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JEWISH EMIGRATION FROM GEORGIA TO ISRAEL
Eteri KVIRIKASHVILI
Eteri Kvirikashvili, Lecturer, Department of Social, Economic and Political Geography, Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia)
Jews have been living in Georgia since antiquity. There are several opinions about the date of their arrival there. According to one of them they left their homeland when the first temple in Palestine had been ruined in the 6th century B.C. According to another opinion they arrived in the A.D. 160s (precisely in 169) and founded the first colony in Mtskheta. There is ample archeological evidence (early burial stones with Aramaic inscriptions in square Hebrew and later burial stones with Jewish inscriptions) to confirm the latter opinion.
Since that time Jews have been living in a community that differed from its ethnic environment in a very specific way of life and ethnic self-identity. At the same time, it belonged to the country it lived in and could not be separated from the ethnic majority—hence its ethnonym “Georgian Jews.”
Having lived in Georgia for many centuries the Jews found their place in Georgian society and Georgian culture.
They do not speak any of the Jewish dialects; Georgian is their mother tongue, they have Georgian names while their family names acquired Georgian endings. In addition, their way of life never differed from that of their Georgian neighbors: they followed the same traditions, wore similar clothes, used similar furniture, and married their children in a similar way. The use of Hebrew is limited to several religious or ritual songs. They celebrate the New Year and even Christmas and follow traditions of their own: the circumcision ceremony, Bar Mitzvah, weddings and burials. In preparation for the Bar Mitzvah ceremony the boys are expected to study Hebrew yet part of the Torah is read in Georgian.
Just like their Georgian neighbors the Jews are very devoted to the family: children live either together with parents or close nearby; it is for the parents to select the future spouse and to pass a decision on emigration.
Integration, however, should not be taken for assimilation with Georgians.
Migration Causes
We all know that anti-Semitic sentiments are the main cause behind Jewish emigration. In Georgia, however, anti-Semitism was much less pronounced than in any of the post-Soviet countries. “Georgia is a country that knows no ghettos, pogroms and discrimination. There the Jews have been………………..
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