Conference «At the Crossroads of Cultures: The Jews of Central Asia and the Caucasus»

Research Center of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center (Moscow) together with the Ben-Zvi Institute (Jerusalem) and the Georgian American University (Tbilisi) are organizing a conference devoted to the interaction, mutual influence of various Jewish groups and their ethno-confessional neighbors in Central Asia, the Caucasus and in the border regions during the "colonial era" of the 19th - 20th centuries and nowadays. We consider a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to:
• The impact of modernization on the life of Jewish communities;
• Political activity and involvement;
• Relations and interactions with local and foreign (Jewish and non-Jewish) populations;
• Cultural development and assimilation processes;
• Language policies.

In addition to this, the organizers will seek to develop a section devoted to commemoration of 100 years since the setting of the Jewish agricultural settlement in USSR, which was initiated, by the KOMZET and OZET committees. Original and innovative papers focusing on their activities in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and other parts of the USSR are extremely welcomed.

Format: the conference will take place in Moscow on June 5-6 and in Tbilisi on June 7-9, 2024, in hybrid format.

PROGRAM:

June 5
Moscow, Jewish Museum adn Toletrance Center, Screening Room

12:15–12:30 MSK (13:30–15:30 GET — Georgia Standard Time) — Opening ceremony 

12:30–14:30 MSC(13:30–15:30 GET)
Moderator: Valery Dymshits
• Vladimir Kolesov Conflict, Identities and Ostracism in the Mountain Jewish Way (the case of Besaraev and Khampiliev at the end of the 19th century) (ru)
• Alisa Abramov Implementation of the Soviet Educational Vision Among Caucasian Jews in the 1920s: Policies, Characteristics and Trends (online) (ru)
• Arusiak Agababian “I Speak Three/Four Languages”: A Multilingualism Phenomenon Among the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus (ru)
• Ksenia Viktorova Selection of Dialect, Lettering and Teaching Aids for the Revitalization of Juhuri in the Moscow Community of  Mountain Jews (ru)

15:30–17:30 MSK (16:30–18:30 GET)
Moderator:  Arusiak Agababian
• Ekaterina Norkina Jewish Community of Novorossiysk at the End of the 19th and Beginning of the 20th Centuries (ru)
• Valery Dymshits Khaytagi Mountain Jews: From Agriculture to the Fur Industry (ru)
• Lyubov  Solovyova The Women's Space of Krasnaya Sloboda: Some Features of Everyday Life in the 1970s (ru)
• Svetlana Amosova, Elena Fomenko Self-presentation of Mountain Jewesses in Oral Autobiographical Narratives and Published Literary Texts (ru)

June 7
Tbilisi, Georgian American University

11:00–11:30 GET (10:00–10:30 MSK) — Opening ceremony 

11:30–13:30 GET (10:30–12:30 MSK)
Moderator: Chen Bram
• Amir Lekach Avivi Ioseb Bardanashvili’s First Symphony (Exodus): A Musical Commentary on a Political Struggle? (en)
• Nehama Lavi Multicultural Aspects in the Music of Caucasian Jews (en)
• Benjamin Arenstein Reading Rustaveli in Hebrew: Boris Gaponov’s Translation of The Knight in the Panther’s Skin (en)
• Ekaterina Belkina  "Chudaidat" Manuscripts in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (St. Peterburg, Russia) (en)

14:30–16:00 GET (13:30–15:00 MSK)
Moderator: Tatyana Emelianenko  
• Chen Bram Jewish – Muslim Relations Between Central Asia and Israel: 'Bukharan Jews' in a ‘Mixed’ Jewish-Arab City (en)
• Alisa Barannikova Jewish exodus from Uzbekistan (ru)
• Haya Sigal Digitization of Jewish Cemeteries in Central Asia (en)

16:30–17:30 GET (15:30–16:30 MSK)
Moderator: Ekaterina Belkina
• Thea Gomelauri The Lailashi Codex: the Crown of Georgian Jewry (online) (en)
• Ya'acov Sarig Reflections of Contacts between the Mountain Jews and Georgians in Caucasian Popular Literature (online) (en)

June 8
Tbilisi, Georgian American University

11:00–12:00 GET (10:00–11:00 MSK)
• Mateusz Majman “Our Neighbors Had Numbers on Their Forearms”: Examining the Memory of the Holocaust Among Mountain Jews in Soviet Dagestan (en)
• Evgenii Vlasov Bogdanovka’s “Memory Landscape”: the Mountain’s Jews’ Holocaust “Realm of Memory” (ru)

12:15–14:15 GET (11:15–13:15 MSK)
Moderator: Zeev Levin
• Tatyana Emelianenko  Bukharan Jews and Muslims: Culture of Communication (ru)
• Valentina Viktorovskaia “It’s not a Chaikhana, it is the House of the Governor-General!,” or how some Jews became imperial intermediaries in Russian Turkestan (en)
• Thomas Loy Jewish Marv: Colonial Encounters and Economic Practices Between Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia (en)
• Anastassiya Krovitskaya, Dmitry Popov The place of Bukharan Jews in the Historical Narrative of Bukhara (ru)

14:30–16:00 GET (13:30–15:00 MSK)
Moderator: Svetlana Amosova
• Zeev Levin Achievements of Ozet and Komzet in USSR (1924-1938). A Retrospective Analysis (en)
• Sergey Shpagin Features of the activities of the OZET in Rostov-on-Don (online) (ru)
• Yulia Oreshina, Giorgi Zazunishvili Book presentation: Collectivization and Cultural Autonomy: The Early Soviet Period of Jewish History in Georgia  (en)

FOR QUESTIONS AND INQUERIES: rc@jewish-museum.ru

Image: S. Boim, B. Sukhanov. Illustration “Jewish collective farm”, 1931

Schedule
05 June 2024 (12:15-17:30)
07 June 2024 (11:00-17:30)
08 June 2024 (11:00-16:00)