The Red Village (Krasnaya Sloboda) in Azerbaijan is a destination that feels almost mythical. It is the only place in the world outside Israel whose entire population is Jewish. For Jewish travelers, that fact alone is magnetic, but it is only the opening line of a much richer story.
Nestled in the heart of the Caucasus Mountains, the village announces itself first through scent rather than sight: damp earth, old wood steeped in prayer, a faint trace of winter stove smoke, and the distant sweetness of fermented feijoa fruit. Time here does not pass so much as it settles. History is not curated behind glass; it lingers in courtyards, doorways, and silences.
The Red Village is a small Jewish town padded with memory as thick as a handwoven Caucasian carpet, suspended between a glorious past and a thinning present.
A community that endured
In the 19th century, nearly 18,000 Jews lived here. It was a thriving community; religious, industrious, and culturally confident. The Soviet era, however, took a heavy toll. Rabbis were exiled to Siberia, synagogues were closed, and religious life was pushed underground. Yet unlike many Jewish communities across the Soviet Union, the Jews of the Caucasus managed to preserve their identity. Shabbat was kept quietly, Judaism lived on discreetly.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the exodus began. Most residents emigrated to Israel; others left for Moscow in search of opportunity. The village nearly emptied. Today, about 3,500 Jews remain. Mostly elderly, many widowed. Almost every family has children or grandchildren in Israel.
Walking through the streets, one encounters shuttered homes beside sudden bursts of opulence: lavish villas built by former residents who prospered abroad, especially in Moscow, yet chose to anchor their success back here. The village feels hushed, almost spectral. An old Lada drives by occasionally. Children are rarely seen, despite the presence of schools, a yeshiva, and even a Bnei Akiva youth movement branch.
Many abandoned houses remain closed, neither sold nor rented to non-Jews.
A legend born on the riverbank
Local legend traces the founding of the Red Village to a dramatic moment in 1734. On a Shabbat morning, Persian soldiers invaded a nearby town and stormed its synagogue during prayers. Rabbi Reuven ben Shmuel stepped forward to confront them. As a general raised his sword to strike, the rabbi instinctively lifted the siddur he was holding. The sword shattered. The prayer book was slashed, but the rabbi was unharmed.
The Muslim general, stunned, declared this a divine sign. He withdrew his troops and asked the rabbi what he desired. The request was simple: more space for the Jewish community to live. The general granted land on the southern bank of the Gudyalchai River, later called “the Caucasian Jordan.” The rabbi and his followers settled there, laying the foundations of what would become the Red Village.
Over time, the community flourished. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the village was divided into nine neighborhoods, each named after the Persian hometowns of its residents. Yeshivot and a central rabbinical court turned the village into the spiritual heart of Caucasian Jewry. It earned the nickname: “Jerusalem of the Caucasus.”
The Jews engaged in trade, tobacco farming, winemaking (an industry left almost entirely to them by Muslim neighbors), and carpet weaving, an art mastered especially by the women of the village.
Thirteen synagogues, two still active
At its height, the Red Village had 13 synagogues. Today, only two remain active. The others have been repurposed into schools, museums, or public buildings, still marked with Hebrew marble plaques commemorating donors and original names.
The Gilaki Synagogue, built in 1896, has never closed. Not even during the Soviet era. Twelve windows symbolize the Tribes of Israel. A small hexagonal tower crowned with a Star of David rises above the roof, sheltering a menorah. Inside, ornate wood carvings surround the ark, windows, and ceiling in breathtaking detail. Much of the restoration was funded by former villagers who became wealthy oligarchs who did not forget where they came from.
One absence is striking: there is no women’s section. Women rarely enter the synagogue, except on Yom Kippur, when they stand outside in the courtyard, listening through open windows.
At the entrance, shelves hold woolen slippers. Worshipers remove their shoes out of respect, a custom influenced by Muslim practice and practical concern for the costly carpets covering the floor.
A short walk away stands the monumental “Six Domes” Synagogue, its six domes arranged to form a Star of David when viewed from above. During Soviet times, it served as a warehouse. Returned to the community in the early 2000s, it now hosts prayers only in warmer months due to heating costs. Two adjacent arks symbolize the Tablets of the Covenant, and services follow the unique Caucasian prayer rite.
