bogumile phenomenon. According to this theory, the Croats were a branch of the Caucasian Iranians, who lived somewhere in the western Caucasus during the era of the Roman Emperors. The Caucasian Anten were another branch of this group."
Let us conclude this section on Croats with the words of the learned Prof. Mandic: "The oldest historical evidence, the ancient Croatian social organization, religion, national customs and art indicate that the Croats are of Iranian origin."
Sarmatians, Sauro Matii, Surya Madras or Solar Medes
Now, the exact path of migration of the Croats from Iran to the Balkans is still disputed. Some hold that they migrated via Anatolia, others that they migrated via Central Asia and the Pontic region. Some of the latter historians link the Sarmatians with the Croats and Jats. Thus, Dvornik traces both Serbs and Croats back to the Sarmatians of Southern Russia (Dvornik 1956). The Sarmatians were generally identified as Scythians. Thus, Sulimirski, author of "The Sarmatians" also makes mention of the referral of the Emperor's to the Belochrobati or White Croats who "exhibited certain Sarmatian characteristics ... [they were] of Iranian origin". Their interest to history stems from the fact that their matriarchial Scythian society probably formed the basis of the Greek legends of the Amazons. In this connection, it is interesting to note numerous reference to the fighting ability, combat skills, bravery and great freedom of Jat women - the Jat amazons.
The name Sarmatian is an Anglicization of the original Sauro Matii, the Latin form of the Prakrit Surya Madra or Surya Mada. The name means "Solar Medes", in English, another testimony to the worship of Surya, or Cyrus, the Asshur of Assyria, the Ahura Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the splendid Sun-god of the Iranic peoples. In this regard, Mandic notes, "Indeed from the end of the I to III century A.D. in the city-state of Tanais, in the region of the Don, lived various Iranian tribes of Samatians as well as Croats who must have been Iranians.
Concerning the Iranian tribes in present-day southeastern Russia around the Don and the Iranian origin of the Croats. Furthermore the national name "Croat" is of Iranian origin. According to the Russian Vselod Miller the name "Croat" comes from the Iranian word Hor-va (t)u meaning: the sun's bed or path. M. Vasmer derives the Croatian name from Hu-urvata meaning, "friend". And the terms used to designate the high officials among the Croats, "kral, ban, zupan", are of Iranian origin.
Slovaks & Jats
Prof. Mandic notes, "The great resemblance between the Croatian and Slovak languages tell us that the Croats for the most part moved south from northern Slovakia. For they are far nearer to each other in affinity than to any other Slavic language." Thus, the Slovaks would also share the same Saka origins as the Croats and Jats.
Bosnia
Regarding the roots of Bosnians, Dodan notes that Bosnia is historically a Croatian land, that Bosnia belonged to Croatia in the early mediaeval times, that the majority of Bosnian population used to be and are still Croats, and that mediaeval Bosnian kings were ethnic Croats. Even their surnames end in "-an". Dodan quotes Draganovic's and Mandic's research according to which 95 % of Muslims and 30% of Serbs are actually Croats. He also elucidates the Iranian roots of the Croatian people.
Serbs
Now, we turn to the connection with the Serbs. Several historians maintain that the Serbian ruling caste shared the same origin as the Croats. Prof. Malcolm recently wrote a book "Bosnia"o, in which he clearly elucidates the Iranic origin of both Serbs and Croats. For instance, Prof. Salzman notes while reviewing Malcolm's first chapter: "The Croats and Serbs (who were either Slavic tribes with Iranian ruling castes or Iranian tribes with Slavic subjects) arrived in the Balkans in the 620s, a land already occupied by the Slavs."
The view of Prof. Malcolm is thus that the Croats and Serbs were originally Iranic speakers who adopted a Slavic language. Examples of a conquering immigrant group adopting the language of its surrounding subjects abound in history. For example, the Scandinavian Normans adopted the Romance French language in Normandy, while their ruling kinsmen in England adopted Anglo-Saxon; the Germanic Franks, Merovingians and Carolingians adopted the Romance French language; the Nordic Visigoths adopted the Romance Spanish language; the Germanic Lombards adopted the Romance Italian language, and the Tungus Manchu adopted the Chinese language of their subjects. Likewise, the Jats were originally speakers of Scythian or East Iranic languages, who subsequently adopted an Indo-Aryan language. Hence, that the Iranic Croats and Serbs should adopt a Slavic language would not be unusual in any way
The Croats were also commonly named by the medieval chroniclers as "Goths": "The old Croatian chronicle 'The Kingdom of the Croats' and the 'Chronicle of Pop Dukljanin', based on Croatian national tradition and on the ancient records, states that the Croats whom they misnamed the Goths arrived for the north through Pannonia and Templana (6) in Dalmatia, which they conquered and settled. (7)"
This is important because the ethnonym "Jat" is widely considered a variant of "Goth" and its Greco-Latin variant "Getae". "Professor Vernadsky was the first, in modern times, to suggest that the Slavs had direct Iranian antecedents. The derivation of both names from religious designations, as suggested above, may be considered as additional evidence, especially as most of the Slavic gods bear purely Iranian, or Indian, names. One of the Slavic groups, the Poles, called themselves Sarmatians; this name was recorded very early in Western Medieval chronicles, which lends credence to the traditions recorded in Polish chronicles edited at the waning of the Middle Ages, according to which they were in touch with the Iranians. In Antiquity the Sarmatians, as is well known, were the Alans. The meaning of the name "Sarmata" in Iranian is the "council." It refers not to the nationality or language, but to the social organization of the Alans, ruled by a supreme council, appointing the king. The role of the council in early Slavic history is well known, especially among the Western Slavs. Thus the social, or political, organization of the Iranian Alans and Polish Slavs offers evidence of their affiliation."
Bulgarians
It may also be stated that several scholars have noticed Iranic elements amongst the Proto-Bulgarians.
Anthropology
The Iranic or Irano-Aryan race as a whole is dolichocephalic (long-headed), leptorrhine (having long, narrow noses), tall, robust, dark-haired, large-boned and fair-skinned with straight hair. These features are found amongst the Jats, Pathans, Persians, Rajputs and Kurds. Due to the common features of Iranic skeletons with Nordics, some authorities consider the Nordics and Iranics as belonging to a common Nordic-Iranian macro-race. It is a further strong support for the Iranic origin of Croats that the Croats, and indeed, West Slavs in general, display strong Iranic racial features.
Thus, the majority of Croatians today tend to be tall statured, with narrow facial features. Many historians consider these western Slavic features to be a trait passed on from the Iranic tribes mentioned above. The Alans in particular are thought to have had considerable impact on the Croatian racial "type". Now, there are three sub-types of Croats proper: Dinaric (Iranoid race), Mediterranean (Latinoid race) and Panonian (Slavoid race) The Dinaric type to which many Croats belong is often viewed as an Iranic sub-type: "In the central mountainous regions settled by the Croats upon their arrival on the Adriatic the Dinaric type of Croat developed. This type is quite remote from the general Slavic type. The Dinaric Croats are tall in stature (ca. 1.8 metres), long-headed but with a skull of short circumference (cephalic index of 80-85)."
The main feature of the Dinaric sub-type of Iranics is that the head is long when viewed from front, but the circumference is short, giving the illusion of brachcephaly when viewed from the top. It is common amongst Armenians as well, and is often viewed as a breeding isolate of the Iranoid race.
Refuting the view that the Croatians were of Illyrian or Roman stock, Mandic notes, ".... Nevertheless one has to say that the contribution of the local Romanized remnants [Illyrian] of the prehistoric Dinaric folk, hardly amounted to more than 20% to 30% in forming the Dinaric Croat." These Mediterranean Croats are "intermediary in stature, a little smaller than the Dinaric type. They have quite oval skulls, dark hair and eyes and an olive complexion."
The Panonian Croats, however, are largely descendants of the Slavic populations. The Slavoid race in general (to be distinguished from the speakers of Slavic languages) is short-statured, brachycephalic (round-headed), with blond hair. Thus, "When the Croats conquered Lower Pannonia and Savia they at one began to assimilate with the Kaikavian Slavs of those areas. Out of that came the third type of Croat, the Pannonian, of intermediate stature, blond hair, ruddy complexion and of a rather sizeable cephalic index. .... [A] conspicuous type of Pannonian Croat was preserved up until this day. They of all the Croats are the closest to the general Slavic type in their physical and psychological make-up. (88)"
Thus, the round-headed blond Panonian Croats are not members of the Iranoid race, but instead are of the round-headed Slavoid race. They are, however, outnumbered by the Iranic or Dinaric Croats, who form the dominant element of Croatia.
Genetics
A scholarly Croatian society called ZDPPH recently held a conference on the Iranic origin of Croats, where genetic evidence was presented. According to the society's president Nedjeljko Kujundzic, "Swedish geneticists have confirmed, in 75 percent of cases, that Croats are of Iranian origin." Two days after the news conference, the book "Indo-Iranian Origin of Croats" by Mate Marcinko was released in which much additional proof was presented.
Croatian elements among Serbs
Furthermore, even if the Serbs represent primarily the descendants of round-headed Slavs, there has been much Croat infusion into the Serb genetic stock. Thus, Mandic estimates that one-third of Serbs are ethnically Croat: "Our investigations have led us to believe that of the Serbs presently in Bosnia and Herzegovina 32 to 35% are descended from Orthodox Croats, 50 to 52% are from non-Slavic Wallachs, 6 to 7% are from Serbianized Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians and Albanians and 8 to 10% from genuine ethnic Serbs who came there mainly during Austro-Hungarian rule and during the time of the two Yugoslavias.
Jats
Where do the Jats come into this? Now, the Jats are generally held to be of Scythian descent. The Jat-Sikhs are also of Saka descent, for indeed the very name "Sikh" is derived from "Saka". Noted historian Satya Shrava notes, "The Jats are none other than the Massagetae (Great Getae) mentioned in Diodorus as an off-spring of the ancient Saka tribe.... a fact now well-known". Eminent scholars like Tod, Toynbee, Trevaskis, Keene, Kephart, Dhillon, Dahiya, Prakash and Bingley directly or indirectly connected Jat, Goths and Scythians. Thus, the famed Anglo-American historian Toynbee notes: "It may not be fantastic to conjecture that the Teutonic-speaking Goths and Gauts of Scandinavia may have been descended from a fragment of the same Indo-European-speaking tribe as the homonymous Getae and Thyssagetae and Massagetae of the Eurasian Steppe who are represented today by the Jats of the Panjab."
Whatever the details of the original home of the Iranoid race itself, all scholars agree that the Jats, Serbs and Croats predominantly belong to the same ethnic stock.
It is thus clear, Belgrade was indeed an appropriate choice for the location of the World Jat Congress. This article amply shows that close kinsmen of the Jats abound all across the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Now, given the tragic recent history of the Serb-Croat divide during the break-up of Yugoslavia, it might be more advisable to first establish Jatism in Croatia, for it is in Croatia that the Iranic connection has recently become official history. Sadly, Serbian historians are still split between the Slavic and Iranic theories. Once the first base has been established in Croatia, one may look beyond to the surrounding regions to develop further Jat connections in the Balkans.
Identity of Croatians in Ancient Iran
To date, 120 Croat and non-Croat university professors and several academics have compiled 249 research works of which many have been printed in various publications and thereby have proven that Croats are of Iranian origin.
There are many real evidences about the identity of ancient Croats which all dismiss the theory that Croats are of Slav origin. Although research works on the Iranian origin of the Croats could not be publicized due to the censorship that was widely practiced at the time of the former regime in Yugoslavia, however, the available documented evidences reveal that the initiator of the effort on research about the Iranian origin of the Croats lived two centuries ago.
In his thesis in 1797, the researcher made a study on the Iranian origin of the Croats and reached the conclusion that the present day Croats migrated from the western part of ancient Iran.
Following the formation of Yugoslavia in 1918, the bigot Slavs known as the "wolves" collected the original copies of the research work and destroyed them in an attempt to conceal the truth about the Iranian origin of the Croats. To date, only some part of the research work that has been quoted in a report prepared by the academy of sciences of former Yugoslavia in 1938 is available.
One of the articles has quoted some police reports that the then government in former Yugoslavia mounted pressures on Iranologists within the period 1918 to 1990. The article further proves that upon official instructions by the then government, Croats had to be considered as the middle ages Slavs. For this same reason, all the research works conducted over the origin of the Croats were considered as criminal acts and thus prohibited for a period of 70 years. All the research papers compiled by Iranologists were confiscated as documents against state interests and the researchers were imprisoned or sent to detention camps. Even four researchers were killed by the Yugoslav secret police for making investigations over the issue.
However, there are other research works proving that 75 percent of the Croats are different in origin from the Slavs and more similar to Kurds and Armenians from genetic point of view. On the other hand, studies show that there are less similarities between domestic livestock, poultry and plants in the old time Croatia with those in Europe, lending further proof to the fact that Croats had most probably migrated from a region close to Asia to their present area.
Former Croat homeland and their migration
A manuscript dating back to 1370 B.C. has named the present day Croats and their language as Hurrvuhe (resembling Hrvati).
In the era of the Achaemenid, especially at the time of Cyrus II and Darius I, the name of the eastern Iranian province Harauvatya and the Croats of the ancient Iran Harauvatis and Harahvaiti have been mentioned for 12 times. In addition, two unearthed manuscripts belonging to the Croats living in the second and third centuries B.C. in ancient Iran have referred to the inhabitants of Horooouathos and Horoathoi. In the year 418, the Aryans were dubbed as Horites and Zachariasrhetor, in 559 the Aryan horse riders were referred to as Hrwts who lived in the vicinity of Krima and Azova and in the 7th century Croats were called as Slavs.
