feature
Armenia Has Had
Few Jews and a
Poor Relationship
With Israel.

That Could Be
Changing. YEREVAN, ARMENIA — Just outside a remote village
two hours’ drive east of Yerevan, in a clearing reach-
able only by hiking down a steep embankment and
crossing a rickety wooden bridge, looms a remarkable
sight: a blue metal gate decorated with a Star of David
that guards the entrance to one of the world’s most
unusual Jewish cemeteries.

Here, in a pastoral setting disturbed only by the
chirping of birds and the rushing waters of the Yeghegis
River, lie 64 complete tombstones and fragments of
others dating from 1266 to 1346. Their inscriptions,
written in both Hebrew and Aramaic, have been studied
by scholars for years. Among them is the epitaph of a
young Jewish boy that refl ects the profound grief of his
parents: “Your dead [shall live], corpses shall rise, awake
and sing for joy, O dwellers in the dust! For [your dew] is
a radiant dew.”
The medieval cemetery, rarely visited these days and
in an obvious state of neglect, is nevertheless proof
that a Jewish community has long existed and even
fl ourished in Armenia — the world’s fi rst Christian nation
and, according to tradition, home of the mountain upon
which the biblical Noah’s Ark came to rest.

That community is today among the smallest of
the 15 republics that until 1991 formed the Soviet
Union, although it has swelled in recent months, if
only temporarily, with Jews fl eeing Russia. In addition,
even as Israel is home to the oldest Armenian diaspora
community and Jerusalem’s Old City boasts an
Armenian quarter, Armenia’s relationship with Jews and
Israel is diffi cult, both for historical reasons and because
Israel is a key ally of Armenia’s archenemy, Azerbaijan.

Rimma Varzhapetyan, 74, chairs the Yerevan-based
Jewish Community of Armenia. Her organization, which
16 JANUARY 5, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
has been around for 25 years, occupies a small offi ce on
the ground fl oor of an institute for deaf and mute people.

Varzhapetyan took issue with a 2019 poll by the
Pew Research Center, in which 32% of Armenian
respondents said they wouldn’t accept Jews as fellow
citizens — the highest percentage of any of the 18
European countries included in the survey.

“There is no antisemitism in Armenia,” said the
Russian-speaking Varzhapetyan, who was born in
Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region but has lived in
Armenia for the last 52 years. “It’s true that our economy
isn’t that developed, so many Jews — scientists,
doctors, journalists and others — made aliyah. Today,
there isn’t much religious life, but we do try to celebrate
all the Jewish holidays.”
After the Soviet collapse, about 15,000 Armenian
Jewish families emigrated to Israel, she said, and these
days, the Maryland-size country of about 3 million is home
to around 280 Jewish families, though it’s hard to say for
sure since the country’s few Jews are mostly intermarried.

Varzhapetyan’s numbers are far more optimistic
than those of Rabbi Gershon Burshteyn, the spiritual
leader of Yerevan’s Mordechay Navi Jewish Religious
Center of Armenia since 1996. Burshteyn, a locally born
Orthodox Jew with a striking resemblance to “Tevye
the Dairyman” (he even speaks with a Yiddish accent)
said most Jews here are from families that arrived
after World War II from Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova,
Uzbekistan and, to a lesser extent, Azerbaijan.

“Before the 1920s, there were two Jewish
communities here: one from Poland and one from
Iran. At the time, they made up 17% of the population
of Yerevan,” said the 60-year-old. “But during the
Armenian genocide of 1915, there were rumors that
the Russian Army would hand Yerevan to the Turks, so
Persian Jews went back to Iran.”
Today, he said, no more than 100 to 200 of Armenia’s
2.9 million inhabitants are Jews; nearly all of them live
in Yerevan, except for a handful in Vanadzor, Armenia’s
third-largest city. But those numbers are confusing,
since at least 500 Armenians would qualify for aliyah
under Israel’s 1953 Law of Return, meaning they have
at least one Jewish grandparent. On the other hand,
because intermarriage is so prevalent here, only 20 or
so Armenians are the off spring of Jewish mothers and
fathers, according to Burshteyn.

No more than 25 people attend Shabbat services, and
the worshippers are almost all 45 years of age or older.

Kosher meat is available thanks to a schochet, or kosher
ritual slaughterer, who visits once or twice a month from
Tbilisi, the capital of neighboring Georgia. The High
Holidays tend to attract more, about 100 people.

‘I feel comfortable here’
Ida Zilman, 71, is a painter and designer who teaches
arts and crafts at a local primary school. Her father, a
Ukrainian Jew from Odessa, was seriously wounded
while fi ghting for the Soviet Red Army, and in 1944,
he was demobilized and sent to the Caucasus to
work as a geologist. “He helped establish the metal-
lurgy industry in Armenia, and it was here that he met
my mom,” said Zilman, a grandmother who attends
synagogue services on Jewish holidays. With her late
husband, she also visited Israel, where she has a step-
sister in Ashdod.

“I adore Israel, but I feel comfortable here in Armenia,”
she said. “There are rumors that it’s antisemitic, but
that’s not true. When I tell people I’m Jewish, they smile.”
Six years ago, Israel issued a stamp commemorating
the famed French-Armenian crooner Charles Aznavour,
his parents and his sister Aida, all of whom had
sheltered Jews at their home during World War II. In
Photos by Larry Luxner
By Larry Luxner | JTA
Entrance to the
ancient Jewish
cemetery in
Yeghegis, Armenia, which
contains nearly
40 medieval
tombstones from
the 13th and
14th centuries
C.E., inscribed
in Hebrew and
Aramaic