0ulture&Society

Jews in ArmeniaThe Hfdden Diaspora

Vartan Akchyan

While the territory of Arrnenia has shrunk consistently, the

Armenian rnap of the world has widened and now encorn-

passes almost every single continent. A piece of Arrnenian

culture lives and thrives in the most rernote areas of the

world, while Arrnenia itself only houses approxirnately 30percent of the global Arrnenian population. This dispersion

gives birth to quests for personal identity among rnany

Armenians in the Diaspora.

Although Armenians are usually thought of as a single

group, similar to the Jews, there are several subgroups that

rnake up the greater Armenian ethnicity. -Western

Arrnenians

are comprised of the Diaspora while Eastern Armenians are

comprised of Arrnenians in the Republic of Arrnenia. These

two groups, in turn, include smaller communities of Armeni-

ans living throughout the world, such as North and South

American Armenians, Australian Armenians, Iranian Arme-

nians, etc. While these cornmunities have shared traits that are

distinctively Arrnenian, there still exist important differences,

which can be used as identity rnarkers to distingrrish arnong the

various subgroups. This creates syntheses of identity based on

national, religious, territorial, and ethnic characteristics. Is a

person living in the United States with an Armenian grandfa-

ther really an Armenian? Who decides? Much about the

Vartan Akchyan i .associated with

G e o r g e t o w n U n i v e r s i -

t y ' s C e n t e r f o r N e w

D e s i g n s i n L e a r n i n g

a n d S c h o l a r s h i p . H e

d i r e c t e d a d o c u m e n -

tary { i lm on Jews in

A r m e n i a , w h i c h p r e

miered in New York

C i t y i n J u n e 2 o o 2 .

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J E W S I N A R M E N I A

Armenian identity, both at home and

abroad, remains unclear.Ambiguity and uncertainty are the

children of such prescriptive labels, and

when fantasy of the future and nostalgia

in order to function. His only presencein Armenia is through his English lan-

Suage, which is foreign to Armenia. Onlywhen located in Canada is he seen as aneffectively powerful and perhaps Armen-

M UCh abOUt thg attttenian identity, bothat horne and abroad, rernains rr.nclear.

for the past are conflated in the Armen-ian psyche after the traumatic experience

of near annihilation at the beginning ofthe twent ieth century, the presentbecomes further distorted-a mere fable.Current ly , Armenian col lect ive con-sciousness preoccupies itself with theshared collective rnernories of the pastamong a disparate and diffuse ethnic

group of the present. It is important tonote that, from the perspective of theDiaspora (approximately lo per-cent ofArmenians in the wor ld) , an Armenianin Armenia is narneless and faceless-sheis merely a part of Armenia. As a result,Armenia itself becornes something less

than real. It becomes a utopian ideawithout a strong foundation to supportit, while it is this foundation that renders

the group capable and the individual

important. Otherwise, the individual isfaceless and incapable, neither an actornor a creator-a mere shadow.

In Atom Egoyan's Calendar, for exam-ple, the Armenian protagonist of thefi lm is, in effect, "dead" in Armenia. Heis nameless and faceless, powerless and

out of place. Visually, he is never presentin Armenia. He is in his ancestral horne,

while the very Armenian environmentand his presence there turn him into a

stranger and "make him from somewhere

else. "' While recognizing that "he is from

there," he is in need of an intermediary

ian character. One that is able to over-

come personal t rauma ( the loss oF h isArrnenian-speaking wife) by reducinghistorical, cultural, and religious baggageto a self-created wall hanging (a calendarof Armenian churches) and by recon-

structing and facing the reality of his lossthrough the presence of foreign-speakingwomen in his home, which represents hisunconscious attachrnent to a fragmentary

ternporal and spatial relationship withArmenia. Such complex identity searches,marked by dispersion and personal jour-

neys of revelation, become the reference

points of self-discovery and common

ground for Diaspora Armenians, wholook inward towards Arrnenia, andJewishArrnenians, who look outward towardsIsrael.