Other articles offered to the symposium discussed formation of the empire at the time of Cyrus the Great, history of the Croats in ancient Iran and Croat's development from the time of ancient Indians to the time of their migration in the middle ages from the Caucasus through ancient Persian to the present Adriatic and emergence of the first traces of Croats which could be classified as follow:
Harahvaiti and Harauvati in Iran and Afghanistan
Hurravat and Hurrvuhe in Armenia and Georgia
Horoouathos in Azova and the Black Sea
Present day Croats Horvati and Hrvati along the Adriatic
First contacts between old-time Slavs and Croats of ancient Iran
Research works have been conducted on the relationship between the language spoken by the Croats and the language the present-day Slavs speak with an aim to identify the possible similarities. However, the studies do not dismiss the possibility that the old-time Croats were part of the ancient Iran at the time of the Persian Empire who later migrated to Europe and their language was changed into the Slav.
Meanwhile, studies on the Croats indicate that the old-time Slavs did not share the same race with the East European nations and that with the migration of the Croats with the Iranian origin, they established common cultural and lingual ties with each other.
Ties with the old-time Slavs in the 4th century was first established in the Red Croatia under the title Sarmatskim-Horitima and also after the 6th century in the realm of the Carpathians within the boundaries of the Great, or White, Croatia under the patronage of the Iranian Croats who had been turned Slavs due to the largeness of the population of the Slavs.
Iranology and old-tine language of Croats
Studies show that there had been various stages in which the Croats had been pressured for accepting the language of the Slavs and annexation to former Yugoslavia. The idea was realized by the Serb nationalist Karadzic whose slogan was "Serbs everywhere". He invited all bigot Slavist Serbs to the Vienna Congress in the middle of the 19th century for a political and lingual consensus and for adopting policies for the future of former Yugoslavia. In the aftermath of the agreements reached in the gathering and from 1890 the pro-Karadzic Slavists launched their activities for the elimination of all signs of cultural and lingual differences between the Serbs and the Croats. To this end, they changed the past history of the Croats and eliminated all the terms with Indo-Iranian roots that did not exist in the Serbian language. Such a trend continued until 1918 when Yugoslavia was formed.
The process for the change of the spoken language of the Croats of ancient Iran to the language of Slavs that was started in the 7th century continued up to the 20th century and was forcefully followed by former Yugoslavia.
Mazdaism, ancient myths and religion of Croats
In addition to similarities in language, common cultural points can be pointed out as well. For example, reference can be made to the symbols belonging to the old-time Christians that resembled symbols of Mazdaism in the ancient Iran.
A study in this connection has drawn a parallel between the language used in Bosnia and littoral states and islands of the Adriatic Sea in two separate sections. The study further elaborates how followers of Mazda in ancient Iran converted to Christianity in Europe and how Mazdaism was spread in Europe by the migration of the inhabitants of the above-mentioned areas.
Other research works have studied the influence of traditions in ancient Iran on the symbols of the roots of old Christianity from the ancient time to the middle ages.
Identity of old-time Croat tribes
Research works conducted in the past decade discuss the similarities between names and families used in the ancient-time Iran and the names and families in present Croatia. Some of these studies have pointed to the roots of alphabetic letters in the Croat language and stressed that contrary to the claims of the Slavs the roots of those letters are totally oriental and widely used at ancient times. Many manuscripts written with those letters date back to before 9th century.
Research studies on the style of dressing of the Croats show that they were dressed up as the Sassanid and most of the local costumes of women were exactly similar to those worn by women at the time of the ancient Iranian empire.
Studies on other features of the Croats such as navigation reject the Slav presumption that the Croats had not have navigated before but that they had rather learnt the art from the Italians. According to the studies, there are evidences available that the Croats were acquainted with sailing even before the Slavs and that the time for their navigation in the Adriatic goes back to the 6th and 7th centuries. It should be noted that local Croat navigators were known as "Indo-Iranian" and "Slavs" in the Adriatic.
The Redheads of Judah & other Judahites
Red Haired (& blond) Udmurts, but also Maris, Komis, Uyghurs, Berbers...
Cicily, Scilly (the Cornish archipelago), Sicily, Sheilah, Celia... are names derived from Shelah, one of the surviving sons of Judah, together with Zara & Phares. Er was Shelah's son.
Part of Judah is found in Ireland (called Erie after Er, or for others after Eri, son of Gad) & Scotland.
It has been claimed that the Udmurt People are the most red haired in the world, even more than the Irish.
I don't know why people always associate red-headedness with Ireland. Scotland has the highest percentage of red heads.
This is an endless source of frustration to me, as a part Ulsterman.
There have always been far more Irish people worldwide and more spread out than Scottish people though so red heads people encountered tended to be Irish.
The Scots and Irish are very closely related. Irish settlers displaced the native Picts in Scotland over a thousand years ago.
The Udmurt people are not of an athletic build but they are very hardy.
Komi are often red-headed too, which is the large orange area to the north.
After traveling around both Scotland and Ireland, they both have a lot of redheads. What I found surprising was how many redheads the Rhineland has.
It looks like it's focused on the Russian region of Tatarstan, which is populated not by ethnic Russians, but by the Turkic Tatar people.
Finno-Ugric peoples like Mari and Mordvins who have the red hair.
It's not impossible for Turkic peoples to have light hair (the Kirgiz are mentioned as having red hair and green eyes in ancient Chinese texts), but you're probably right, given the splotch of red hair to the north.
My ex brother-in-law is a Kalmyk from Kyrgyzstan. Always blew my mind seeing him: an absolutely asiatic face, high cheekbones, Asian eyefolds, and bright red hair and white skin.
Much of Central Asia is of fairly fair complexion. My mother is from Northern India and has Hazel eyes, and I have a few cousins with green eyes. The Turkish side of my family is filled with blue/green eyes and blonde/light brown hair.
The Mongolian Ghengis Khan is reputed to have had red hair.enlacepadre Sounds implausible, but it's still possible, if he had some ancestors from one of the numerous Indo-European and Uralic groups which surrounded Mongolia.
The Vikings invaded Scotland and Ireland and founded slave trading cities like Dublin. They also traded through eastern Europe down to Istanbul and some settled there. They were the called the Rus from which word comes our word for Russia. Are those high numbers on or near rivers? If so it's probably Scandinavians eg the Vikings of the volga.
It has been stated higher up in this thread that the cause of the red dot in central Russia is probably because of the Udmurt people.
Udmurts with their flag
It would seem quite unlikely that your claim about Vikings is true. Why would their heritage of red hair end up as a dot in Russia, rather than follow the rivers? Also, if your claim were true, other coastal areas in Russia, Ukraine and around the Black sea should also have coloured differently.
If your theory is right, though, and a lot of Vikings settled in Udmurtia, that would be very fascinating. Got any sources on this?
But why are the Udmurt people randomly very red-headed?
Red hair: "Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads; 13 percent (13%) of the population has red hair and approximately 40 percent (40%) carries the recessive redhead gene. Ireland has the second highest percentage; as many as 10 percent (10%) of the Irish population has red, auburn, or strawberry blond hair." Welsh are next with about 8%.
What's with the little spot in Poland? It coincides with Pomerania, maybe a local ethnicity?
I would've thought Turkey would be at least one notch higher. I know a few red-haired Turks.
I saw a whole bunch of red heads in the hills while traveling from Cas to Kusadasi (Turkey). The women there were stunningly beautiful.
Interesting that the brown patch in eastern England are almost the same area as the Danelaw.
Redheaded Sicilian here. I live in Michigan now, but a few of my cousins in Palermo are redheads. They call them "Normanni" because the red hair is assumed to be one of the many things brought by the Normans.
I had a red-headed Southern Italian grandmother. And having been to Puglia and Sicily a few times I would have expected a higher concentration in the Mezzogiorno.
Udmurtians
Sicily was under Norman control for over a hundred years.
How much over 10% is the Western fringes of the British Isles? Anyone know?
Still not much over 10%.
Rus means "red haired" in a lot of Slavic languages. South Slavic also. There was a tribe of Roxolans ( Rus-Alans, bright Alans ) in the same area before the appearance of the Rus state. The Rurikid dynasty has been attested to belong to the haplogroup N1, which is common among finnic peoples.
Rus ("Rusy") hair means light-brown hair in Slavic languages. Red (in the context of hair) is ryzhyi/rudyi/rydzhy (rus/ukr/pol), which may or may not have the same roots as germanic "red".
The most accepted theory is Rus comes from Ruotsi (finnish for men who row)
I mean russian legends reference the Varangians and Oleg and Rurik and them, and we know of Norse travels down the various rivers.
"Roux" means red haired in french. "roux" and "rus" have probably a common origin.enlacepadre
I wonder if the higher density in western Norway is because the vikings took trells in Scotland and Ireland?
I've seen far more red hair during my year in Amsterdam than I have during my lifetime in Ireland. Still, statistics are statistics.
As a redhead I find this fascinating. The weird thing is that most of my ancestors came from Bavaria, very low redhead rate. I'm a bit Irish, but not much. I was told that there are many gingers in northern italy and it is not uncommon. Unless i was adopted and my family lied to me.
Vikings aren't Celts. Actually some of them were partially/mostly. Scenario: viking raids Ireland, captures and takes woman back home to Norway, has more viking kids. His sons do the same thing. Outcome: after two generations you have some vikings with 75% Celtic ancestry. This is especially true of those that ended up in the island colonies (Iceland, Greenland, Faroes, etc...) because they couldn't blend back in with the pure-blood scandinavian population.
Good call not including Israel in this, there are a hell of a lot of redhead Israelis (they're called "gingies" in Hebrew). For some reason it seems like a Jewish thing. I have a lot of red-heads in my family (I believe from Hungary where there doesn't seem to be a high proportion).
The correlation is not 1-1, but I think it's interresting how similar these maps are:Viking areas of conquest.
I guess the old stereotype of celtic regions having red hair holds true.
I like the little patch on the coast of Norway. Guess the Vikings had a good time in northern England.
Russia means "land of the Rus" and Rus means Red and the Rus people were named that way because of their hair.
According to the most prominent theory, the name Rus, like the Finnish name for Sweden (Ruotsi), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen (the Rowing crews) or Roden, as it was known in earlier times.
It makes sense because the Vikings did "row" down the Volga into Central Asia where they established trading posts and were known as the "Rus".
Queen Lalla of Moroccco is a Berber
There are quite a few redheads among the Berbers, sometimes among Uyghurs... It's the same in the case of blondes. The Berber origin of redheads is clearly derived from Israelite Vandals that had a kingdom in the area & from Jews that mingled with Berbers & Israelites that in Solomon's time colonized the area. I already said in another article that Uyghurs had a good amount of Israelite blood.
Udmurtian people
It seems even in the Uralic heartland, most people aren't nearly close to being completely Mongoloid (though there are other groups that are more so than these which I may make threads on eventually). The thing is, in the older black and white pictures you seem to get more authentic types while the newer ones look more like just Russians or something. Hard to find many older ones. The old ladies in the folk costumes also have a slightly different, more Uralid look than some of the group pics with the younger people and all those redheads. Maybe some of these people were Slavs or something moved in later as populations were moved around during the Soviet era.
I've decided to also include the related Komi or Komi-Permyak people here as well rather than making a separate thread. There are some redheaded Maris too.
Red hair automatically = Scottish.
Udmurt old women
I Wonder if people who live in the area that used to be the Novgorod republic look more Nordic. (or, I would assume so anyways).
It's funny how people think red hair is confined to British isles.
This is a proof not all redheads are Celtic/Germanic. Notice how their cheekbones are really strong and broad similar to how mine are.
Well Udmurts should be most red haired nation in the world not Irish.
Red hair among Irish is overstated while most people don't know about the Udmurts.
Anyway, I've always been interested in these peoples, a few could pass in Scandinavia but most look more "exotic."
So many redheads. This is proof not all redheads are celtic/germanic. Notice how their cheekbones are really strong and broad similar to how mine are.
Udmurts should be the most red haired nation in the world not Irish. Red hair among Irish is overstated while most people don't know about the Udmurts.
Anyway, I've always been interested in these peoples, a few could pass in Scandinavia but most look more "exotic."
I've got natural red hair, if it was any other colour i'd probably instantly picked for non Anglo here but since it's red nobody pays second thought or takes me seriously when I say ancestry because they all even think red=Irish.
There seems to be multiple theories about how Uralics originated... some think it's just a parallel development of a local Europid type to others, with cold adapted features, or that the original people of Europe, at least that part, were more like that anyway, closer to Eurasian phenotypically. Others seem to think it was simply the result of an ancient blending of Caucasoid and Mongoloid (specifically mostly West Sibirid types) populations in the area (which has since mixed with others), as sort of a transition between the two. Not all people speaking these widely distributed sets of languages are that similar even, especially to a trained eye, and as you move from east to west the types gradually change, the most different being Nenets, Enets, and Nganasans, if you count Samoyedic groups as part of the greater Uralic spectrum. Lapps don't even seem to be that close to these Mari people from what I read, for example. I don't really know.
It does have a different look or vibe than actual Turanids proper, who seem to be a more recent mixture of old Caucasoid types in Central Asia, e.g. Iranic speakers (which had Mediterranean types), with later Turkic (mostly Tungid) peoples from further to the east, much of it possibly occurring during the historical era rather than prehistoric as with the case of Uralics.
Mari El is not the only place where Mari people live, in fact only some 50% of the nation lives there. Large populations of Mari can also be found in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
An article stated that Mari, Udmurts and suprisingly also Mansi have some gene that's most typical for Basque people.
This woman has a very pan-baltid look. She can pass anywhere from Yoshkar-Ola to Hamburg
As seen above the peoples with highest amount of redhaired are the Irish, Scotts & the Udmurts. This is considered to be an Israelite trait, especially common in the tribe of Judah. This is the tribal identity of many Scotchmen, Irishmen, Ulstermen (anciently called Scotch-Irish), Welshmen... Because of this I would attribute a Judahite (perhaps mingled with Simeonite) origin.
Mary Magdalene (Jesus's wife?)
I believe these Judahites are not todays Jews that didn't lost their identity, but the Jews that the ones that never came back to the Holy Land to rebuild the temple & lost their identity with the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.
In fact I attribute an Israelite origin to several non-Slavian ethnicities inhabiting the Volga-Ural region of Russia: Udmurts, Chuvash, Mordvins...
Jews have been regarded as redheaded in the past, as seen in different texts an paintings, like paintings of Judah the apostle, Mary Magdalene, king David, different rabbis...
