The Voice of Mirza Xazar

By Amiram Barkat

Moscow's New Year's Eve parties are considered among the most ostentatious in the world. Last year, Russian gossip columnists ranked them according to the fee paid to the evening's main entertainer. Russian President Vladimir Putin's private party was not high on the list, with just $35,000 paid for the services of the British pop group, Smokie. Billionaire Roman Abramovich came in far above him, paying $900,000 for a single performance by the Australian singer, Kylie Minogue.

But the title of New Year Party King was bestowed upon a far less familiar businessman. Telman Ismailov threw his New Year's Eve bash at Moscow's luxury Baltschug Kempinski Hotel, and brought in no fewer than three superstars: Ricky Martin, Robbie Williams and Mariah Carey. Martin and Carey got $850,000 each for 40-minute performances, while Williams, according to the media, pocketed a cool $1 million.

Ismailov is known in Moscow as "the Caucasian." His name - son of Ishmael, in Russian - makes many think he is Muslim, but in fact Ismailov belongs to a small, isolated Jewish community that has lived in the Southern Caucasus for at least 1,500 years.


The Jews of the region call themselves Juhuro (Jews), and claim descent from the biblical Ten Lost Tribes, or from members of the tribe of Judah, exiled after the destruction of the First Temple [586 BCE]. The historical truth is unclear, but Prof. Mordechai Altshuler of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the leading scholar on the Jews of the Caucasus, believes that they have a connection to the Persian and Bukharan Jews, and became an independent community around the 6th century CE, just before the appearance of Islam.

Savage but hospitable

In the 19th century, the Russian conquerors of the Southern Caucasus were surprised to find Jews there who rode horses and wore daggers, and they called them "Mountain Jews." A century later, the Nazis pondered the question whether the Mountain Jews were part of the "Jewish race" marked for extinction: regarding the Ashkenazi Jews, there was never any doubt.

A traveler called Braverman, who visited the Mountain Jews in 1895, wrote about "Jacob the Caucasian": "In many things he is indeed a savage, as if the blood of our uncle, Ishmael, runs in his veins," but praised the admirable attributes of the Mountain Jews, especially their hospitality.

There are hardly any Jews left in Ismailov's home village of Geokchai. Researcher Leah Shamailov estimates there are still a few dozen Jews scattered in a rural area near the Georgian border, but most are now from mixed Jewish-Muslim families. In addition, a significant proportion of the Jewish women in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, are married to Muslim men.

Just one town in the Caucasus, and perhaps the only one in Eurasia, is still known as Jewish. Called Girmizi Gasaba in the Azeri language and Krasnaya Sloboda (the Red Settlement) in Russian, the town is located in northern Azerbaijan, 2,500 kilometers south of Moscow.

It is in fact a suburb of the regional town of Quba, just an hour's drive from the Azerbaijani-Russian border. The Quba region is favored as a recreation area, and attracts many well-heeled Ajerbaijanis in the summer, but the elegance of their dachas cannot compete with Krasnaya Sloboda. "It's like Kfar Shmaryahu in the middle of the Caucasus," says Eitan Na'eh, former Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan.

Krasnaya Sloboda was built about two centuries ago by Jews who had fled from different areas of Central Asia. From afar, it looks like a small town in a Chagall painting: a pile of houses on the far side of a river, against a backdrop of the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus.

Until about 15 years ago, all village homes were one story, with a large courtyard in front. Today the houses are built by Turkish workers, according to the luxury designs in English and French catalogs. Furniture is imported from Sweden or Dubai, and appliances from the United States. In the last few years, almost all the old houses have been demolished, and replaced by villas. The larger ones have four or five floors, and are equipped with an elevator. "A private swimming pool is standard in Krasnaya Sloboda," says Shamailov, who still has family living in the town.

Almost every able-bodied young man born in Krasnaya Sloboda in recent years has gone off to Moscow, to join the family business there. As in the village, the women do not work, but in Moscow, they divide their time between the house, the shopping mall and the health club. The children get the best education the town can offer, and the very rich send their children to British "public" (i.e. private) schools.

Some of the town's residents come home only for the summer, between Passover and Tisha B'Av, while others come only for weddings and funerals. On wedding days, the bridegroom's friends compete for the best places in his convoy of cars. When they are not being driven wildly, the parked Mercedes limousines are covered with Persian carpets, an ostentatious substitute for ordinary fabric. In short, the Jews of Krasnaya Sloboda are wealthy by any standards.

A head for commerce

The first difference between the prosperous Caucasian families and the "Ashkenazi" oligarchs is the way they have amassed their fortunes. The Caucasians do not have "a head for industry." They were not the ones to take over oil companies and aluminum mines, nor take part in the great carnival of privatization [in the former Soviet Union]. They make their money in commerce, an area in which they are considered the best around.

In the distant past they were especially involved in agriculture, but in the twilight days of the Soviet Union, they developed impressive commercial skills, selling fresh produce and imported Turkish leather products on Moscow's black market. The collapse of the Soviet empire found them in a favorable position, with many of them already sitting on private nest eggs. As a first step, they gained control of markets, then went on to build shopping malls, and today they are a serious force in the hot real-estate market in the Russian capital.

A year ago, Ismailov and his partner, Zarakh Iliyev, bought Moscow's monumental Ukraina Hotel for $300 million in cash. The partners' real estate holdings in Moscow are in excess of 1 million square meters [about 10 million square feet].

The second difference between the Caucasian and the Ashkenazi Jews is the formers' distaste for involvement in politics or Jewish affairs outside their own community. They are not big philanthropists, and give money mainly to synagogues and religious institutions.

The third difference is in their attitude to women. Unlike the "Western" oligarchs, the Caucasian Jews do not send their daughters to prestigious schools in the West, and their wives remain at home to run the household.

In the past, the inhabitants of Krasnaya Sloboda were meticulous in preserving their origins. Each community lived in its own neighborhood, and married within the community. The neighborhoods were known by the names of the communities that lived there: Kusari, Mizrahi and Chipkent. The borders have blurred in recent years, but families still make a point of saying which neighborhood they come from.

A short walk around the town reveals that it is half-empty. For most of the year, the town is home only to the old and infirm. Of its 13 synagogues, only one - Gila - is fully active. The stores, on the other hand, lack for nothing. The groceries are on a par with Tel Aviv's convenience stores, and the electronic emporiums stock computers, television sets and MP3 players.W

Last update - 18:37 02/10/2006

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