Jews escaping from Russia find a home in Armenia

State atheism existed in all of the Soviet republics, but they differed in how Soviet authorities treated Jews in daily life. Unsurprisingly, Russia and Ukraine, which had the largest Jewish populations, evidenced more antisemitism, including physical attacks on Jews wearing yarmulkes and institutional barriers such as universities refusing to accept Jewish students. Armenia, on the other hand, was considered liberal and tolerant.

Throughout the 20th century, over 15,000 Ashkenazim moved from Moscow and Kyiv to Yerevan. Among them were the parents of Gershon Meir Burstein, the rabbi of Armenia’s only shul. Fittingly, the synagogue was named Mordecai Navi — the name of the former synagogue there that was shut down by the Communists.

Armenia’s Jewish community kept growing until the late 1980s, when a war broke out over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in the South Caucasus. Also known as Artsakh, Nagorno-Karabakh  a majority-Armenian area that the Bolsheviks handed over to Armenia’s Muslim neighbor Azerbaijan in the 1920s.

After a wave of anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan, Armenia attacked Azerbaijan to regain control over the Armenian enclave and protect its population. Eventually, Armenia won, but at the cost of extreme economic hardship. Week-long blackouts were frequent in the capital, and people had to burn trees from the local parks to keep warm in the winter.

Naturally, those with the right to Israeli citizenship chose to make aliyah, and Rabbi Burstein gladly helped them with the paperwork. After a while, only several dozens of Jews remained in the country. Burstein wrote a letter to the last Chabad Rebbe, asking if he himself should leave Armenia, but never got a response. This was in 1994, the year when the Rebbe died. Burstein decided to stay.

Rabbi Burstein’s shul isn’t the only Jewish place in Yerevan today. There’s a secular group that organizes Birthright trips to Israel for Armenian Jews and helps them make aliyah. In March 2022, I witnessed the groundbreaking ceremony of another informal community center. As a Russian speaker already living in Armenia by the time the war in Ukraine broke out, I was invited to a cafe called Mama Jan to give a talk, providing the disoriented recent arrivals with important information about living in Armenia.

Soon the cafe began attracting more immigrants, and a cozy private room at the back of the cafe became the default meeting place for the members of the Yerevan Jewish Home, a social media group for Russian Jews in Armenia, launched by Moscow journalist Nathaniel Trubkin.

“I decided to leave Russia right after the war began,” Trubkin said. “Armenia was an easy choice because Russians could enter it without a valid passport. Domestic ID was enough. Armenia’s largely Russian-speaking society was another important factor. It’s easier to preserve your identity in a familiar setting. I’ve grown to love Yerevan, it’s a hospitable city.”

The Yerevan Jewish Home is more than a group chat, Trubkin explains. “Jewish immigrants from Moscow and Saint Petersburg needed to regain a sense of community, meet new people who share the same culture and engage in networking to build their future.” Their first project was hosting a support group followed by Hebrew classes, Shabbos meetups and movie screenings.

Today, the group has about 500 members, many of whom attend Yerevan’s only synagogue at least semiregularly. Before 2022, the small community was barely able to gather a minyan, even on major Jewish holidays. These days, the weekly Kabbalat Shabbat services often attract over a dozen people.

Still, most of the recent immigrants view Armenia as merely a temporary stop on their way to a more “desirable” destination. Many of the Russian Jews are headed to Israel, while non-Jewish Russians usually hope to move to Western Europe or North America. There’s nothing wrong with this attitude per se, but many use it as a way to justify their lack of interest in Armenia’s culture and language.

One could say immigrants have no obligation to integrate or assimilate, but it becomes slightly more complicated in a postcolonial context. Russians in Armenia aren’t just immigrants; they’re people from a recently dissolved empire taking residence in its ex-colony.

Iranian immigrants don’t expect a waiter at a Yerevan restaurant to speak perfect Persian. They learn some English and eventually learn the local language. For many Russians, it’s different. The Soviet past that the two countries share is enough for many of them to demand that Armenians talk to them in Russian.

Once, for example, I witnessed a Russian lady scolding two local bank employees for speaking to each other in Armenian. She claimed it was impolite to speak anything but Russian if she’s standing there. I’ve also heard Russian immigrants say that Armenia didn’t feel like a separate country, comparing it to a slightly “exotic” province of Russia. This may have been intended as a compliment — they were happy Armenia seemed familiar and easy to navigate. But many of the Armenians I talked to found their approach condescending and offensive.

Thankfully, most of the new Russian Jewish arrivals don’t seem to have this attitude. Maybe it’s the similar histories of the two diaspora peoples, accustomed to being minorities wherever they go, that causes the Jewish immigrants to be respectful and willing to learn about Armenian culture.

Despite shared histories and cultural similarities, relations between Israel and Armenia are far from flawless. This is partly explained by Israel’s dependence on Turkey and Azerbaijan as situational allies against Iran.

That said, Armenia opened an embassy in Tel Aviv in 2020, and the city of Petah Tikva recognized the Armenian genocide that same year. Haifa followed suit in 2023. One can only hope that the growth of Armenia’s Jewish community, even if caused by a global tragedy, might help build better ties between the two countries.

“For now, the region’s geopolitical situation offers little opportunity for a government-level rapprochement, but right now we’re working on the relations between ordinary people wishing to live in peace and engage in cultural exchange,” Trubkin said.

Several weeks after our conversation, Azerbaijan launched an offensive aimed at regaining control over Nagorno-Karabakh. Thousands of ethnic Armenians were forced to flee their homes.

Yesterday, I met with Michael Avetikyan, the Armenian founder of the local NGO Armenian Food Bank. He told me that a group of Russian Jewish regulars at the Mama Jan Cafe had just donated over a dozen boxes of food, clothes, and hygiene items to help the new Armenian refugees. “We may have disagreements with the Israeli government, but we know many Jews and Israelis are our friends, and they’re always welcome here,” he said.

Dor Shabashewitz is a Russian-born Israeli journalist and junior researcher with a background in anthropology and sociolinguistics. He writes about ethnic minority rights in the ex-USSR and endangered languages around the world.