In the Bible king David was described as ruddy, which iss regarded as redheaded.
Among the Germans is not common to be a redheaded, except among the those of Jewish origins.
Quitting the redhead topic, keeping with Judah's offspring; Darda was a a son of Zara. His name is in the Dardanelles, Greece, so we can say that beside the Simeonite Spartans, the Dardanelans were Greek Judahites, but other Greek Israelites, the Tuata Danaans, were Danites.
Robert the Bruce, was a brave king of Scotland & according to the genealogical web www.scotlandroyalty.org was a Judahite. If Henry the VIII was excomunicated in the 1500s, Robert the Bruce & the whole Scottish nation were excomunicated before, with the whole Scottish nation in the 1300s.
Among Pashtuns & Tajiks we can find some redheads. The neighboring Kashmiris are with the Kalash, Dardic speakers, so they could descend from Darda, the mentioned grandson of Judah.´
Calcol, another descendent of Judah, may have given name to ancient Colchis, in the Caucasus, so the Sakartvelans (Georgians of the Caucasus) may also come from Judah, together with Issakar.
Judah with Simeon & perhaps Ephraim is present in Dixieland (ex Confederate States of America), Wales (with Simeon & Levi, although the lion of the Welsh flaag might indicate Dan's snake & therefore tribe too), northern Germany (with Gad & pockets of Ephraim & Manassah), in former Jute areas (Denmark & Kent, England) & the European monarchies.
This is why the English royal crest has three lions that represent the Lion of Judah.
Frisians are said to come from Zebulon, but Judah might be present & might have given name the Frisians through Phares.
Eastern European Israelites?
MOLDAVIA, amongst the first to claim independence is the Arsareth region that Israel settled. ARMENIA (the name comes from Aram, son of Shem and it was the Armenians, who later allied with Israel, settled Afghanistan. It is mentioned twice in the Bible. The UKRAINE. Here is where the tombstone inscriptions make clear that Israelites lived and were buried. Here Volodymyr the ruler, accepted Christianity in 988 and Ukraine, of Israelitish origin, also became Christian. He was the third in line of great Varangian rulers, and these Varangians were the Vikings.
We could go on listing the Galatians of RUMANIA, the Celts of AUSTRIA, the Sarmatians of LITHUANIA, descendants of Israel’s Median allies. East of the Caspian, too, are regions where ancient Scythian artifacts have been found.
The East Jordan Tribes Today
They lived in Khazar territory, which included parts of Southern Russia, Eastern Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia -- not far from their scripturally-documented resettlement territories in Armenia! Many of the leading modern authorities on Khazaria -- including Kevin Brook and others -- conclude that evidence for some of the 'lost tribes' among the Khazars is strong, although they hesitate to make more definite statements upon the issue.
Interestingly, these traditions correlate remarkably well with evidence from modern LDS patriarchal blessings - a tremendous resource unavailable to Jewish or Gentile scholars.
The blood of Dan has been recognized in a wider variety of areas, including Ukraine, Russia, Finland, Ireland, Spain, and possibly others.
The remarkable affinity of Armenians and Ukrainians, and to a lesser extent of Russians (particularly in Southern Russia) for the restored gospel has been of interest to many missionaries and mission presidents. This has frequently been cited as anecdotal evidence of the 'blood of Israel.' Armenians have had strong and well- acknowledged traditional and historical associations with the lost tribes of Israel.
While multiple ethnohistoric influences constitute modern Ukrainian ethnicity, a particularly interesting note is made in the Rus'ian Primary Chronicle. Kiev, the 'mother of Rus'ian cities,' was felt by old school historians to have been founded by the Rus. Yet the Rus'ian Primary Chronicle -- a primary source of early Kievan history -- attributes Kiev's (Kyiv's) founding to three brothers -- Kiy, Shchek, and Khoriv -- and describes Kiev as a Khazar tributary conquered by the Varangians (Rus) after the death of the brothers. Furthermore, the Laurentian, Suprasl, and Semeonovskaya editions of the Chronicle associate the three brothers with the Khazar empire (Julius Brutzkus, 'The Khazar Origin of Ancient Kiev,' p. 117, cited in 'The Jews of Khazaria' by Kevin Alan Brook, p. 34-35). Omeljan Pritsak even demonstrated that the Chronicle explicitly states at one point that the three brothers were 'kin' of the Khazars: '...and we [Kievans] are living here and pay tribute to their [Kiy, Shchek, and Khoriv] kin, the Khazars' (Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century, Cornell University Press, p.55, as cited in 'The Jews of Khazaria.') Pritsak also suggested that Kiy, the primary founder of Kiev (Kyiv) can be identified as the Khazar vizier Kuya.
Given the strong Khazar connection, it is possible that Kiev may have been founded by Israelites. The Savior taught the Nephites: 'But now I go unto the Father, and also to show myself unto the lost tribes of Israel, for they are not lost unto the Father, for he knoweth whither he hath taken them' (3 Nephi 17:4). Given the Lord's promise that he would manifest himself unto the lost tribes, the significant evidence for continuity of the East Jordan tribes in this region -- with identification of lineage supported by modern patriarchal blessings-- it is likely that a society of righteous Israelites once existed in the territory of Armenia, Southern Russia, and/or Eastern Ukraine, and that Christ appeared to these people after His resurrection. Prophets among these people undoubtedly recorded the Lord's words to them: 'For behold, I shall speak unto the Jew and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it' (2 Nephi 29:12).
'In 1991, my stake patriarch declared that I am a literal decendant of the tribe Dan. Most of my ancestors come from Germany and England. However, I have a great grandfather who is full blooded Greek. I assume that is where my Danite blood comes from. While serving as a missionary in Thailand, a certain General Authority told me that he felt I would one day serve as a mission president among my people' in Greece. He said that after the 10 tribes were carried off, many Danites were sold as slaves in the area of Greece.' There is a river Dan in Scotland.
Lands of the Dispersion: Ukraine
Carpatho-Rusyns, Lemkos, and Western 'Ukrainians'
The Carpatho-Rusyn people (also called 'Ruthenians') are Eastern Slavs whose historic homelands included the mountainous lands in what is now South-Eastern Poland, Eastern Slovakia, and Western Ukraine. There are various distinct cultural groups of CarpathoRusyns, including Lemkos, Boykos, and Hutsuls, of whom the Lemkos are the most numerous. Some individuals identify the Carpatho-Rusyns as Ukrainians. While their culture and language share many common features, the Carpatho-Rusyns are in fact a distinct cultural and ethnic group with their own language and history distinct from Ukraine. Much like the Ephraimites of the bible, the Carpatho-Rusyns are mountain dwellers. Interestingly, they are the only mountain-dwellers of the Slavs, with the exception of some of the Slovenians, whose culture and history are heavily influenced by that of Austria and Italy. The Carpatho-Rusyns are some of the most independent and free-thinking of the Slavs. They resisted the Bolshevik takeover after the Russian Revolution, the Nazi invasion during World War II, and the subsequent oppression by the Polish Communists and the USSR. As a result, many were displaced from their homeland and emigrated to North America, especially Canada. The great majority of the 2 million 'Ukrainians' living in Canada are actually Western Ukrainians and Carpatho-Rusyns, from the traditional homelands of the Lemkos, Boykos, and Hutsuls.
Many of these individuals have come into the true Church in Canada and in the United States. 'The Lord hath covenanted this land unto me, and to my children forever, and also all those who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord. Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord. Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever. 2 Nephi 1:5-7'
The Church has also met with the greatest success among the Ukrainians of all of the Slavic nationalities of Eastern Europe. A temple has been announced for Ukraine, and two missions in Ukraine have brought approximately 8000 people into the Church (as of mid-1999) compared to 11000 members in 8 missions served by far more missionaries in all of Russia. A stake is being planned for Kiev, which will probably be the first stake in Eastern Europe.'
The Tribe of Ephraim Today
I came to the conclusion (and this is just my opinion) that the majority of the first members are going to be from the tribe of Ephraim. That's because it is the 'gathering' tribe, so they are chosen to help assist us in the gathering of the other tribes in that area.'
It does seem like many early members in Eastern Europe are from Ephraim, but that makes sense given their great missionary responsibility.
Some comments on the Khazars from Yair Davidy
The title “Chakan”, or “Cagan”, was originally the Hebrew “COHEN” and means “priest” or “officiate”. [In the Ukraine today the western "h" is still pronounced like a "g"]. More information concerning the Khazars comes from a letter sent some time between 954-961 to Ibn Hasdai who was the Jewish physician and foreign minister to the muslim king of Cordoba in Spain. The letter is from a King Joseph of Khazaria. There are two versions of this letter but both contain important information from early sources. From the letter(s) we learn that: King Joseph was the 13th king of Khazaria; Previously, in the time of the 11th monarch, King Benjamin, all the surrounding kings had been at war against the Khazars except for the King of the Cossacks and the King of the Alans.
By “King of the Cossacks”, the Don Cossacks are intended. The Don Cossacks were a mixed people amongst whom in historical times were a few isolated families who practiced Judaic customs and some of whom converted to Judaism. These individuals had the notion that they were descended from Dan, son of Israel, after whom the Don River was named (Casdoi).
The Vatican has rejected recent requests to open its archives or publish wartime baptismal records. The article quoted ADL director Abraham Foxman, who was hidden during the war and illicitly baptized by a Polish nanny: "There may have been tens of thousands of rescued and baptized Jewish children who to this day are not aware of their true origins." Freund concludes, “It is time for Israel and world Jewry to turn up the pressure on Rome to come clean. The Vatican must open its archives and release the baptismal records at once. It is bad enough that they plundered Jewish property over the centuries. They cannot be allowed to get away with stealing Jewish children too.”
Karaims
Lithuanian Karaims - Lietuvos Karaimai
"For six hundred years, two Turkish nations - Tatars and Karaims have been living in Lithuania. From linguistic and ethnogenetic point of view they belong to the oldest Turkish tribes - Kipchaks. This ethnonym (Kipchak) for the first time was mentioned in historical chronicles of Central Asia in the 1st millennium BC. Anthropologically ancient Kipchaks were very close to Siberia inhabitants Dinlins, who lived on both sides of the Sajan Mountains - in Tuva and northern part of Gobi.
In 5th cent. BC Kipchaks lived in the West of Mongolia, in 3 rd cent. BC they were conquered by Huns. Since 6 - 8 cent., when the first nomadic Turkish empires were founded, Kipchak's fate is closely connected with the history and migration of the Middle Asia tribes. In Middle Ages Kipchaks started to play an important role in the Eastern Europe. European historians and linguists call them Kumans; Russian scientists call them Polovtsy. In Turkish literature they are known as Kipchaks.
Following after Turkish oguzes, who were the biggest Turkish tribe, in 10th cent. Kipchaks crossed the Volga and settled in steppes near the Black Sea and Northern Caucasus. Huge territories occupied by Kipchaks from the West of Tian- Shan to the Danube, in 11-15th cent. were called Dest-e-Kipchak (Kipchak's steppes). They did not have an integral state; khans guided the union of different tribes. Khazar's kaganate, spread over southern territories of contemporary Russia, in 9 th cent.being at its blossom, was famous for its religious tolerance. Karaim missionaries reached the kaganate in 8 - 10 cent. passed their faith to some Turkish tribes (Khazars, Kipchaks-Kumans, and others), living in the southern steppes of Russia and Crimea. Common language and religion united these tribes as a nation for a long time; the name of religion became ethnonym. Contemporary Lithuanian Karaims are the descendants of those tribes.
Karaite flag
The Karaims of Crimea, Galich-Luck area, Lithuania and Poland who have common origin, past, religion, language (with dialects), spiritual and factual culture, make the same nation.
The history of Karaims is connected with Lithuania since 1397-1398. According to the tradition, The Great Duke of Lithuania Vytautas, after one of the marches to the Golden Horde steppes, had to bring from Crimea several hundreds of Karaims and settle them in the Great Duchy of Lithuania. Vytautas could bring Karaims after he had beaten one of the hordes not far from Azov. Transference of several hundreds Karaim families and several thousands of Tatars was not done once. It was connected with the state policy of The Great Duchy - to inhabit the empty areas, to build towns and castles, to develop trade and economic life.
Initially, Karaims were settled in Trakai between two castles of The Great Duke, present Karaim Street. Later they were found living in Birai, Naujamiestis, Pasvalys, Panevoys, however, Trakai has always been the community's administrative and spiritual centre in Lithuania. Karaims themselves began to hold it not only a homeland, but as fatherland, too. Throughout the centuries their ethnic and cultural relations with the Karaims from Crimea and Galich-Luck areas were not interrupted either.
In order to get thorough information about Karaims' social, cultural, ethnic and religious situation, in 1997 The Statistics Department of Lithuania carried out the ethno-statistic research "Karaims in Lithuania". It was decided to question all adult Karaims and mixed families, where one of the members is a Karaim. During the survey, i.e. beginning 1997 there were 257 Karaim nationality people, 32 among them were children under 16." (Lithuanian Karaim Culture Society, 2007)
Lena & Magdalena Are Hebrew Names
Lena's language of origin is Hebrew. It is predominantly used in Armenian, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, and Scandinavian. The name Lena means 'dwelling, lodging'.
Lena has 19 forms that are used in English and foreign languages. English forms of the name include Leena (also used in Indian), Lenah, Lencea, Lencee, Lencey, Lenci, Lencie, Lency, Lene, Lenee, Lenka, Lenna, Linah, and Lyna. Other English forms include the spelling variants Leina, Leyna, and Lina (also used in German, Italian, Russian, African, and Arabic). Forms used in foreign languages include the Dutch Lenie and the Latvian Liene.
Meaning & History of Magdalene
From a title which meant "of Magdala". Mary Magdalene, a character in the New Testament, was named thus because she was from Magdala - a village on the Sea of Galilee whose name meant "tower" in Hebrew. She was cleaned of evil spirits by Jesus and then remained with him during his ministry, witnessing the crucifixion and the resurrection. She was a popular saint in the Middle Ages, and the name became common then. In England it is traditionally rendered Madeline, while Magdalene or Magdalen is the learned form.
