The Synagogue of Batumi in Georgia

 

On my journey through the Caucasus I visited many churches in Armenia and Georgia and also a synagogue, to be precise the Synagogue of Batumi (ბათუმის სინაგოგა) [1]. It was built in 1904, but was closed during the Soviet era from the end of the 1920s and later used as a sports facility. I remembered a visit to Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, where I had visited a Lutheran church  that had been altered to be a public swimming pool during the Soviet era [2]. The Synagogue of Batumi was handed back to the Jewish community of Batumi in 1993. It was then extensively renovated and painted white. The synagogue was reopened in 1998. The Batumi synagogue was added to the list of national monuments of Georgia in 2011.

There is not much to say about the interior. It's just a room where people (I guess men) meet to pray; there is an upper floor, traditionally for women. I was allowed to enter, but the young man who was controlling the entrance did not appear to be of Jewish faith, because he was not wearing a kippah (yarmulke). I was already wondering what the Jewish community in Batumi might be like. Later that day, just before I got to my hotel at the the circus, I saw an Orthodox Jew with his two daughters, aged around 9-11. The two girls were wearing identical clothes and I had seen something like this before in pictures of Orthodox Jewish families. But I had to be patient to answer my question about the Jewish community or the Jews in Georgia. However, I did find a very interesting article on Wikipedia in English about the history of the Jews in Georgia [3].

I would like to quote the first sentence of the Wikipedia article: “The Georgian Jews (Georgian: ქართველი ებრაელები, romanized: kartveli ebraelebi, Hebrew: יהדות גאורגיה, romanized: Yahadut Georgia) are a community of Jews who migrated to Georgia during the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE.” The Jewish community in Batumi can therefore look back on a tradition that is 2,600 years old. This led to a distinction being made between traditions, as Ashkenazi Jews lived in Tblisi, for example, until the Soviet era. Of the approximately 60,000 Jews who lived in Georgia in the 1970s, most emigrated. In 2014, a census counted 1,405 Jews. In principle, the Jews in Georgia are one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. For more on the history of the Jews in Georgia, please refer to the article on Wikipedia.

Traditionally, the Jews in Georgia spoke Judaeo-Georgian, known endonymically as Qivruli (Georgian: ყივრული ენა) and also known as Gruzinic, which contains many loanwords from Hebrew. Yiddish is a West Germanic language that developed in a similar way, but in addition to loanwords from Hebrew, it also contains loanwords from other languages. Judaeo-Georgian is sometimes denied classification as a separate language because when spoken it is very similar to Georgian. But it is also a written language and, like Yiddish, is written using the Hebrew alphabet.
The Wikipedia article has the text “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity ...”.
The Latin transliteration of Judaeo-Georgian is:
Qvela adamiani ibadeba tavisupali da tanasc̣ori tavisi ɣirsebita da uplebebit. Mat minič̣ebuli akvt goneba da sindisi da ertmanetis mimart unda ikceodnenʒmobis sulisḳvetebit
The Latin transliteration of Georgian is:
q’vela adamiani ibadeba tavisupali da tanasts’ori tavisi ghirsebita da uplebebit. mat minich’ebuli akvt goneba da sindisi da ertmanetis mimart anda iktseodnen dzmobis sulisk’vetebit.
It looks very similar, but as far as I understand it is not the whole truth. Everyday language will differ more than it is the case with a text concerning human rights. I have tried to illustrate this for Mandarin and Cantonese by translating it using Google Translate [4]. While the political text written in Cantonese is quite understandable for someone who speaks Mandarin, this is no longer the case for the part of the text from the kitchen.
What I've done in the previous paragraphs, one could almost call this a digression.
There are still around 85,000 speakers of Judaeo-Gregorian, most of whom now live in Israel.

The Jewish community in Batumi has a very long history. It is nice that there is still a community in Batumi. And who knows whether it will not make history one day, because the consulate of the Iranian state Islamic Republic of Iran is only about 130 m away around the corner. Yes, I would like to suggest that Iran and Israel hold peace negotiations in Batumi; it is such a beautiful city on the Black Sea that such an endeavor should be promising [5].

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synagoge_Batumi The German article on Wikipedia is more extensive than the English article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batumi_Synagogue
[2] From Church to Swimming Hall and back again https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2013/03/from-church-to-swimming-hall-and-back.html
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Georgian
[4] The US President has introduced the law to protect voles in Congress.
美國總統在國會提出了保護田鼠的法律。
Měiguó zǒngtǒng zài guóhuì tíchūle bǎohù tiánshǔ de fǎlǜ.
美國總統喺國會提出咗保護田鼠嘅法律。
mei5gwok3 zung2tung2 hai2 gwok3wui2 tai4ceot1 zo2 bou2wu6 tin4syu2 ge3 faat3leot6。
In the kitchen, the daughter accidentally had the soup spoon and that Dulcimer thrown into the trash bin.
在廚房裡，女兒不小心把湯匙和菜板丟進了垃圾桶。
Zài chúfáng lǐ, nǚ'ér bù xiǎoxīn bǎ tāngchí huo cài bǎn di ū jìnle lèsè tǒng.
喺廚房入面，個女唔小心將個湯匙同砧板丟咗落垃圾桶度。
hai2 cyu4fong4 jap6min6，go3 neoi2 m4 siu2sam1 zoeng1 go3 tong1ci4 tung4 baan2 diu1 zo2 lok6 laap6saap3 tung2 dou6。
[5] I know that I am a dreamer. [Scio me somniare.]
 
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