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Yerevan, Armenia (JTA) — Just outside a remote village a two-hour drive east of Yerevan, in a clearing available only as you descend a steep embankment and cross a rickety wooden bridge, lies a remarkable sight: a blue steel gate adorned with a Star of David guarding the front of one of the world’s most important Jewish cemeteries.
Here, in a pastoral setting disturbed by birdsong and the torrential waters of the Yeghegis River, lie 64 complete tombstones and fragments of others dating from 1266 to 1346. Its inscriptions, written in Hebrew and Aramaic, have been studied by scholars for years.
Among them is the epitaph of a Jewish child that reflects the deep sorrow of his parents: “Your dead [will live], the corpses will rise, awaken and sing for joy, O population of dust!For [your dew] is a radiant dew.
The medieval cemetery, little visited and in an apparent state of neglect, is nevertheless evidence that a Jewish network has existed for a long time and even flourished in Armenia, the first Christian country in the world and, according to tradition, the mountainous space in which Noah’s biblical ark was immobilized.
This network is now one of the smallest of the 15 republics that, until 1991, shaped the Soviet Union; it has grown in recent months, if only temporarily, with Jews fleeing Russia. Moreover, although Israel is home to the oldest network in the Armenian diaspora and Jerusalem’s Old City is home to an Armenian neighborhood, Armenia’s relations with Jews and Israel are difficult, either for ancient reasons and because Israel is the key best friend of Armenia’s archenemy, Azerbaijan.
Rimma Varzhapetyan, 74, chairs Yerevan’s Jewish community in Armenia. His organization, which has existed for 25 years, occupies a small plot of land in an institute for the deaf and dumb.
Varzhapetyan contested a 2019 vote through the Pew Research Center, in which 32 percent of Armenian respondents said they would not settle for Jews as fellow citizens, the percentage of any of the 18 European countries included in the survey.
“There is no anti-Semitism in Armenia,” said Varzhapetyan, a Russian-born native of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region but living in Armenia for 52 years. “It is true that our economy is so developed, so many Jews – scientists, doctors, bloodhounds and others – have made aliyah. Today there is a lot of devout living, but we go out to celebrate all the Jewish holidays.
After the Soviet collapse, some 15,000 Armenian Jewish families immigrated to Israel, he said, and in those days the Maryland country of about 3 million is home to about 280 Jewish families, though it’s hard to say for sure, since the country’s few Jews are the majority. commonly married.
Varzhapetyan’s figures are far more positive than those of Rabbi Gershon Burshteyn, the non-secular leader of Yerevan’s Mordechay Navi Armenian Jewish Religious Center since 1996.
Burshteyn, a born Orthodox Jew with a striking resemblance to Tevye the milkman — he even speaks with a Yiddish accessory — said most Jews here come from families that arrived after World War II from Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Uzbekistan and, to a lesser extent, Azerbaijan.
“Before the 1920s, there were two Jewish communities here: one from Poland and one from Iran. At the time, they constituted 17 percent of Yerevan’s population,” said Burshteyn, 60. “But the Armenian genocide of 1915, there were rumors that the Russian army would hand over Yerevan to the Turks, so the Persian Jews returned to Iran.
Today, he said, no more than one hundred to two hundred of Armenia’s 2. 9 million inhabitants are Jewish; almost all live in Yerevan, with the exception of a handful in Vanadzor, Armenia’s third-largest city. But those numbers are puzzling, as at least 500 Armenians would be eligible for aliyah under Israel’s 1953 Law of Return, meaning they have at least one Jew. grandfather.
On the other hand, because intermarriage is so prevalent here, about twenty Armenians are descended from Jewish fathers and mothers, according to Burshteyn.
No more than 25 people attend ShabbatArray and the faithful are almost all forty-five years of age or older. Kosher meat is obtained through a schochet, or ritual slaughterhouse, which travels once or twice a month from Tbilisi, the capital of the neighboring city. Georgia, while Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur attract about a hundred more people.
Ida Zilman, 71, is a painter and designer who teaches arts and crafts at a local elementary school. His father, a Ukrainian Jew from Odessa, was seriously wounded while fighting for the Soviet Red Army. In 1944, he demobilized and was sent to the Caucasus to painting as a geologist.
“He helped identify the metallurgical industry in Armenia, and it was here that he met my mother,” said Zilman, a grandmother who attends synagogue on Jewish holidays. With her late husband, she also traveled to Israel, where she has half-sister in Ashdod.
“I love Israel, but I feel smart here in Armenia,” he said. “There are rumors that he is anti-Semitic, but that’s not true. When I tell other people I’m Jewish, they smile.
Six years ago, Israel issued a stamp commemorating the famous French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour, his parents and sister Aida, who had hosted Jews in their homes during World War II. In addition, dozens of other Armenians across Europe who have protected or stored Jewish lives are being revered at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel.
However, those warm emotions are universal, warns Ilya Dorfman, a software entrepreneur in his early fifties who lived in Moscow, Toronto, San Francisco and New York before deciding to return to his local Armenia.
