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, rarely visited and in an apparent state of neglect, is nevertheless evidence that a Jewish network has long existed and even flourished in Armenia, the biblical Noah’s Ark home and the world’s first Christian nation.
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 of the Armenian diaspora and the Old City of Jerusalem is home to an Armenian neighborhood, Armenia’s relations with Jews and Israel are difficult, either for ancient reasons and because Israel is Armenia’s key best friend. 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 Armenians surveyed 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 who has lived in Armenia for 52 years.
“It is true that our economy is not so developed, many Jews (scientists, doctors, journalists and others) have made aliyah. Today there is not much devout life, but we go out to celebrate all the Jewish holidays,” he said. the Hebrew word for settling in Israel.
After the Soviet collapse, some 15,000 Armenian Jewish families immigrated to Israel, he said, and in those days the Maryland-sized country of about 3 million is home to about 280 Jewish families, though it’s hard to say for sure since the few Jews in the country marry at the most often.
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, they have at least one Jewish grandparent.
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.
“It’s not the anti-Semitism I felt when I was living in Russia, or even 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 simmering confrontation erupted again in war at the end of 2020. Azerbaijan, led by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and heavily aided by Turkey and Israel, nevertheless regained 20 percent of its territory it had lost to Armenia in 1994. (Azerbaijani 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 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 weapons for 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.
“You wouldn’t say the number of letters we’ve written from the Jewish network here exposing what really happened. But in Israel, this is not a very popular topic.
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 a lot of money for NGOs around the world, but not even a shekel for Armenia’s Jewish community. It’s a shame,” said Chernamorian, who made aliyah 20 years ago.
“Why does Israel, a country that has suffered genocide, help an Islamic dictator kill Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh?We all know that it is a murderer and that Azerbaijan is not a democracy.
However, Azerbaijan “categorically denies” any human rights violations against Armenians or civilians.
On October 12, a senior Defense Ministry official told a Baku-based online page that Armenia’s targeted bombing of the local population on the border with the city of Ganja “demonstrates its contempt for foreign humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention,” and that “those who dedicate such war crimes will have to be brought to justice. “
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 Yerevan’s Armenian Genocide memorial complex, visitors are greeted with a quote from Adolf Hitler, who, a week before his invasion of Poland in 1939, said: “Who, after all, is talking about the annihilation of the Armenians?
Coincidentally, Azerbaijan has a similar genocide memorial in a mass grave of nearly 17,000 Azerbaijani civilians killed in 1918 by Armenian Bolsheviks, and it turns out to be in Quba, a few kilometers from the Jewish village of Krasnaya Sloboda. .
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 family’s car dealership, is decorated with a framed certificate in Hebrew and Armenian, as well as his python cub, which he helps keep in 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 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 change of government 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 again protested 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 just 5,000 Israeli tourists.
Although there are more Israelis with ties to Georgia than to Armenia, Shakhmouradian said he is 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 fluent Hebrew.
The two men then history the 1700-year-old Armenian network in Israel and the affinities between the two peoples.
In addition, Russia’s 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 do so.
That includes at least 450 Jews who have made Yerevan their home, according to Burshteyn, dramatically expanding the extent of the local Jewish community, albeit temporarily.
And on Oct. 6, Azerbaijan’s 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 go to 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 could also be entrepreneurs or potential investors. The prospect is huge. “
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