VARIANTS: Magdalena (German), Magdalone (Danish), Madeleine, Madeline, Magdalen, Magdalena (English) DIMINUTIVES: Alena, Lena, Lene, Leni, Magda (German), Lene, Lone, Magda, Malene (Danish), Lena (English) OTHER LANGUAGES: Shelena (African American), Maialen (Basque), Magdalena, Magdalina (Bulgarian), Magdalena, Magda, Majda, Manda, Mandica (Croatian), Magdaléna, Magdalena, Alena, Lenka, Magda (Czech), Madelon, Magdalena, Magda (Dutch), Magdalena, Matleena, Leena, Malin (Finnish), Madeleine, Magali, Madeline, Magalie (French), Magdaléna, Magdolna, Duci (Hungarian), Madailéin (Irish), Maddalena, Lena (Italian), Magdalena (Macedonian), Magdalena, Lena, Linn, Magda, Malene, Malin (Norwegian), Magali, Magdalena (Occitan), Magdalena, Lena, Magda (Polish), Madalena, Magda (Portuguese), Mădălina, Magdalena, Magda (Romanian), Magdalena, Manda (Serbian), Magdaléna, Alena, Lenka (Slovak), Magdalena, Alena, Alenka, Majda (Slovene), Magdalena, Malena (Spanish), Madeleine, Magdalena, Lena, Linn, Magda, Malena, Malin (Swedish).
Lenny might come from either of the two names. Were the rivers Lena & Lenne named by ancient Israelites? I would say so. There are several toponyms with the name "Lenne" in Germany. The river Lena is in Yakutia, Russian Federation. There's a Lena river in Asturias, one of the Celtic regions of Spain.
Crimean Karaim — who are they?
When you find a group with a surprising combination of linguistic and religious affiliation, you know an interesting story is coming. One example is the Crimean Karaim. They are a Jewish group speaking a Turkic language.
But first, a note on the terminology. The term “Karaim” or “Karaites” refers to adherents of a branch of Judaism, which recognizes the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible or the Torah) as the sole source of legal authority. In this respect, Karaite Judaism is distinct from the more widely spread Rabbinic Judaism, which considers the Oral law, the legal decisions codified in the Talmud and subsequent works to be authoritative interpretations of the Torah. There are other groups following the Karaite Judaism, besides Crimean Karaim. However, this term is problematic in another respect as well: a small group of Crimean Karaim have settled in Vilnius (Vilna) and Trakai (Troki), as well as other smaller towns in Lithuania. These Lithuanian Karaim are descendants of the original group of Crimean Karaim, speaking the same language. Today, there are more Crimean Karaim in Lithuania and elsewhere in Europe than in Crimea itself. But we will continue calling them “Crimean Karaim”.
Abraham Firkovich Crimean Karaites hakham famous Karaim writer and archeologist
So who are these mysterious adherents of a distinct form of Judaism but speaking a Turkic language? Whenever you have a group whose religion and language “don’t match”, two possible explanations come to mind: either the group in question kept the religion and switched the language, or vice versa — they kept the language but switched the religion. Both whole-sale massive language shift and religious conversion are not unheard of in the history of different peoples.
In the case of Crimean Karaim, one theory will have them as descendants of Middle Eastern Karaite Jews who settled in Crimea and adopted a form of the Kipchak tongue. (Kipchak is a branch of Turkic languages that includes Kazakh, Karakalpak and Kyrgyz in Central Asia, Tatar in the central Volga region and Balkar in the northern Caucasus region). Another theory is that Crimean Karaim are descendants of the ethnic Kipchak who converted to Karaite Judaism. And there is a third theory which holds them to be descendants of the mythical Khazars, a group that converted to Judaism but most likely spoke a Turkic language (whether it was a Kipchak language or a language from a different branch of the Turkic family, we cannot quite say). There are however some scholars who believe that the Khazar state was polyethnic, with a population of not only Turkic-speakers, but also of speakers of Iranian, Finno-Ugric, Slavic and Caucasian languages. Another reason to doubt the Khazar theory on the origins of Crimean Karaim is that Khazars are most widely believed to be adherents of Rabbinical (or Talmudic) Judaism rather than Karaite Judaism.
Kevin Alan Brook, the author of The Jews of Khazaria concluded based on genetic testing that Crimean Karaim are indeed of Middle Eastern origin and hence related to other Jews. But Crimean Karaim themselves are divided as to whether they identify themselves as Jewish first and Turkic-speaking second or vice versa. In fact, some modern Crimean Karaim seek to distance themselves from being identified as Jews, emphasizing what they view as their Turkic heritage and claiming that they are Turkic practitioners of a “Mosaic religion” separate and distinct from Judaism. On the other hand, many scholars state that the phenomenon of claiming a distinct identity apart from the Jewish people appears to be a recent phenomenon, mostly in response to anti-Semitic threats.
However, nineteenth-century leaders of Crimean Karaim who identify as “a Turkic people of a Mosaic religion” pushed to be recongized as non-Jews. And indeed, the Russian Tsarist government officially recognized the Karaims as being of Turkic, not Jewish, origin. This legal status saved Crimean Karaim from being persecuted by the Nazis. The Reich Agency for the Investigation of Families determined that from the standpoint of German law, the Karaites were not to be considered Jews. Despite the reservations many Nazis had about Crimean Karaim, the official ruling on the matter stated:
The Karaite sect should not be considered a Jewish religious community within the meaning of paragraph 2, point 2 of the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law. However, it cannot be established that Karaites in their entirety are of blood-related stock, for the racial categorization of an individual cannot be determined without … his personal ancestry and racial biological characteristics
After the Soviets recaptured Crimea from Nazi forces in 1944, the Soviet authorities counted just over 6,000 remaining Karaim. And like so many groups who survived under Nazi occupations, Crimean Karaim found themselves under the shadow of official suspicion. While they were not subject to mass deportation as a group, unlike the Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Armenians and others, the Soviet authorities alleged that Crimean Karaim had collaborated under the Nazi German occupation, and some individual Crimean Karaim were deported.
Whether Crimean Karaim are Jewish or not also determines whether they are eligible to immigrate to Israel and their status there. This problem is further compounded by the fact that among the Karaite Jews, a person’s Jewishness is passed on along the paternal line, whereas in mainstream Judaism whether one is or isn’t a Jew is determined based on his maternal descent. Only the Cohen/Levite status and the belonging to the Ashkenazic/Sephardiс group is passed on through paternal line.
Today, the Crimean Karaim communities are shrinking, with assimilation and emigration greatly reducing their ranks. A few thousand Crimean Karaim remain in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Poland, and other communities exist in Israel, Turkey, the United States and Great Britain.
It will be interesting to see if any additional genetic studies will shed new light on this group’s identity and their past.
Crimean TatarsLithuanian Karaims - Lietuvos Karaimai
"For six hundred years, two Turkish nations - Tatars and Karaims have been living in Lithuania. From linguistic and ethnogenetic point of view they belong to the oldest Turkish tribes - Kipchaks. This ethnonym (Kipchak) for the first time was mentioned in historical chronicles of Central Asia in the 1st millennium BC. Anthropologically ancient Kipchaks were very close to Siberia inhabitants Dinlins, who lived on both sides of the Sajan Mountains - in Tuva and northern part of Gobi.
In 5th cent. BC Kipchaks lived in the West of Mongolia, in 3 rd cent. BC they were conquered by Huns. Since 6 - 8 cent., when the first nomadic Turkish empires were founded, Kipchak's fate is closely connected with the history and migration of the Middle Asia tribes. In Middle Ages Kipchaks started to play an important role in the Eastern Europe. European historians and linguists call them Kumans; Russian scientists call them Polovtsy. In Turkish literature they are known as Kipchaks.
Following after Turkish oguzes, who were the biggest Turkish tribe, in 10th cent. Kipchaks crossed the Volga and settled in steppes near the Black Sea and Northern Caucasus. Huge territories occupied by Kipchaks from the West of Tian- Shan to the Danube, in 11-15th cent. were called Dest-e-Kipchak (Kipchak's steppes). They did not have an integral state; khans guided the union of different tribes. Khazar's kaganate, spread over southern territories of contemporary Russia, in 9 th cent.being at its blossom, was famous for its religious tolerance. Karaim missionaries reached the kaganate in 8 - 10 cent. passed their faith to some Turkish tribes (Khazars, Kipchaks-Kumans, and others), living in the southern steppes of Russia and Crimea. Common language and religion united these tribes as a nation for a long time; the name of religion became ethnonym. Contemporary Lithuanian Karaims are the descendants of those tribes.
Karaite flagThe Karaims of Crimea, Galich-Luck area, Lithuania and Poland who have common origin, past, religion, language (with dialects), spiritual and factual culture, make the same nation.
The history of Karaims is connected with Lithuania since 1397-1398. According to the tradition, The Great Duke of Lithuania Vytautas, after one of the marches to the Golden Horde steppes, had to bring from Crimea several hundreds of Karaims and settle them in the Great Duchy of Lithuania. Vytautas could bring Karaims after he had beaten one of the hordes not far from Azov. Transference of several hundreds Karaim families and several thousands of Tatars was not done once. It was connected with the state policy of The Great Duchy - to inhabit the empty areas, to build towns and castles, to develop trade and economic life.
Initially, Karaims were settled in Trakai between two castles of The Great Duke, present Karaim Street. Later they were found living in Birai, Naujamiestis, Pasvalys, Panevoys, however, Trakai has always been the community's administrative and spiritual centre in Lithuania. Karaims themselves began to hold it not only a homeland, but as fatherland, too. Throughout the centuries their ethnic and cultural relations with the Karaims from Crimea and Galich-Luck areas were not interrupted either.
In order to get thorough information about Karaims' social, cultural, ethnic and religious situation, in 1997 The Statistics Department of Lithuania carried out the ethno-statistic research "Karaims in Lithuania". It was decided to question all adult Karaims and mixed families, where one of the members is a Karaim. During the survey, i.e. beginning 1997 there were 257 Karaim nationality people, 32 among them were children under 16." (Lithuanian Karaim Culture Society, 2007)
Lena & Magdalena Are Hebrew Names
Lena's language of origin is Hebrew. It is predominantly used in Armenian, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, and Scandinavian. The name Lena means 'dwelling, lodging'.
Lena has 19 forms that are used in English and foreign languages. English forms of the name include Leena (also used in Indian), Lenah, Lencea, Lencee, Lencey, Lenci, Lencie, Lency, Lene, Lenee, Lenka, Lenna, Linah, and Lyna. Other English forms include the spelling variants Leina, Leyna, and Lina (also used in German, Italian, Russian, African, and Arabic). Forms used in foreign languages include the Dutch Lenie and the Latvian Liene.
Meaning & History of Magdalene
From a title which meant "of Magdala". Mary Magdalene, a character in the New Testament, was named thus because she was from Magdala - a village on the Sea of Galilee whose name meant "tower" in Hebrew. She was cleaned of evil spirits by Jesus and then remained with him during his ministry, witnessing the crucifixion and the resurrection. She was a popular saint in the Middle Ages, and the name became common then. In England it is traditionally rendered Madeline, while Magdalene or Magdalen is the learned form.
VARIANTS: Magdalena (German), Magdalone (Danish), Madeleine, Madeline, Magdalen, Magdalena (English) DIMINUTIVES: Alena, Lena, Lene, Leni, Magda (German), Lene, Lone, Magda, Malene (Danish), Lena (English) OTHER LANGUAGES: Shelena (African American), Maialen (Basque), Magdalena, Magdalina (Bulgarian), Magdalena, Magda, Majda, Manda, Mandica (Croatian), Magdaléna, Magdalena, Alena, Lenka, Magda (Czech), Madelon, Magdalena, Magda (Dutch), Magdalena, Matleena, Leena, Malin (Finnish), Madeleine, Magali, Madeline, Magalie (French), Magdaléna, Magdolna, Duci (Hungarian), Madailéin (Irish), Maddalena, Lena (Italian), Magdalena (Macedonian), Magdalena, Lena, Linn, Magda, Malene, Malin (Norwegian), Magali, Magdalena (Occitan), Magdalena, Lena, Magda (Polish), Madalena, Magda (Portuguese), Mădălina, Magdalena, Magda (Romanian), Magdalena, Manda (Serbian), Magdaléna, Alena, Lenka (Slovak), Magdalena, Alena, Alenka, Majda (Slovene), Magdalena, Malena (Spanish), Madeleine, Magdalena, Lena, Linn, Magda, Malena, Malin (Swedish).
Lenny might come from either of the two names. Were the rivers Lena & Lenne named by ancient Israelites? I would say so. There are several toponyms with the name "Lenne" in Germany. The river Lena is in Yakutia, Russian Federation. There's a Lena river in Asturias, one of the Celtic regions of Spain.
Crimean Karaim — who are they?
When you find a group with a surprising combination of linguistic and religious affiliation, you know an interesting story is coming. One example is the Crimean Karaim. They are a Jewish group speaking a Turkic language.
But first, a note on the terminology. The term “Karaim” or “Karaites” refers to adherents of a branch of Judaism, which recognizes the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible or the Torah) as the sole source of legal authority. In this respect, Karaite Judaism is distinct from the more widely spread Rabbinic Judaism, which considers the Oral law, the legal decisions codified in the Talmud and subsequent works to be authoritative interpretations of the Torah. There are other groups following the Karaite Judaism, besides Crimean Karaim. However, this term is problematic in another respect as well: a small group of Crimean Karaim have settled in Vilnius (Vilna) and Trakai (Troki), as well as other smaller towns in Lithuania. These Lithuanian Karaim are descendants of the original group of Crimean Karaim, speaking the same language. Today, there are more Crimean Karaim in Lithuania and elsewhere in Europe than in Crimea itself. But we will continue calling them “Crimean Karaim”.
So who are these mysterious adherents of a distinct form of Judaism but speaking a Turkic language? Whenever you have a group whose religion and language “don’t match”, two possible explanations come to mind: either the group in question kept the religion and switched the language, or vice versa — they kept the language but switched the religion. Both whole-sale massive language shift and religious conversion are not unheard of in the history of different peoples.