H istoric 0verview of Jews inAfmenia, Var ious Jewish communi-ties have lived in A:-menia. Perhaps thefirst appearance of Jews took place inthe first century BCE, when ArmenianKing Tigran the Great exiled thousandsof Jews from the Holy Land to theArmenian Empire. The ultimate fate ofthis community remains unclear, butthe works of Khorenats'i inform us thatthey first settled in the Armenian cit iesof "Artashat and Valarshapat."" Whileaccording to Khorenats'i 's account the

Jews were converted to Christianity, the

I B Z ] Georgetom Journa l o f In te rna t iona l A f fa i rs

Greek geographer Strabo claims that"the tribesmen and townspeople, exceptfor those of Jewish and Greek birth,spoke the Armenian langrrage."3 Sincethere are no clear historical accountsthat recorded the fate of this particularcomrnunity at a later date, we can spec-ulate that they were either eventuallyassimilated into the Armenian cultureor have abandoned Armenia. In partic-ular, theseJews may have been the pre-decessors of today's Zoks, who are oftenconsidered ethnic Arrnenian Jews.a AsRabbi Burshteyn claims,

Unofficially, Zoks are the descen-dants of ancientJer,rs who lived on theterritory of Arrnenia and later con-verted to Christianity. Today, theyconsider themselves to be Arrneniansand their point of view is also sharedby the Jewish world. However, I dobelieve that one day the world willknow who the Zoks really are-whether they are a rnlth or reality.5

An interesting account of possible

Jewish presence in Armenia beginning inthe seventh century cornes from Ya'qubi.The medieval kingdom of Khazaria exist-ed from 65o to 1016 when "the far east ofEurope was ruled by Jewish kings whopresided over nurnerous tribes, includ-ing their own tribe: the Turkic Khazars.After their conversion, the Khazar peo-ple used Jewish personal narnes andspoke and wrote in Hebrew."o Ya'qubi

writes that "the Khazars were they whoconquered all the lands ofArrnenia."T

Another community ofJ ewish convertsliving in Armenia is the Subbotnils-acommunity of ethnically RussianJews thatescaped religious persecution in Russiaand has found its home in Armenia onthe shores of Lake Sevan since the begin-

AKcHYAN Culture & Society

ning of eighteenth century., Subbotnilsare "The People of the Sabbath," a dis-tinctively Jewish identification. Previous-ly, the Subbotnil<s were considered a sect,"but in today's reality, after studying theirexperience, we come to an understandingthat they are not a different sect at all,because the Torah constitutes the verybasis of their beliefs, and there is nothingexcept the Torah."e Thus, the Subbotnikexperience lacks notJudaism, but the cul-tural identity of

'Jewishness." They are

ethnically and linguistically Russian.Although the early history of the Subbot-nils has yet to be uncovered, there is somecertainty that they carne to Arrnenia fromthree Russian cities: Thrnbov, Saratov.and Voronezh.'o They established theirown srnall town in Armenia and narned itYelenovka. An elder Subbotnik said,"Our ancestors had their own synagogue,their own Rabbi, and their own prayerbooks-which were translated frornHebrew to Russian. To this date we con-tinue using those bools.""

Many Subbotnils still live in Armeniaand practice their religion freely, but liletheir Armenian peers, most of theyounger rnembers of the community havenow left Armenia due to economic diffi-culties and have established themselves inRussia, the birthplace of their late ances-tors. Currently, the elder members arethe only people who argue that there hasbeen a continuity of the Subbotnik corn-munity in Armenia. As an elder Subbot-nik suggests, "I was born here, and willmost likely die here. Where else can wego? This is our homeland. We love ourhorneland. We love our Armenia."'"

Historical evidence of another Jewishcommunity in Arrnenia was found inrggJ with the discovery of a thirteenthcenturyJewish cemetery in the Arrnenianhighlands. According to Dr. Michael

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Stone, a professor at the Hebrew lJniver-sity ofJerusalem and head of excavationsat the site, indications ofJewish commu-nities in Armenia have been vague andsporadic, "We didn't know that Armeniahad a Jewish community.

'We saw a hint

here or a word there, but nothing fromthis period."'3 The discovery of seventytombstones inscribed in Aramaic withHebrew letters, which date frorn thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries,constitutes the first physical evidence ofa Jewish community in Armenia beforethe nineteenth century.

It is diff icult to g.enerate an all-inc lus ive p ic ture of theJewish presencein Armenia due to the imprecis ion ofsome his tor ica l accounts and lack ofvalidation by other available data. How-ever, the available combination of his-t o r i ca l accoun ts and a rchaeo log i ca lfindings, while certainly less than com-prehensive and rnost ly in f requent ,provides for a modest window into thegeneral history of Jewish presence inArmenia, but ult imately belies the clearindication of a strong and lasting rela-tionship between Jews and Armenianscharacter ized by in termarr iage andc ross -cu l t u ra l po l l i na t i on .