“Sometimes I communicate with other young people here and they have the concept that Jews are opposed to Armenians. But that never translates into hatred against Jews,” he said. “In fact, it’s not the anti-Semitism I felt when I was alive. in Russia, or even in Ukraine after independence. “
Much of the unwillingness that exists between Armenia and Israel stems from Israel’s significant military aid to oil-rich Azerbaijan with which Armenia has fought wars in the Nagorno-Karabakh region claimed through the two former Soviet states. the lives of 16,000 Azerbaijanis and 4,000 Armenians.
The long-standing confrontation erupted again in war at the end of 2020. Azerbaijan, led by President Ilham Aliyev and heavily aided by Turkey and Israel, nevertheless regained 20% of its territory it had lost to Armenia in 1994. (Azerbaijan’s forces included foot soldiers from that country’s Jewish population of about 8,000. )
Last month, new border skirmishes between the two countries left around 300 people dead on both sides, with Muslim-majority Azerbaijan and predominantly Christian Armenia trading accusations of genocide and human rights atrocities.
“The fact is that Israel has provided weapons to this scoundrel gangster Aliyev and his brainwashed elite. He gave medals to the infantrymen who cut off the heads of Armenian and Yazidi infantrymen,” Dorfman said. Written from the Jewish network here exposing what really happened. But in Israel, this is not a very popular topic.
(Azerbaijan “categorically denies” human rights violations against Armenian foot soldiers or civilians and claims Armenia committed war crimes, adding its recent bombing of Ganja, a border town. )
Artiom Chernamorian, founder of a nonprofit called the Nairi Union of Armenians in Petah Tikva, Israel, says he is disgusted with Israel’s official policy toward his country of birth, as well as Israel’s alliance with Azerbaijan.
“Israel has so much cash for NGOs around the world, but not even one shekel for Armenia’s Jewish community. It’s a shame,” said Chernamorian, who made aliyah 20 years ago. “Why is Israel, a country that has suffered genocide, helping Islamic dictator kills Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh?We all know that it is a murderer, and Azerbaijan is not a democracy.
Armenians also deeply feel that Israel refuses to officially recognize the Ottoman bloodbath of 1. 5 million Armenians in 1915 as genocide, for fear of offending Turkey, with whom it re-established diplomacy this year after a long pause.
In front of the Armenian Genocide memorial complex in Yerevan, visitors are greeted with a quote from Adolf Hitler, who, a week before his invasion of Poland in 1939, said: “Who, after all, talks about the annihilation of Armenians?
Achot Shakhmouradian is a guy who works hard for Israeli-Armenian relations.
Since 2013, Shakhmouradian has been Israel’s honorary consul in Yerevan. His office, on the current grounds of his circle of relatives’ car dealership, is decorated with a certificate framed in Hebrew and Armenian, as well as his python cub, which he helps maintain. a huge glass tank.
“Our two countries have a lot in common,” said Shakhmouradian, who is Jewish. “Both are landlocked and surrounded by Muslim countries. And we are ancient peoples with fashionable tragedies: the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the Holocaust. As a result, we have giant communities abroad, but the Armenian diaspora is even larger than the Jewish diaspora.
Shakhmouradian said that in 2018, following a government replacement in Armenia, his country, despite everything, made the decision to open an embassy in Tel Aviv and relations flourished, with high-level visits and an active inter-parliamentary friendship group. But two years later, when war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the ambassador was called in to protest Israel’s arms sales to the Baku government.
“In my opinion, it’s not the right decision,” he said. “Israel is not the only country promoting weapons. For example, Russia is a much more vital best friend of Armenia, and they also sold weapons to both sides.
Shakhmouradian said some 180,000 Israelis visited Georgia in 2019, before the pandemic hit; that same year, Armenia gained a little than 5,000 tourists. Although there are more Israelis with ties to Georgia than to Armenia, Shakhmouradian said he was confident the number of tourists to Armenia could increase, particularly with direct flights from Tel Aviv to Yerevan, a flight time of less than two and a half hours.
Things can get better. In April, Israeli President Isaac Herzog met with Arman Akopian, Armenia’s new ambassador to Israel, who presented his credentials and signed the official guest e-book in unusually fluent Hebrew. The two men then discussed the 1700-year-old history of the Armenian network in Israel and the affinities between the two peoples.
In addition, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s recent mobilization of reserves to fight this war have led tens of thousands of Russian citizens to emigrate to Armenia, one of the only places where they can still easily enter. That includes at least 450 Jews who have made Yerevan their home, according to Rabbi Burshteyn, dramatically expanding the length of the local Jewish community, though only temporarily.
And on Oct. 6, Azerbaijani Aliyev met informally with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, marking the first high-level talks between Turkish and Armenian leaders in decades. This follows Erdogan’s recent rapprochement with Israel and the resumption of diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey.
“There is a massive Armenian presence in the Old City of Jerusalem, and many Armenians need to stop in Israel on pilgrimage. But no one needs to waste a whole day traveling,” Shakhmouradian said. “If there were direct flights, I’m sure some of those tourists can also be entrepreneurs or potential investors. The prospect is huge. “
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