In the case of Crimean Karaim, one theory will have them as descendants of Middle Eastern Karaite Jews who settled in Crimea and adopted a form of the Kipchak tongue. (Kipchak is a branch of Turkic languages that includes Kazakh, Karakalpak and Kyrgyz in Central Asia, Tatar in the central Volga region and Balkar in the northern Caucasus region). Another theory is that Crimean Karaim are descendants of the ethnic Kipchak who converted to Karaite Judaism. And there is a third theory which holds them to be descendants of the mythical Khazars, a group that converted to Judaism but most likely spoke a Turkic language (whether it was a Kipchak language or a language from a different branch of the Turkic family, we cannot quite say). There are however some scholars who believe that the Khazar state was polyethnic, with a population of not only Turkic-speakers, but also of speakers of Iranian, Finno-Ugric, Slavic and Caucasian languages. Another reason to doubt the Khazar theory on the origins of Crimean Karaim is that Khazars are most widely believed to be adherents of Rabbinical (or Talmudic) Judaism rather than Karaite Judaism.
Kevin Alan Brook, the author of The Jews of Khazaria concluded based on genetic testing that Crimean Karaim are indeed of Middle Eastern origin and hence related to other Jews. But Crimean Karaim themselves are divided as to whether they identify themselves as Jewish first and Turkic-speaking second or vice versa. In fact, some modern Crimean Karaim seek to distance themselves from being identified as Jews, emphasizing what they view as their Turkic heritage and claiming that they are Turkic practitioners of a “Mosaic religion” separate and distinct from Judaism. On the other hand, many scholars state that the phenomenon of claiming a distinct identity apart from the Jewish people appears to be a recent phenomenon, mostly in response to anti-Semitic threats.
However, nineteenth-century leaders of Crimean Karaim who identify as “a Turkic people of a Mosaic religion” pushed to be recongized as non-Jews. And indeed, the Russian Tsarist government officially recognized the Karaims as being of Turkic, not Jewish, origin. This legal status saved Crimean Karaim from being persecuted by the Nazis. The Reich Agency for the Investigation of Families determined that from the standpoint of German law, the Karaites were not to be considered Jews. Despite the reservations many Nazis had about Crimean Karaim, the official ruling on the matter stated:
The Karaite sect should not be considered a Jewish religious community within the meaning of paragraph 2, point 2 of the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law. However, it cannot be established that Karaites in their entirety are of blood-related stock, for the racial categorization of an individual cannot be determined without … his personal ancestry and racial biological characteristics
After the Soviets recaptured Crimea from Nazi forces in 1944, the Soviet authorities counted just over 6,000 remaining Karaim. And like so many groups who survived under Nazi occupations, Crimean Karaim found themselves under the shadow of official suspicion. While they were not subject to mass deportation as a group, unlike the Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Armenians and others, the Soviet authorities alleged that Crimean Karaim had collaborated under the Nazi German occupation, and some individual Crimean Karaim were deported.
Whether Crimean Karaim are Jewish or not also determines whether they are eligible to immigrate to Israel and their status there. This problem is further compounded by the fact that among the Karaite Jews, a person’s Jewishness is passed on along the paternal line, whereas in mainstream Judaism whether one is or isn’t a Jew is determined based on his maternal descent. Only the Cohen/Levite status and the belonging to the Ashkenazic/Sephardiс group is passed on through paternal line.
Today, the Crimean Karaim communities are shrinking, with assimilation and emigration greatly reducing their ranks. A few thousand Crimean Karaim remain in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Poland, and other communities exist in Israel, Turkey, the United States and Great Britain.
It will be interesting to see if any additional genetic studies will shed new light on this group’s identity and their past.
The non-Muslim minorities of the Crimean Khanate (Greeks, Adygues, Crimean Goths, Armenians, Venetians, Genoese, Crimeans, Karaites & Qirimçaq Jews [or simply Krymchaks] became absorbed into the Tatar Crimean nation & most of them had Israelite roots.
Bashkirs have Kipchak Turkish ancestry, but Ugrian & Iranian too. They mostly follow Sunni Islam.
It's noteworthy that the main Chuvash god is called Tura, a name very similar to Thor, one of the main Viking gods, but also might have derived from the Torah.
Crimean Tatars (Crimean Tatar: Qırımtatarlar or Qırım, Qırımlı, Russian: Крымские татары, Ukrainian: Кримськi татари) are a Turkic ethnic group native to the Crimean Peninsula, which constituted the largest population in the peninsula from the time of its ethnogenesis in the 15th century until 1864, and the relative largest ethnic population until the end of 19th century. They have a great diaspora.
In 1944 Crimean Tatars were targeted for mass deportation under Soviet rule. In the late 1980s they were allowed to return to their motherland, where they constitute a 12% minority today. There remains a large diaspora of Crimean Tatars in Turkey and Uzbekistan.
In the latest Ukrainian census, 248,200 Ukrainian citizens identified themselves as Crimean Tatars with 98% (or about 243,400) of them living in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. An additional 1,800 citizens (or about 0.7% of those that identified themselves as Crimean Tatars) live in the city of Sevastopol, also on the Crimean peninsula, but outside the border of the autonomous republic.
About 150,000 remain in exile in Central Asia, mainly in Uzbekistan. The official number of Crimean Tatars in Turkey is 150,000 with some Crimean Tatar activists estimating a figure as high as 6 million. The activists reached this number by taking one million tatar immigrants to Turkey as a starting point and multiplying this number by the birth rate in the span of the last hundred years. Crimean Tatars in Turkey mostly live in Eskişehir Province, descendants of those who emigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the Dobruja region straddling Romania and Bulgaria, there are more than 27,000 Crimean Tatars: 24,000 on the Romanian side, and 3,000 on the Bulgarian side.
Sub-ethnic groups
The Crimean Tatars are subdivided into three sub-ethnic groups:
the Tats (not to be confused with Tat people, living in the Caucasus region) who used to inhabit the mountainous Crimea before 1944 (about 55%), the Yalıboyu who lived on the southern coast of the peninsula (about 30%), the Noğay (not to be confused with Nogai people, living now in Southern Russia) – former inhabitants of the Crimean steppe (about 15%).
Historians suggest that the inhabitants of the mountainous parts of Crimea lying to the central and southern parts (the Tats), and those of the Southern coast of Crimea (the Yalıboyu) were the direct descendants of the Pontic Greeks, Armenians, Scythians, Ostrogoths (Crimean Goths) and Kipchaks along with the Cumans while the latest inhabitants of the northern steppe represent the descendants of the Nogai Horde of the Black Sea nominally subjects of the Crimean Khan. It is largely assumed that the Tatarization process that mostly took place in the 16th century brought a sense of cultural unity through the blending of the Greeks, Armenians, Italians and Ottoman Turks of the southern coast, Goths of the central mountains, and Turkic-speaking Kipchaks and Cumans of the steppe and forming of the Crimean Tatar ethnic group. However, the Cuman language is considered the direct ancestor of the current language of the Crimean Tatars with possible incorporations of the other languages like Crimean Gothic.
Another theory suggests Crimean Tatars trace their origins to the waves of ancient people Scythians, Greeks, Goths, Italians and Armenians. When the Golden Horde invaded Crimea in the 1230s, they then mixed with populations which had settled in Eastern Europe, including Crimea since the seventh century: Tatars, but also Mongols and other Turkic groups (Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, and Kipchacks), as well as the ancient.
The Crimean Tatars emerged as a nation at the time of the Crimean Khanate, an Ottoman vassal state during the 15th to 18th centuries and one of the great centers of slave trade to the Ottoman Empire. The Turkic-speaking population of the Crimea had mostly adopted Islam already in the 14th century, following the conversion of Ozbeg Khan. By the time of the first Russian invasion of Crimea in 1736, the Khan's archives and libraries were famous throughout the Islamic world, and under Khan Krym-Girei the city of Simferopol was endowed with piped water, sewerage and a theatre where Molière was performed in French, while the port of Gözleve stood comparison with Rotterdam and Bahçesarai, the capital, was described as Europe's cleanest and greenest city.
Flag of the Crimean Tatar peopleUntil the beginning of the 18th century, Crimean Tatars were known for frequent, at some periods almost annual, devastating raids into Ukraine and Russia. For a long time, until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East which was the most important basis of its economy. One of the most important trading ports and slave markets was Kefe. Slaves and freedmen formed approximately 75% of the Crimean population.
Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 2 million people were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate. On the other hand, lands of Crimean Tatars were also being raided by Zaporozhian Cossacks, armed Slavic horsemen, who defended the steppe frontier – Wild Fields – against Tatar slave raids and often attacked and plundered the lands of Ottoman Turks and Crimean Tatars. The Don Cossacks and Kalmyk Mongols also managed to raid Crimean Tatars' land. The last recorded major Crimean raid, before those in the Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) took place during the reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725) However, Cossack raids continued after that time; Ottoman Grand Vizier complained to the Russian consul about raids to Crimea and Özi in 1761. In 1769 one last major Tatar raid, which took place during the Russo-Turkish War, saw the capture of 20,000 slaves.
The Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) resulted in the defeat of the Ottomans by the Russians, and according to the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) signed after the war, Crimea became independent and the Ottomans renounced their political right to protect the Crimean Khanate. After a period of political unrest in Crimea, Russia violated the treaty and annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783. After the annexation, the wealthier Tatars, who had exported wheat, meat, fish and wine to other parts of the Black Sea, began to be expelled and to move to the Ottoman Empire. Further expulsions followed in 1812 for fear of the reliability of the Tatars in the face of Napoleon's advance. Particularly, the Crimean War of 1853–1856, the laws of 1860–63, the Tsarist policy and the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) caused an exodus of the Tatars; 12,000 boarded Allied ships in Sevastopol to escape the destruction of shelling, and were branded traitors by the Russian government.[22] Of total Tatar population 300,000 of the Taurida Governorate about 200,000 Crimean Tatars emigrated.[30] Many Crimean Tatars perished in the process of emigration, including those who drowned while crossing the Black Sea. Today the descendants of these Crimeans form the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.
Ismail Gasprali (1851–1914) was a renowned Crimean Tatar intellectual, influenced by the nationalist movements of the period, whose efforts laid the foundation for the modernization of Muslim culture and the emergence of the Crimean Tatar national identity. The bilingual Crimean Tatar-Russian newspaper Terciman-Perevodchik he published in 1883–1914, functioned as an educational tool through which a national consciousness and modern thinking emerged among the entire Turkic-speaking population of the Russian Empire. His New Method (Usul-i Cedid) schools, numbering 350 across the peninsula, helped create a new Crimean Tatar elite.[citation needed] The educated "Crimean Tatars" during this period refused the appellation of "Tatars" given to them by the Turks (which however in earlier times had also been used natively). They wished to be known simply as "Turks", and their language as "Turkish" (the Crimean Tatar language had indeed been substantially influenced by Ottoman Turkish).
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 this new elite, which included Noman Çelebicihan and Cafer Seydamet proclaimed the first democratic republic in the Islamic world, named the Crimean People's Republic on 26 December 1917. However, this republic was short-lived and asbolished by the Bolshevik uprising in January 1918.
During Stalin's Great Purge, statesmen and intellectuals such as Veli Ibraimov and Bekir Çoban-zade (1893–1937), were imprisoned or executed on various charges.
Soviet policies on the peninsula led to widespread starvation in 1921. More than 100,000 Tatars, Russians, Ukrainians and other inhabitants of the peninsula starved to death, and tens of thousands Tatars fled to Turkey or Romania. Thousands more were deported or slaughtered during the collectivization in 1928–29. The government campaign led to another famine in 1931–33. No other Soviet nationality suffered the decline imposed on the Crimean Tatars; between 1917 and 1933 half the Crimean Tatar population had been killed or deported.
Some modern researchers argue that Crimea's geopolitical position fueled Soviet perceptions of Crimean Tartars as a potential threat. This belief is based in part on an analogy with numerous other cases of deportations of non-Russians from boundary territories, as well as the fact that other non-Russian populations, such as Greeks, Armenians and Bulgarians were also removed from Crimea.
All 240,000 Crimean Tatars were deported en masse, in a form of collective punishment, on 17–18 May 1944 as "special settlers" to Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and other distant parts of the Soviet Union This event is called Sürgün in the Crimean Tatar language; the few who escaped were shot on sight or drowned in scuttled barges, and within months half their number had died of cold, hunger, exhaustion and disease. Many of them were re-located to toil as indentured workers in the Soviet GULAG system.
Although a 1967 Soviet decree removed the charges against Crimean Tatars, the Soviet government did nothing to facilitate their resettlement in Crimea and to make reparations for lost lives and confiscated property. Crimean Tatars, having definite tradition of non-communist political dissent, succeeded in creating a truly independent network of activists, values and political experience. Crimean Tatars, led by Crimean Tatar National Movement Organization, were not allowed to return to Crimea from exile until the beginning of the Perestroika in the mid-1980s.
Today, more than 250,000 Crimean Tatars have returned to their homeland, struggling to re-establish their lives and reclaim their national and cultural rights against many social and economic obstacles. In 1991, the Crimean Tatar leadership founded the Qurultay, or Parliament, to act as a representative body for the Crimean Tatars which could address grievances to the Ukrainian central government, the Crimean government, and international bodies. Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People is the executive body of the Qurultay.
Since the 1990s, the political leader of the Crimean Tatars and the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People is a former Soviet dissident Mustafa Abdülcemil Qırımoğlu.
Following news of Crimea's planned referendum on March 16, 2014, the Tatar population voiced concerns of renewed persecution, as commented by a US official before the visit of a UN human rights team to the peninsula.
On March 18, It was announced that Crimean Tatars will be required to relinquish land that they hold and be given land elsewhere in Crimea. Crimea stated it needed the relinquished land for "Social purposes", since part of this land is occupied by the Crimean Tatars without legal documents of ownership. The situation was caused by the inability of the USSR (and later Ukraine) to give back to the Tatars the land owned before deportation, once they or their descendants returned from Siberia. As a consequence, Crimean Tatars settled in squatters, occupying land that was and is still not legally registered.
Some Crimean Tatars fled to Lviv, Ukraine due to the Crimean crisis.