Jews and Modern ArmenianReal i ty . Dur ing the past decade and ahalf, the people ofJewish origins livingin Armenia have undergone a religious,cu l t u ra l , and l i ngu i s t i c rena i ssance .After the collapse of the Soviet lJnionand its unsl,ccessful attempt at creatinga unified conglomerate of peoples andreligions under the umbrella of Com-munism, the first synagogue andJewishSunday school to open in more than acentury was established in the Armeniancapital. They offered Hebrew classes,Shabbat services, holiday celebrations,

and a range of other Jewish programs.The fall of the Iron Curtain and theemergence of pluralisrn and dernocratiza-tion have, in turn, Ied to the awakening of

Jewish identity in post-Soviet Armenia.It is important to note thatJewish pres-

ence in Armenia during the Soviet epochwas, to a large extent, transparent. Sharedtraditions, values, and aspirations in thetwo cultures broughtJews and Armenianstogether throughout the territory of theSoviet lJnion and, specifically, withinArmenia. In addition, deep solidaritygrew between the two peoples in the after-math of the tragic events of the first andsecond world wars. While there was aninflux of Jews into Armenia during theI94Os and through the rg$Os, a repatria-tion of Armenians from Europe and theMiddle East was simultaneously takingplace, makingArmenia home for the sur-vivors of loth Armenian and Jewishtragedies. The factor rnost responsible forthe integration of Jews into Arrneniansociety, however, was the establishrnent ofmatrirnonial unions between representa-t ives of the two groups. Due to ih" .o--bination of these elements, Arrneniansno longer perceived theJews as outsiders,but rather as insiders.

The uniqueness of Armenia's Jewrycanno t be unde rs tood ou ts ide thegreater context of Armenian reality as awhole. Specifically, this reality comes tol i fe in the fus ion of Armenian home-land w i th t he A r rnen ian D iaspo ra ,cha rac te r i z i ng Jew ish ex i s tence i nArmenia as a presence of one Diasporapeople in another Diaspora people 'shomeland, which gives birth to a mul-tiplicity of outlooks and frames of ref-erence in the Armenian conscience.Interestingly, even with such dispersionand variety, being Armenian is to be ina "c losed uni t , " s ince "Armenianness"

t S + ] GeorgetownJourna l o f In te rna t iona l A f fa i rs

(analogous to 'Jewishness")

does not

provide any real windows of inclusion

apart from kinship. Similar to 'Jew

andGentile, " there exists an "Armenian

and Otar (foreign)" dichotomy, bothof which are ethnic-religious identit ies

forrnulated frorn and reinforced by thefamilial institution.

Indeed, the modern Jewish presencein Arrnenia reproduces itself rnainly

through intermarriages betweenJews andArmenians-comrnonly labeled in the

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To the ground I bow in front of these

people, who in this little village on top ofthe mountains, in the rniddle of their joy-

or.rs moments, spoke of the suffering ofthe Jews. To those I bow, who in solernnsilence listened to those words."'a

Such e*pressions of solidarity andexchanges of feelings were characteristicof the relationship between Jews andArrnenians. Even rnore, such mutualacknowledgements have elevated the rela-

tionship between the two groups to a level

PfOCeSS has beCOme rnore irnportant thansagaclty.

former Soviet lJnion as "the thunderingmerger." Stereotypically, this "rnerger"

rneant a "union of parallels," in whichtwo strong cultural groups with collectivepain and confidence in their own ethnic-ity and religion came together to create amagnetic bond founded upon their sim-ilar paths. But, at the sarne tirne, therewas an ironic distance stemming from

their conscious awareness that a union ofparallels was in fact irnpossible.

This is illustrated by the experience ofRussian-Jewish writer Vasiliy Grossman,who, in rg62, was dispatched to Arrnenia

to write short stories about Soviet life in

the peripheral republic. In one of his sto-ries, he describes an incident at anArmenian wedding where an old Arrnen-

ian veteran, after learning that Grossman

wasJewish, drank a glass of vodka to com-memorate the deaths of hisJewish friends

duringWorldWar II. This sort of publicdisplay of sympathy and grief for the vic-tims of the Holocaust was unheard of in

the r96os. Grossrnan was so rnoved andaffected by this gesture that he later wrote:"Never have I bowed in front of anvone.

often characterized as "unique and spe-cial, " as "enigmatic and rnystical. " '5

Although physically close, Jews andArmenians are often far apart; but,despite their differences, their fates werestrangely similar. Historical events turnedthese groups into sur-yivors and trans-forrned their continued existence fromrnere subsistence to an imperative of per-sistence and prosperiry into the future."And the chain, the continuurn of thispeople's life was unbreakable," continuesGrossrnan. "In it were united youth, oldage, and sorrows of the dead. The contin-uum seemed firm and everlasting. Mis-fortunes. death. invasion did not breakthe chain."'o These words, while describ-irg Grossrnan's perspective on theArmenian people, are peculiarly charac-teristic of bothJews and Armenians.