One former synagogue, the Karchag Synagogue, now houses a museum dedicated to Caucasian Jewry. Though not officially opened, it is already a highlight. The building was dismantled stone by stone and rebuilt using original materials, preserving its sanctity while adapting it for exhibition.
Inside are traditional garments, ritual objects, manuscripts, jewelry, and rare documents. One striking exhibit features tiny tefillin, barely a centimeter wide, resembling dice. During Soviet times, Jews hid tefillin under hats or sleeves. These miniature sets made that possible.
Another powerful document recounts the community’s migration to the Caucasus, likening it to the exodus from Egypt – wandering through deserts and mountains until reaching “the land where the mountains touch the sky.”
The museum also displays issues of a local Jewish newspaper in Azerbaijan’s languages printed in Hebrew letters. Alongside are photographs of cultural life, including Jewish theater troupes and choirs.
Notably, the Mountain Jews were spared the Holocaust; the Nazis classified them as a “Caucasian-speaking people” rather than Jews.
Streets of memory
Walking through the village, Stars of David still crown many doorways. Former synagogues bear Hebrew inscriptions. Another interesting building is the maternity house, notable for its green color. The building was originally the private home of a wealthy, childless couple.
After the husband was widowed, he no longer wished to live in a house filled with memories of his beloved wife. He renovated his home to serve as a maternity house. The exterior wall of the façade was designed in the Art Nouveau style, with supporting columns (caryatids) in the image of his wife, and above the windows, mascaron sculptures of babies’ faces as decorative elements.
At the village’s edge spans the Arch Bridge over the Gudyalchai River, built under Tsar Alexander III. Known as the Bridge of Love, it once hosted matchmaking rituals reminiscent of Tu B’Av. Young women strolled back and forth while young men watched from below. Matches were made, weddings followed. The wedding hall still stands at the bridge’s entrance; the last ceremony was held just last summer.
Where did they come from?
The origins of the Mountain Jews, known as Juhuro, remain the subject of debate. Some researchers claim they descend from the Tribe of Ephraim, exiled to Persia after the destruction of the First Temple and later migrating north. Another, more dramatic theory links them to the Khazar Kingdom.
Between the 6th and 10th centuries, the Khazar Empire ruled much of this region. Around 740 CE, the Khazar king famously summoned representatives of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to present their beliefs. After careful consideration, he chose Judaism, converting along with his family and, eventually, much of his population.
For nearly three centuries, a powerful Jewish kingdom existed here. Larger than modern Israel in both territory and population. Its kings bore biblical names: Obadiah, Joseph, Manasseh, Benjamin.
The kingdom was ultimately destroyed by the Byzantines and the Rus in the early 11th century. Only fragments remain, mostly in parts of today’s Ukraine.
Later rulers attempted to force conversions to Islam, but their grip on distant regions was weak. Some Jewish communities held fast. According to several historians, the Jews of the Red Village are descendants of those survivors.
The Mountain Jews speak Juhuri, a Jewish dialect of Persian, just as Yiddish evolved from German, and Ladino from Spanish. It is deeply moving and heart-expanding to know that there was once a Jewish empire of our people.
To leave the Red Village is to walk away slowly, as one does from a synagogue after the final prayer, reluctant to break the spell.
This is not a place of spectacle or grand monuments, but of the persistence of Judaism lived softly yet stubbornly, generation after generation, against the odds.
Between the red bricks and silent courtyards, between abandoned houses and glowing synagogues, the village carries a truth that feels almost forgotten in the modern Jewish world: that identity does not always shout. Sometimes it survives by whispering.
Here, far from Jerusalem yet bound to it by memory and faith, Jewish history did not merely visit. It stayed, adapted, and endured.
The Red Village stands as a living footnote to a vanished Jewish empire and as a reminder that even when empires fall and communities thin, something essential can remain.
For those who listen carefully, the story is still being told, carried on the mountain air, across the river, and into the heart.
Jacob Maor