In April 2014, Crimean Tatars were made an official ethnic group of Ukraine by the Parliament.
On 29 March 2014, an emergency meeting of the Crimean Tatars representative body, the Kurultai, voted in favour of seeking "ethnic and territorial autonomy" for Crimean Tatars using "political and legal" means. The meeting was attended by the Head of the Republic of Tatarstan and the chair of the Russian Council of Muftis. Decisions as to whether the Tatars will accept Russian passports or whether the autonomy sought would be within the Russian or Ukrainian state have been deferred pending further discussion.
Common Origin of Croats, Serbs and Jats
Their relation with Pastuns, Isars...& their ancestry makes some Balkanic Slavians as Israelites. I suggested the Israelite origin of Jats too. No to forget that there's a subethnic group in the Balkans called Kuchi as there's another Kuchi in Afpak area.
Croats as Hrvati, Haravaitii, Arachosians or Sarasvatians, descendants of the ancient inhabitants of the Harauti province & the Haravaiti or Sarasvati River. Their mention on legendary inscriptions of Darius the Great. Croatian flag based on the chessboard, Croatian religion derived from primordial Iranic Sun-worship. Common origin of Croats and Serbs. Their relations with the Sarmatians, Saura Matii or Surya Madas, the Solar Medes. False claims of The Indian Express refuted. Scythian or Saka origin of Jats. Consequent commmon origin of Jats, Croats and Serbs. Genetic proof for the same is presented.
It is unfortunate that Dr. Sahib Singh Verma, Union Labour Minister, was not allowed to attend the recent World Jat Conference in Belgrade ("Sahib Singh wanted to visit Serbia to meet fellow Jats, PM put his foot down and spiked his bonding-in-Belgrade plans", Indian Express, 21/9/2003). Sad indeed, because there actually do exist strong connections between Jats, Serbs and Croats. Several historians view these communities as sharing a common ethnic origin as is evident from a study of the following submissions.
Philology: Croats as Hrvatis
Let us commence our investigation with the Croats. The science of linguistics provides several connections with Iran. Thus, the Croats of Croatia call themselves "Hrvati" and their country "Hrvatska", whence the Croatian domain name on the internet is .hr. The name "Hrvati" is derived from the Avestan province "Harahvaiti" (Greek: "Arachosia"). The scientific philological argument for the identification of the Croats with the Haravatis is given in (Sakac 1955, pp. 33-36; Sakac 1949, 1937)
As Dvornik notes, "P.S.Sakac thinks that he discovered the name 'Croats' in Darius' inscriptions from the sixth century B.C. There an old Persian province and people are mentioned, called Harahvaitai, Harahvatis, Horohoati..." Further, the Roman leader Ammanius Marcellinus mentioned that two cities arose in ancient Persia called Habroatis and Chroates. In this regard, Prof. Mandic writes, "The Croats of the Don, then had to come in ancient times from Iran. On a stone inscription of the King Darius (522-486 B.C.) the nation of the Haruavat-is appears among the 23 subject nations. The Persian sacred books of the Avesti (Vendidad) call that nation the Harahvaiti. The provinces settled by that nation encompassed in those times the southern half of modern south Afghanistan, the whole of Baluchistan and the eastern part of modern Iran. In that ancient province ought we to look for the paleo-fatherland of the modern Croats."
Furthermore, the name of the Croatian capital, Zagreb, is related to the Zagros mountain range of Iran. The Dinara mountains in Dalmatia and the Dinar currency may be connected to Mount Dinar (Dene) of Iran. The name Serbia is similar to the Seropi or Surappi River in Elam. Moreover, certain authorities note that the name of the Carpathian mountains is derived from Croatia: "Here the Iranian Croats mingled with the numerous local Slavic tribes and adopted the Slavic language from them. Meanwhile after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire the Croats organized the local Slavs into a state and gave them their national name. Before the invasion of the Avars ca. 560 the White or Western Croats created along with the Antes a great state extending north of the Carpathians from the upper Elbe to the upper Dniester. R. Heinzel is of the opinion that the Carpathians of the old Germanic Hervarsaga took their name from the Croats who called them the Harvate mountains i.e. Croatian mountains.
Indeed, philologists trace the migration of the Croats from Harahvati (Arachosia, Sarasvati) in the following manner using fossil place-names along the path of migration:
Harahvaiti and Harauvati in Iran and Afghanistan. Hurravat and Hurrvuhe in Armenia and Georgia. Horoouathos in Azova and the Black Sea.
Present day Croats Horvati and Hrvati along the Adriatic
It is important to note that the Avesta - the sacred scriptures of the ancient Aryan Zoroastrians - mentions the lands settled by the Iranic peoples. Hapta-Hindawa (ie. the Punjab, "Sapta-Sindhu" in Prakrit) is mentioned in the Avesta amongst the Irano-Aryan lands. Even today, the Punjab is the primary home of the Jats. Since the Croats are named after the Harahvaiti or Sarasvati River, and the Jats are the present-day inhabitants of the lost Harahvaiti, it would appear that Jats and Croats would be very closely related indeed.
Vexillology
Further compelling evidence comes from vexillology (the scientific study of flags). Thus, the Croatian flag is based on the chessboard, whence many Croatian historians consider Croats as eponymic descendants of the Sassanid chess master & minister Bozorgmehr, just as the Kambojas are eponymic descendants of Cambyses and Georgians are viewed as the eponymic descendants of King George II. In this regard, Prof. Mandic notes,
"Ancient Croatian folk art bears eastern and Iranian traces, particularly the Croatian "troplets". The Croats also brought over from Iran their national coat of arms with its 64 red and white checkers. "The organization of the state among the southern Croats with the king, bans and zupans at its head similar to that of the northern Croats; in addition the religion, national customs, dress and arts of the southern Croats bear Iranian traces, just like the Croats in the north. "
Indeed, a total of 120 Croat and non-Croat university professors and several academics have published 249 research works elaborating the Old Iranic origin of Croats.
Folklore
A researcher notes similarities in folklore as well, "There are old Croatian customs and national poems that have been cited as evidencing lingering traces of the fire and sun worship of the Iranians. Fire, the essence of human origin, the sun, and the great boiling cauldron around which the warriors spring in the age old kolo or circle dance, all these are ingredients in the national lore of the Croatian nation. The Croat vilas or fairy witches resemble the peris of Iranian mythology. Then there is the legendary Sviato zov, the personification of strength, a being almost too huge for the earth to bear. He is strongly reminiscent of the "elephant-bodied" Rustum of Persian legend."
Research studies on Croatian clothing reveals similarities with Sassanian and other Iranic styles both in terms of male and female clothing.
White Croatia, Red Croatia, Green Croatia
The Iranic origin of Croats is in fact the only way one can comprehend the traditional distinction existing between White Croatia, Red Croatia and Green Croatia: "After the Iranian fashion the ancient Croats ascribed a specific colour to each of the four cardinal points of the compass in the territory which they inhabited. The colour white designated the west, red the south, green the east, and black the north.Hence White or West Croatia, Red or South Croatia and Green or East Croatia"
"It should be noted that only the thesis of the Iranian origin of the Croats can explain the name "Horvath", the title of a Croat dignitary Banus, the names "White" and "Red Croatian", and the Bogumile phenomenon. According to this theory, the Croats were a branch of the Caucasian Iranians, who lived somewhere in the western Caucasus during the era of the Roman Emperors. The Caucasian Anten were another branch of this group."
Let us conclude this section on Croats with the words of the learned Prof. Mandic: "The oldest historical evidence, the ancient Croatian social organization, religion, national customs and art indicate that the Croats are of Iranian origin."
Sarmatians, Sauro Matii, Surya Madras or Solar Medes
Now, the exact path of migration of the Croats from Iran to the Balkans is still disputed. Some hold that they migrated via Anatolia, others that they migrated via Central Asia and the Pontic region. Some of the latter historians link the Sarmatians with the Croats and Jats. Thus, Dvornik traces both Serbs and Croats back to the Sarmatians of Southern Russia (Dvornik 1956). The Sarmatians were generally identified as Scythians. Thus, Sulimirski, author of "The Sarmatians" also makes mention of the referral of the Emperor's to the Belochrobati or White Croats who "exhibited certain Sarmatian characteristics ... [they were] of Iranian origin". Their interest to history stems from the fact that their matriarchial Scythian society probably formed the basis of the Greek legends of the Amazons. In this connection, it is interesting to note numerous reference to the fighting ability, combat skills, bravery and great freedom of Jat women - the Jat amazons.
The name Sarmatian is an Anglicization of the original Sauro Matii, the Latin form of the Prakrit Surya Madra or Surya Mada. The name means "Solar Medes", in English, another testimony to the worship of Surya, or Cyrus, the Asshur of Assyria, the Ahura Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the splendid Sun-god of the Iranic peoples. In this regard, Mandic notes, "Indeed from the end of the I to III century A.D. in the city-state of Tanais, in the region of the Don, lived various Iranian tribes of Samatians as well as Croats who must have been Iranians.
Concerning the Iranian tribes in present-day southeastern Russia around the Don and the Iranian origin of the Croats. Furthermore the national name "Croat" is of Iranian origin. According to the Russian Vselod Miller the name "Croat" comes from the Iranian word Hor-va (t)u meaning: the sun's bed or path. M. Vasmer derives the Croatian name from Hu-urvata meaning, "friend". And the terms used to designate the high officials among the Croats, "kral, ban, zupan", are of Iranian origin.
Slovaks & Jats
Prof. Mandic notes, "The great resemblance between the Croatian and Slovak languages tell us that the Croats for the most part moved south from northern Slovakia. For they are far nearer to each other in affinity than to any other Slavic language." Thus, the Slovaks would also share the same Saka origins as the Croats and Jats.
Bosnia
Regarding the roots of Bosnians, Dodan notes that Bosnia is historically a Croatian land, that Bosnia belonged to Croatia in the early mediaeval times, that the majority of Bosnian population used to be and are still Croats, and that mediaeval Bosnian kings were ethnic Croats. Even their surnames end in "-an". Dodan quotes Draganovic's and Mandic's research according to which 95 % of Muslims and 30% of Serbs are actually Croats. He also elucidates the Iranian roots of the Croatian people.
Serbs
Now, we turn to the connection with the Serbs. Several historians maintain that the Serbian ruling caste shared the same origin as the Croats. Prof. Malcolm recently wrote a book "Bosnia"o, in which he clearly elucidates the Iranic origin of both Serbs and Croats. For instance, Prof. Salzman notes while reviewing Malcolm's first chapter: "The Croats and Serbs (who were either Slavic tribes with Iranian ruling castes or Iranian tribes with Slavic subjects) arrived in the Balkans in the 620s, a land already occupied by the Slavs."
The view of Prof. Malcolm is thus that the Croats and Serbs were originally Iranic speakers who adopted a Slavic language. Examples of a conquering immigrant group adopting the language of its surrounding subjects abound in history. For example, the Scandinavian Normans adopted the Romance French language in Normandy, while their ruling kinsmen in England adopted Anglo-Saxon; the Germanic Franks, Merovingians and Carolingians adopted the Romance French language; the Nordic Visigoths adopted the Romance Spanish language; the Germanic Lombards adopted the Romance Italian language, and the Tungus Manchu adopted the Chinese language of their subjects. Likewise, the Jats were originally speakers of Scythian or East Iranic languages, who subsequently adopted an Indo-Aryan language. Hence, that the Iranic Croats and Serbs should adopt a Slavic language would not be unusual in any way
The Croats were also commonly named by the medieval chroniclers as "Goths": "The old Croatian chronicle 'The Kingdom of the Croats' and the 'Chronicle of Pop Dukljanin', based on Croatian national tradition and on the ancient records, states that the Croats whom they misnamed the Goths arrived for the north through Pannonia and Templana (6) in Dalmatia, which they conquered and settled. (7)"
This is important because the ethnonym "Jat" is widely considered a variant of "Goth" and its Greco-Latin variant "Getae". "Professor Vernadsky was the first, in modern times, to suggest that the Slavs had direct Iranian antecedents. The derivation of both names from religious designations, as suggested above, may be considered as additional evidence, especially as most of the Slavic gods bear purely Iranian, or Indian, names. One of the Slavic groups, the Poles, called themselves Sarmatians; this name was recorded very early in Western Medieval chronicles, which lends credence to the traditions recorded in Polish chronicles edited at the waning of the Middle Ages, according to which they were in touch with the Iranians. In Antiquity the Sarmatians, as is well known, were the Alans. The meaning of the name "Sarmata" in Iranian is the "council." It refers not to the nationality or language, but to the social organization of the Alans, ruled by a supreme council, appointing the king. The role of the council in early Slavic history is well known, especially among the Western Slavs. Thus the social, or political, organization of the Iranian Alans and Polish Slavs offers evidence of their affiliation."
Bulgarians
It may also be stated that several scholars have noticed Iranic elements amongst the Proto-Bulgarians.
Anthropology
The Iranic or Irano-Aryan race as a whole is dolichocephalic (long-headed), leptorrhine (having long, narrow noses), tall, robust, dark-haired, large-boned and fair-skinned with straight hair. These features are found amongst the Jats, Pathans, Persians, Rajputs and Kurds. Due to the common features of Iranic skeletons with Nordics, some authorities consider the Nordics and Iranics as belonging to a common Nordic-Iranian macro-race. It is a further strong support for the Iranic origin of Croats that the Croats, and indeed, West Slavs in general, display strong Iranic racial features.
Thus, the majority of Croatians today tend to be tall statured, with narrow facial features. Many historians consider these western Slavic features to be a trait passed on from the Iranic tribes mentioned above. The Alans in particular are thought to have had considerable impact on the Croatian racial "type". Now, there are three sub-types of Croats proper: Dinaric (Iranoid race), Mediterranean (Latinoid race) and Panonian (Slavoid race) The Dinaric type to which many Croats belong is often viewed as an Iranic sub-type: "In the central mountainous regions settled by the Croats upon their arrival on the Adriatic the Dinaric type of Croat developed. This type is quite remote from the general Slavic type. The Dinaric Croats are tall in stature (ca. 1.8 metres), long-headed but with a skull of short circumference (cephalic index of 80-85)."
