MOSCOW — The fall of communism has prompted so many renaissances in Jewish life across Eastern Europe that the phrase almost has become a cliche.
But post-Soviet turmoil has jeopardized the existence of Mountain Jews, as Jews from the Caucasus region are known.
Until the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, most Mountain Jews outside of Israel lived in the Caucasus, the area of present-day Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
But increased ethnic tension — including numerous kidnappings by Chechen separatists — and an economic crisis have caused an exodus of Mountain Jews to Russia and Israel, and a fear that the community’s distinctive identity will be lost.
To combat this possibility, more than 100 community activists gathered recently in Baku, Azerbaijan, to consider ways to keep alive the culture of Mountain Jews, whose numbers are estimated at around 100,000 worldwide.
The distinct identity of Mountain Jews is believed to have crystallized by the eighth century, when waves of Jewish immigrants began migrating to the Caucasus from Persia.
Members of the community spoke Dzhuhuri — a kind of “Persian Yiddish” — a Farsi dialect with a heavy mixture of Hebrew.
Later, some scholars say, Mountain Jews may have mixed with the remnants of the Judaic population of the mysterious Khazar empire.
Situated between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, the Khazars converted to Judaism en masse and made it their state religion in the seventh century. Three hundred years later, they fell under attacks from the Byzantine Empire and the precursors of today’s Slavs.
Living in enclaves surrounded by Muslims and Christians, Mountain Jews managed to maintain their identity and keep stable relations with their neighbors. The predominantly Muslim region rarely saw anti-Semitism, at least of the virulent European form.
Under the Russian czars, the Mountain Jews were left alone and free of pogroms — except during wars, when they were attacked by all sides.
After the Communist revolution of 1917, the Soviet state tried to “absorb” the Mountain Jews into a local ethnic group known as the Tats. Still, they preserved both their distinct role of operating open-air markets and their traditional religious practices, which mix Sephardi and Askenazi customs.
All that has changed in recent years as 90 percent of the community emigrated.
The community is now evenly split, with some 50,000 members across the former Soviet Union and similar numbers in Israel.
Some observers are skeptical that this community can survive outside of its traditional boundaries. But others see events such as the recent Baku conference — and the group’s long history — as signs of optimism.