Sirnilar to the Jews, the Armenianshave come to acquire a concentricity ofhistory, of national consciousness, andof linguistic and religious difference. In

contrast to other Christian churches-and akin to practices of Judaism-theArrnenian Church has been historically

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J E W S I N A R M E N I A

a non-proselytizing institution con-stantly struggling to maintain its ownidentity (even within Christendom),

s ince, according to the wr i t ings ofElishe, spiritual and secular models

parallel to and borrowed from the Mac-

cabees were uti l ized to shield Armenian

customs and culture from outside forcesas early as in the fifth century.'7

Establishing an organized ethno-cul-tural framework is absolutely essentialfor a successful salvaging of the Armen-ian reality. "Go ahead, destroy thisrace. . .See i f you can do i t , " suggestsWill iam Saroyan.'t Armenians have

struggled throughout much of history inorder to protect and maintain theirsocial rnemories and way of l i fe. Theyhave struggled to such an extent thatst ruggle has become a major componentof their culture and identity. Who else

extends an invitation to be destroyed sothat they can rebuild again?

Process has become more important

than sagacity; it has become a deeply-

rooted trait of Armenian character to beextremely rational and irrationally whim-sical at the same time, to live life to itsfullest while rnanaging to fulfill theirnperative of survival. The fear of escap-ing the bliss of denial and thus con-fronting the traurna that suspends thechoice- that-must-be-made and theact ion- that-must-be- taken preventsArmenian reality from transforrningfrom "process" into "choice/action." Thefear of moving beyond this cycle (or pa.u-dox) is what "successfully" sustains conti-nuity. Armenian reality has now enteredthe "domain of the closed circular palpi-tation which finds satisfaction in endless-ly repeating the sarne failed gesture."'eThe constant Armenian denial of its

own historical trauma has to be derailedbefore Armenia, along with its Jewishcornmunity, can become a full member

of the twenty-first century worid. Today,however, Arrnenian reality is a culture offantasy, with a suspended present and apressingly uncertain future.

N O T E S

r Calendar, dir. Atom Egoyan, perf. Atom Egoyan,

Ars in€e Khan j ian , and Ashot Adamian, Ego F i lm

Ar ts /ZDF, Ig93.

2 Moses Khorenats'i, Htstory of the ArmenicnJ, trans.

Robert W. Thomson (Cambridge, Haward lJniversi-

ty Press , r978) , zg3 .

3 David Marshall Lang, Armeniu: Cradle of CiuilQotion,

znd ed . (London: George A l len & Unwin , 1978) , 126.

4 For more in {brmat ion about the Zo lc , p lease

refer to the documentary fi lm entit led lews in Armenia:

The Hidden Diaspora.

5 Rabb i Gersh-Mei r Bursh teyn , in te rv iew w i th

a u t h o r , r J u l y 2 O o t .

6 "Khazaria In{b Center, " http, //w.l<hzaria. com(Date Acce. red , z8 August 2oo2) .

7 D. M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khoaors(Pr ince ton : Pr ince ton Un ivers i ty Press , lg54) , Zo .

8 The au thor 's persona l in ten iews w i th the Sub-

botn iks y ie lded the I73os as the da te o f the i r ances-

to rs ' a r r i va l in Armen ia .

g Rabb i Gersh-Mei r Bursh teyn , in te rv iew w i th

a u t h o r , I J u l y 2 O o I .

to Yo'av Karny, Hghlanders: AJourne] to the Cqucosus rn

Quesl of | ltemog, (New York' Fanar, Straus and Giroux.

zooo) , 3o9.t t In tewiew wi th au thor , Ju ly 2oor .

12 Nacha Cat tan , "Pro f d iscovers remnants o f

bur ied Armen ian c i ty , " F reedon, 18 Januar f 2oo2.l3 Vasil iy Grossman, Pouest', lassAc4i, Ocherfri (Mosk-

va : Vagr ius , r998) , 22o.

r{. Dr. Igor Ulanovsky, interview with author, t{.

J u n e 2 o O I .

lg Grossman, ZZ l . Thken f rom "Dobro Vam"

[Peace Be Wi th You] , an account o f Grossman 's jour -

n e y t o A r m e n i a , t 9 6 z - 6 3 .

t6 Elishe, Histog ofVoulon and the ArmenionWur (Cam-

br idge, Massachuset ts : Harvard lJn ivers i ty Press ,

r 9 8 z ) , r 5 6 .I7 Wi l l iam Saroyan, Inho le &Exha le (NewYork , Ran-

d o m H o u s e , 1 9 3 6 ) , + 1 8 .r8 Slavoj Zizek, The Plogue ofFantosies (London, Vet

s o , I 9 9 7 ) , 3 0 .

i 8 6 I Georgetown Journa l o f In te rna t iona l A f fa i rs