The main feature of the Dinaric sub-type of Iranics is that the head is long when viewed from front, but the circumference is short, giving the illusion of brachcephaly when viewed from the top. It is common amongst Armenians as well, and is often viewed as a breeding isolate of the Iranoid race.
Refuting the view that the Croatians were of Illyrian or Roman stock, Mandic notes, ".... Nevertheless one has to say that the contribution of the local Romanized remnants [Illyrian] of the prehistoric Dinaric folk, hardly amounted to more than 20% to 30% in forming the Dinaric Croat." These Mediterranean Croats are "intermediary in stature, a little smaller than the Dinaric type. They have quite oval skulls, dark hair and eyes and an olive complexion."
The Panonian Croats, however, are largely descendants of the Slavic populations. The Slavoid race in general (to be distinguished from the speakers of Slavic languages) is short-statured, brachycephalic (round-headed), with blond hair. Thus, "When the Croats conquered Lower Pannonia and Savia they at one began to assimilate with the Kaikavian Slavs of those areas. Out of that came the third type of Croat, the Pannonian, of intermediate stature, blond hair, ruddy complexion and of a rather sizeable cephalic index. .... [A] conspicuous type of Pannonian Croat was preserved up until this day. They of all the Croats are the closest to the general Slavic type in their physical and psychological make-up. (88)"
Thus, the round-headed blond Panonian Croats are not members of the Iranoid race, but instead are of the round-headed Slavoid race. They are, however, outnumbered by the Iranic or Dinaric Croats, who form the dominant element of Croatia.
Genetics
A scholarly Croatian society called ZDPPH recently held a conference on the Iranic origin of Croats, where genetic evidence was presented. According to the society's president Nedjeljko Kujundzic, "Swedish geneticists have confirmed, in 75 percent of cases, that Croats are of Iranian origin." Two days after the news conference, the book "Indo-Iranian Origin of Croats" by Mate Marcinko was released in which much additional proof was presented.
Croatian elements among Serbs
Furthermore, even if the Serbs represent primarily the descendants of round-headed Slavs, there has been much Croat infusion into the Serb genetic stock. Thus, Mandic estimates that one-third of Serbs are ethnically Croat: "Our investigations have led us to believe that of the Serbs presently in Bosnia and Herzegovina 32 to 35% are descended from Orthodox Croats, 50 to 52% are from non-Slavic Wallachs, 6 to 7% are from Serbianized Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians and Albanians and 8 to 10% from genuine ethnic Serbs who came there mainly during Austro-Hungarian rule and during the time of the two Yugoslavias.
Jats
Where do the Jats come into this? Now, the Jats are generally held to be of Scythian descent. The Jat-Sikhs are also of Saka descent, for indeed the very name "Sikh" is derived from "Saka". Noted historian Satya Shrava notes, "The Jats are none other than the Massagetae (Great Getae) mentioned in Diodorus as an off-spring of the ancient Saka tribe.... a fact now well-known". Eminent scholars like Tod, Toynbee, Trevaskis, Keene, Kephart, Dhillon, Dahiya, Prakash and Bingley directly or indirectly connected Jat, Goths and Scythians. Thus, the famed Anglo-American historian Toynbee notes: "It may not be fantastic to conjecture that the Teutonic-speaking Goths and Gauts of Scandinavia may have been descended from a fragment of the same Indo-European-speaking tribe as the homonymous Getae and Thyssagetae and Massagetae of the Eurasian Steppe who are represented today by the Jats of the Panjab."
Whatever the details of the original home of the Iranoid race itself, all scholars agree that the Jats, Serbs and Croats predominantly belong to the same ethnic stock.
It is thus clear, Belgrade was indeed an appropriate choice for the location of the World Jat Congress. This article amply shows that close kinsmen of the Jats abound all across the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Now, given the tragic recent history of the Serb-Croat divide during the break-up of Yugoslavia, it might be more advisable to first establish Jatism in Croatia, for it is in Croatia that the Iranic connection has recently become official history. Sadly, Serbian historians are still split between the Slavic and Iranic theories. Once the first base has been established in Croatia, one may look beyond to the surrounding regions to develop further Jat connections in the Balkans.
Identity of Croatians in Ancient Iran
To date, 120 Croat and non-Croat university professors and several academics have compiled 249 research works of which many have been printed in various publications and thereby have proven that Croats are of Iranian origin.
There are many real evidences about the identity of ancient Croats which all dismiss the theory that Croats are of Slav origin. Although research works on the Iranian origin of the Croats could not be publicized due to the censorship that was widely practiced at the time of the former regime in Yugoslavia, however, the available documented evidences reveal that the initiator of the effort on research about the Iranian origin of the Croats lived two centuries ago.
In his thesis in 1797, the researcher made a study on the Iranian origin of the Croats and reached the conclusion that the present day Croats migrated from the western part of ancient Iran.
Following the formation of Yugoslavia in 1918, the bigot Slavs known as the "wolves" collected the original copies of the research work and destroyed them in an attempt to conceal the truth about the Iranian origin of the Croats. To date, only some part of the research work that has been quoted in a report prepared by the academy of sciences of former Yugoslavia in 1938 is available.
One of the articles has quoted some police reports that the then government in former Yugoslavia mounted pressures on Iranologists within the period 1918 to 1990. The article further proves that upon official instructions by the then government, Croats had to be considered as the middle ages Slavs. For this same reason, all the research works conducted over the origin of the Croats were considered as criminal acts and thus prohibited for a period of 70 years. All the research papers compiled by Iranologists were confiscated as documents against state interests and the researchers were imprisoned or sent to detention camps. Even four researchers were killed by the Yugoslav secret police for making investigations over the issue.
However, there are other research works proving that 75 percent of the Croats are different in origin from the Slavs and more similar to Kurds and Armenians from genetic point of view. On the other hand, studies show that there are less similarities between domestic livestock, poultry and plants in the old time Croatia with those in Europe, lending further proof to the fact that Croats had most probably migrated from a region close to Asia to their present area.
Former Croat homeland and their migration
A manuscript dating back to 1370 B.C. has named the present day Croats and their language as Hurrvuhe (resembling Hrvati).
In the era of the Achaemenid, especially at the time of Cyrus II and Darius I, the name of the eastern Iranian province Harauvatya and the Croats of the ancient Iran Harauvatis and Harahvaiti have been mentioned for 12 times. In addition, two unearthed manuscripts belonging to the Croats living in the second and third centuries B.C. in ancient Iran have referred to the inhabitants of Horooouathos and Horoathoi. In the year 418, the Aryans were dubbed as Horites and Zachariasrhetor, in 559 the Aryan horse riders were referred to as Hrwts who lived in the vicinity of Krima and Azova and in the 7th century Croats were called as Slavs.
Other articles offered to the symposium discussed formation of the empire at the time of Cyrus the Great, history of the Croats in ancient Iran and Croat's development from the time of ancient Indians to the time of their migration in the middle ages from the Caucasus through ancient Persian to the present Adriatic and emergence of the first traces of Croats which could be classified as follow:
Harahvaiti and Harauvati in Iran and Afghanistan
Hurravat and Hurrvuhe in Armenia and Georgia
Horoouathos in Azova and the Black Sea
Present day Croats Horvati and Hrvati along the Adriatic
First contacts between old-time Slavs and Croats of ancient Iran
Research works have been conducted on the relationship between the language spoken by the Croats and the language the present-day Slavs speak with an aim to identify the possible similarities. However, the studies do not dismiss the possibility that the old-time Croats were part of the ancient Iran at the time of the Persian Empire who later migrated to Europe and their language was changed into the Slav.
Meanwhile, studies on the Croats indicate that the old-time Slavs did not share the same race with the East European nations and that with the migration of the Croats with the Iranian origin, they established common cultural and lingual ties with each other.
Ties with the old-time Slavs in the 4th century was first established in the Red Croatia under the title Sarmatskim-Horitima and also after the 6th century in the realm of the Carpathians within the boundaries of the Great, or White, Croatia under the patronage of the Iranian Croats who had been turned Slavs due to the largeness of the population of the Slavs.
Iranology and old-tine language of Croats
Studies show that there had been various stages in which the Croats had been pressured for accepting the language of the Slavs and annexation to former Yugoslavia. The idea was realized by the Serb nationalist Karadzic whose slogan was "Serbs everywhere". He invited all bigot Slavist Serbs to the Vienna Congress in the middle of the 19th century for a political and lingual consensus and for adopting policies for the future of former Yugoslavia. In the aftermath of the agreements reached in the gathering and from 1890 the pro-Karadzic Slavists launched their activities for the elimination of all signs of cultural and lingual differences between the Serbs and the Croats. To this end, they changed the past history of the Croats and eliminated all the terms with Indo-Iranian roots that did not exist in the Serbian language. Such a trend continued until 1918 when Yugoslavia was formed.
The process for the change of the spoken language of the Croats of ancient Iran to the language of Slavs that was started in the 7th century continued up to the 20th century and was forcefully followed by former Yugoslavia.
Mazdaism, ancient myths and religion of Croats
In addition to similarities in language, common cultural points can be pointed out as well. For example, reference can be made to the symbols belonging to the old-time Christians that resembled symbols of Mazdaism in the ancient Iran.
A study in this connection has drawn a parallel between the language used in Bosnia and littoral states and islands of the Adriatic Sea in two separate sections. The study further elaborates how followers of Mazda in ancient Iran converted to Christianity in Europe and how Mazdaism was spread in Europe by the migration of the inhabitants of the above-mentioned areas.
Other research works have studied the influence of traditions in ancient Iran on the symbols of the roots of old Christianity from the ancient time to the middle ages.
Identity of old-time Croat tribes
Research works conducted in the past decade discuss the similarities between names and families used in the ancient-time Iran and the names and families in present Croatia. Some of these studies have pointed to the roots of alphabetic letters in the Croat language and stressed that contrary to the claims of the Slavs the roots of those letters are totally oriental and widely used at ancient times. Many manuscripts written with those letters date back to before 9th century.
Research studies on the style of dressing of the Croats show that they were dressed up as the Sassanid and most of the local costumes of women were exactly similar to those worn by women at the time of the ancient Iranian empire.
Studies on other features of the Croats such as navigation reject the Slav presumption that the Croats had not have navigated before but that they had rather learnt the art from the Italians. According to the studies, there are evidences available that the Croats were acquainted with sailing even before the Slavs and that the time for their navigation in the Adriatic goes back to the 6th and 7th centuries. It should be noted that local Croat navigators were known as "Indo-Iranian" and "Slavs" in the Adriatic.
The Redheads of Judah & other Judahites
Red Haired (& blond) Udmurts, but also Maris, Komis, Uyghurs, Berbers...
Cicily, Scilly (the Cornish archipelago), Sicily, Sheilah, Celia... are names derived from Shelah, one of the surviving sons of Judah, together with Zara & Phares. Er was Shelah's son.
Part of Judah is found in Ireland (called Erie after Er, or for others after Eri, son of Gad) & Scotland.
It has been claimed that the Udmurt People are the most red haired in the world, even more than the Irish.
I don't know why people always associate red-headedness with Ireland. Scotland has the highest percentage of red heads.
This is an endless source of frustration to me, as a part Ulsterman.
There have always been far more Irish people worldwide and more spread out than Scottish people though so red heads people encountered tended to be Irish.
The Scots and Irish are very closely related. Irish settlers displaced the native Picts in Scotland over a thousand years ago.
The Udmurt people are not of an athletic build but they are very hardy.
Komi are often red-headed too, which is the large orange area to the north.
After traveling around both Scotland and Ireland, they both have a lot of redheads. What I found surprising was how many redheads the Rhineland has.
It looks like it's focused on the Russian region of Tatarstan, which is populated not by ethnic Russians, but by the Turkic Tatar people.
Finno-Ugric peoples like Mari and Mordvins who have the red hair.
It's not impossible for Turkic peoples to have light hair (the Kirgiz are mentioned as having red hair and green eyes in ancient Chinese texts), but you're probably right, given the splotch of red hair to the north.
My ex brother-in-law is a Kalmyk from Kyrgyzstan. Always blew my mind seeing him: an absolutely asiatic face, high cheekbones, Asian eyefolds, and bright red hair and white skin.
Much of Central Asia is of fairly fair complexion. My mother is from Northern India and has Hazel eyes, and I have a few cousins with green eyes. The Turkish side of my family is filled with blue/green eyes and blonde/light brown hair.
The Mongolian Ghengis Khan is reputed to have had red hair.enlacepadre Sounds implausible, but it's still possible, if he had some ancestors from one of the numerous Indo-European and Uralic groups which surrounded Mongolia.
The Vikings invaded Scotland and Ireland and founded slave trading cities like Dublin. They also traded through eastern Europe down to Istanbul and some settled there. They were the called the Rus from which word comes our word for Russia. Are those high numbers on or near rivers? If so it's probably Scandinavians eg the Vikings of the volga.
It has been stated higher up in this thread that the cause of the red dot in central Russia is probably because of the Udmurt people.
Udmurts with their flagIt would seem quite unlikely that your claim about Vikings is true. Why would their heritage of red hair end up as a dot in Russia, rather than follow the rivers? Also, if your claim were true, other coastal areas in Russia, Ukraine and around the Black sea should also have coloured differently.
If your theory is right, though, and a lot of Vikings settled in Udmurtia, that would be very fascinating. Got any sources on this?
But why are the Udmurt people randomly very red-headed?
Red hair: "Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads; 13 percent (13%) of the population has red hair and approximately 40 percent (40%) carries the recessive redhead gene. Ireland has the second highest percentage; as many as 10 percent (10%) of the Irish population has red, auburn, or strawberry blond hair." Welsh are next with about 8%.
What's with the little spot in Poland? It coincides with Pomerania, maybe a local ethnicity?
I would've thought Turkey would be at least one notch higher. I know a few red-haired Turks.
Udmurtian woman
I saw a whole bunch of red heads in the hills while traveling from Cas to Kusadasi (Turkey). The women there were stunningly beautiful.
