Jews of the former Soviet Union, the Russian Jews as they are known in the West, are generally defined as the Russian-speaking descendants of the former inhabitants of the Pale of Settlement.
There are however many smaller groups of Jews, each with their own language, traditions & unique history, living in the former Soviet regions. Most important and most numerous are the Tajik-speaking Bukharan Jews of Central Asia & the Tat-speaking Mountain Jews of the Eastern Cacusus.
The European Jews or Euro-Jews of the Rus are desecended from either Sephardic migrations or from the Khazars, a nomadic horse-tribe that converted to Judaism on the steppes of Ukraine. Their history is the Sephardic Jewish history common to all Euro-Jews. It will be covered more completely in a later article.
To a scholar, as well as to an outsider, there is a most obvious similarity. These Jewish communities form pockets of 'internal aliens' within the larger Ashkenazi world. Each presents a mirror, posing questions about Jewish identity, ethnicity & begging for a re-examination of the history along with the diversity of the Jewish world.
These ethnic Jewish communities are among the only Jewish communities that have continued to reside & work in the same areas. In the rest of the world, the 100 years from 1880 to 1980 was not only a period of catastrophe, it was also a period of mass Jewish migration. Only some of these migrations were voluntary or forced, today most of the Jewish communities are no longer where they were a 100 years ago. In fact, nowadays much of Jewish ethnography is more like paleo-ethnography.
In contrast, the Jews of the Caucasus & Central Asia still live where they once formed separate, distinct & unique ethnic groups. Naturally, the wave of Soviet Jewish emigration coupled with the population movements of the post-Soviet era had their effect on these communities. None-the-less, these more than any other ethnic Jewish group, offer a unique & valuable resource for historical & ethnic study.
Ever since Jews started leaving the Holy Land there have been 2 potential migration routes: east or west. Historically, the first diaspora was in Babylon, to the east. Its origins lay in the deportation of the Jews from Israel by the Assyrians. The Jews were also taken from Judah by the Babylonians. Progressionally, through the centuries, the Babylonian community was augmented by waves of refugees, especially after the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 AD. Throughout the 1st millennium AD the Babylonian Diaspora remained the most important Jewish community as well as the center of Spiritual development, as the Babylonian Talmud denotes most forcefully.