Interesting that the brown patch in eastern England are almost the same area as the Danelaw.
I had a red-headed Southern Italian grandmother. And having been to Puglia and Sicily a few times I would have expected a higher concentration in the Mezzogiorno.
Udmurtians Sicily was under Norman control for over a hundred years.
How much over 10% is the Western fringes of the British Isles? Anyone know?
Still not much over 10%.
Rus means "red haired" in a lot of Slavic languages. South Slavic also. There was a tribe of Roxolans ( Rus-Alans, bright Alans ) in the same area before the appearance of the Rus state. The Rurikid dynasty has been attested to belong to the haplogroup N1, which is common among finnic peoples.
Rus ("Rusy") hair means light-brown hair in Slavic languages. Red (in the context of hair) is ryzhyi/rudyi/rydzhy (rus/ukr/pol), which may or may not have the same roots as germanic "red".
The most accepted theory is Rus comes from Ruotsi (finnish for men who row)
I mean russian legends reference the Varangians and Oleg and Rurik and them, and we know of Norse travels down the various rivers.
"Roux" means red haired in french. "roux" and "rus" have probably a common origin.enlacepadre
I wonder if the higher density in western Norway is because the vikings took trells in Scotland and Ireland?
I've seen far more red hair during my year in Amsterdam than I have during my lifetime in Ireland. Still, statistics are statistics.
As a redhead I find this fascinating. The weird thing is that most of my ancestors came from Bavaria, very low redhead rate. I'm a bit Irish, but not much. I was told that there are many gingers in northern italy and it is not uncommon. Unless i was adopted and my family lied to me.
Vikings aren't Celts. Actually some of them were partially/mostly. Scenario: viking raids Ireland, captures and takes woman back home to Norway, has more viking kids. His sons do the same thing. Outcome: after two generations you have some vikings with 75% Celtic ancestry. This is especially true of those that ended up in the island colonies (Iceland, Greenland, Faroes, etc...) because they couldn't blend back in with the pure-blood scandinavian population.
Good call not including Israel in this, there are a hell of a lot of redhead Israelis (they're called "gingies" in Hebrew). For some reason it seems like a Jewish thing. I have a lot of red-heads in my family (I believe from Hungary where there doesn't seem to be a high proportion).
The correlation is not 1-1, but I think it's interresting how similar these maps are:Viking areas of conquest.
I guess the old stereotype of celtic regions having red hair holds true.
I like the little patch on the coast of Norway. Guess the Vikings had a good time in northern England.
Russia means "land of the Rus" and Rus means Red and the Rus people were named that way because of their hair.
According to the most prominent theory, the name Rus, like the Finnish name for Sweden (Ruotsi), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen (the Rowing crews) or Roden, as it was known in earlier times.
It makes sense because the Vikings did "row" down the Volga into Central Asia where they established trading posts and were known as the "Rus".
There are quite a few redheads among the Berbers, sometimes among Uyghurs... It's the same in the case of blondes. The Berber origin of redheads is clearly derived from Israelite Vandals that had a kingdom in the area & from Jews that mingled with Berbers & Israelites that in Solomon's time colonized the area. I already said in another article that Uyghurs had a good amount of Israelite blood.
Udmurtian peopleIt seems even in the Uralic heartland, most people aren't nearly close to being completely Mongoloid (though there are other groups that are more so than these which I may make threads on eventually). The thing is, in the older black and white pictures you seem to get more authentic types while the newer ones look more like just Russians or something. Hard to find many older ones. The old ladies in the folk costumes also have a slightly different, more Uralid look than some of the group pics with the younger people and all those redheads. Maybe some of these people were Slavs or something moved in later as populations were moved around during the Soviet era.
I've decided to also include the related Komi or Komi-Permyak people here as well rather than making a separate thread. There are some redheaded Maris too.
Red hair automatically = Scottish.
It's funny how people think red hair is confined to British isles.
This is a proof not all redheads are Celtic/Germanic. Notice how their cheekbones are really strong and broad similar to how mine are.
Well Udmurts should be most red haired nation in the world not Irish.
Red hair among Irish is overstated while most people don't know about the Udmurts.
Anyway, I've always been interested in these peoples, a few could pass in Scandinavia but most look more "exotic."
So many redheads. This is proof not all redheads are celtic/germanic. Notice how their cheekbones are really strong and broad similar to how mine are.
Udmurts should be the most red haired nation in the world not Irish. Red hair among Irish is overstated while most people don't know about the Udmurts.
Anyway, I've always been interested in these peoples, a few could pass in Scandinavia but most look more "exotic."
Udmurt little girl
There seems to be multiple theories about how Uralics originated... some think it's just a parallel development of a local Europid type to others, with cold adapted features, or that the original people of Europe, at least that part, were more like that anyway, closer to Eurasian phenotypically. Others seem to think it was simply the result of an ancient blending of Caucasoid and Mongoloid (specifically mostly West Sibirid types) populations in the area (which has since mixed with others), as sort of a transition between the two. Not all people speaking these widely distributed sets of languages are that similar even, especially to a trained eye, and as you move from east to west the types gradually change, the most different being Nenets, Enets, and Nganasans, if you count Samoyedic groups as part of the greater Uralic spectrum. Lapps don't even seem to be that close to these Mari people from what I read, for example. I don't really know.
It does have a different look or vibe than actual Turanids proper, who seem to be a more recent mixture of old Caucasoid types in Central Asia, e.g. Iranic speakers (which had Mediterranean types), with later Turkic (mostly Tungid) peoples from further to the east, much of it possibly occurring during the historical era rather than prehistoric as with the case of Uralics.
Mari El is not the only place where Mari people live, in fact only some 50% of the nation lives there. Large populations of Mari can also be found in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
An article stated that Mari, Udmurts and suprisingly also Mansi have some gene that's most typical for Basque people.
This woman has a very pan-baltid look. She can pass anywhere from Yoshkar-Ola to Hamburg
As seen above the peoples with highest amount of redhaired are the Irish, Scotts & the Udmurts. This is considered to be an Israelite trait, especially common in the tribe of Judah. This is the tribal identity of many Scotchmen, Irishmen, Ulstermen (anciently called Scotch-Irish), Welshmen... Because of this I would attribute a Judahite (perhaps mingled with Simeonite) origin.
Jews have been regarded as redheaded in the past, as seen in different texts an paintings, like paintings of Judah the apostle, Mary Magdalene, king David, different rabbis...
King David
Among the Germans is not common to be a redheaded, except among the those of Jewish origins.
Robert the Bruce
Robert the Bruce, was a brave king of Scotland & according to the genealogical web www.scotlandroyalty.org was a Judahite. If Henry the VIII was excomunicated in the 1500s, Robert the Bruce & the whole Scottish nation were excomunicated before, with the whole Scottish nation in the 1300s.
Among Pashtuns & Tajiks we can find some redheads. The neighboring Kashmiris are with the Kalash, Dardic speakers, so they could descend from Darda, the mentioned grandson of Judah.´
Calcol, another descendent of Judah, may have given name to ancient Colchis, in the Caucasus, so the Sakartvelans (Georgians of the Caucasus) may also come from Judah, together with Issakar.
Judah with Simeon & perhaps Ephraim is present in Dixieland (ex Confederate States of America), Wales (with Simeon & Levi, although the lion of the Welsh flaag might indicate Dan's snake & therefore tribe too), northern Germany (with Gad & pockets of Ephraim & Manassah), in former Jute areas (Denmark & Kent, England) & the European monarchies.
This is why the English royal crest has three lions that represent the Lion of Judah.
Frisians are said to come from Zebulon, but Judah might be present & might have given name the Frisians through Phares.
Eastern European Israelites?
MOLDAVIA, amongst the first to claim independence is the Arsareth region that Israel settled. ARMENIA (the name comes from Aram, son of Shem and it was the Armenians, who later allied with Israel, settled Afghanistan. It is mentioned twice in the Bible. The UKRAINE. Here is where the tombstone inscriptions make clear that Israelites lived and were buried. Here Volodymyr the ruler, accepted Christianity in 988 and Ukraine, of Israelitish origin, also became Christian. He was the third in line of great Varangian rulers, and these Varangians were the Vikings.
We could go on listing the Galatians of RUMANIA, the Celts of AUSTRIA, the Sarmatians of LITHUANIA, descendants of Israel’s Median allies. East of the Caspian, too, are regions where ancient Scythian artifacts have been found.
The East Jordan Tribes Today
They lived in Khazar territory, which included parts of Southern Russia, Eastern Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia -- not far from their scripturally-documented resettlement territories in Armenia! Many of the leading modern authorities on Khazaria -- including Kevin Brook and others -- conclude that evidence for some of the 'lost tribes' among the Khazars is strong, although they hesitate to make more definite statements upon the issue.
Interestingly, these traditions correlate remarkably well with evidence from modern LDS patriarchal blessings - a tremendous resource unavailable to Jewish or Gentile scholars.
The blood of Dan has been recognized in a wider variety of areas, including Ukraine, Russia, Finland, Ireland, Spain, and possibly others.
The remarkable affinity of Armenians and Ukrainians, and to a lesser extent of Russians (particularly in Southern Russia) for the restored gospel has been of interest to many missionaries and mission presidents. This has frequently been cited as anecdotal evidence of the 'blood of Israel.' Armenians have had strong and well- acknowledged traditional and historical associations with the lost tribes of Israel.
While multiple ethnohistoric influences constitute modern Ukrainian ethnicity, a particularly interesting note is made in the Rus'ian Primary Chronicle. Kiev, the 'mother of Rus'ian cities,' was felt by old school historians to have been founded by the Rus. Yet the Rus'ian Primary Chronicle -- a primary source of early Kievan history -- attributes Kiev's (Kyiv's) founding to three brothers -- Kiy, Shchek, and Khoriv -- and describes Kiev as a Khazar tributary conquered by the Varangians (Rus) after the death of the brothers. Furthermore, the Laurentian, Suprasl, and Semeonovskaya editions of the Chronicle associate the three brothers with the Khazar empire (Julius Brutzkus, 'The Khazar Origin of Ancient Kiev,' p. 117, cited in 'The Jews of Khazaria' by Kevin Alan Brook, p. 34-35). Omeljan Pritsak even demonstrated that the Chronicle explicitly states at one point that the three brothers were 'kin' of the Khazars: '...and we [Kievans] are living here and pay tribute to their [Kiy, Shchek, and Khoriv] kin, the Khazars' (Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century, Cornell University Press, p.55, as cited in 'The Jews of Khazaria.') Pritsak also suggested that Kiy, the primary founder of Kiev (Kyiv) can be identified as the Khazar vizier Kuya.
Given the strong Khazar connection, it is possible that Kiev may have been founded by Israelites. The Savior taught the Nephites: 'But now I go unto the Father, and also to show myself unto the lost tribes of Israel, for they are not lost unto the Father, for he knoweth whither he hath taken them' (3 Nephi 17:4). Given the Lord's promise that he would manifest himself unto the lost tribes, the significant evidence for continuity of the East Jordan tribes in this region -- with identification of lineage supported by modern patriarchal blessings-- it is likely that a society of righteous Israelites once existed in the territory of Armenia, Southern Russia, and/or Eastern Ukraine, and that Christ appeared to these people after His resurrection. Prophets among these people undoubtedly recorded the Lord's words to them: 'For behold, I shall speak unto the Jew and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it' (2 Nephi 29:12).
'In 1991, my stake patriarch declared that I am a literal decendant of the tribe Dan. Most of my ancestors come from Germany and England. However, I have a great grandfather who is full blooded Greek. I assume that is where my Danite blood comes from. While serving as a missionary in Thailand, a certain General Authority told me that he felt I would one day serve as a mission president among my people' in Greece. He said that after the 10 tribes were carried off, many Danites were sold as slaves in the area of Greece.' There is a river Dan in Scotland.
Lands of the Dispersion: Ukraine
Carpatho-Rusyns, Lemkos, and Western 'Ukrainians'
The Carpatho-Rusyn people (also called 'Ruthenians') are Eastern Slavs whose historic homelands included the mountainous lands in what is now South-Eastern Poland, Eastern Slovakia, and Western Ukraine. There are various distinct cultural groups of CarpathoRusyns, including Lemkos, Boykos, and Hutsuls, of whom the Lemkos are the most numerous. Some individuals identify the Carpatho-Rusyns as Ukrainians. While their culture and language share many common features, the Carpatho-Rusyns are in fact a distinct cultural and ethnic group with their own language and history distinct from Ukraine. Much like the Ephraimites of the bible, the Carpatho-Rusyns are mountain dwellers. Interestingly, they are the only mountain-dwellers of the Slavs, with the exception of some of the Slovenians, whose culture and history are heavily influenced by that of Austria and Italy. The Carpatho-Rusyns are some of the most independent and free-thinking of the Slavs. They resisted the Bolshevik takeover after the Russian Revolution, the Nazi invasion during World War II, and the subsequent oppression by the Polish Communists and the USSR. As a result, many were displaced from their homeland and emigrated to North America, especially Canada. The great majority of the 2 million 'Ukrainians' living in Canada are actually Western Ukrainians and Carpatho-Rusyns, from the traditional homelands of the Lemkos, Boykos, and Hutsuls.
Many of these individuals have come into the true Church in Canada and in the United States. 'The Lord hath covenanted this land unto me, and to my children forever, and also all those who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord. Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord. Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever. 2 Nephi 1:5-7'
The Church has also met with the greatest success among the Ukrainians of all of the Slavic nationalities of Eastern Europe. A temple has been announced for Ukraine, and two missions in Ukraine have brought approximately 8000 people into the Church (as of mid-1999) compared to 11000 members in 8 missions served by far more missionaries in all of Russia. A stake is being planned for Kiev, which will probably be the first stake in Eastern Europe.'
The Tribe of Ephraim Today
I came to the conclusion (and this is just my opinion) that the majority of the first members are going to be from the tribe of Ephraim. That's because it is the 'gathering' tribe, so they are chosen to help assist us in the gathering of the other tribes in that area.'
It does seem like many early members in Eastern Europe are from Ephraim, but that makes sense given their great missionary responsibility.
