(Jewish Group) Armenia has had few Jews and a poor relationship with Israel. That could be changing.
Just outside a remote village two hours’ drive east of Yerevan, in a clearing reachable 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 reflects 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 flourished in Armenia — home of the biblical Noah’s Ark and the world’s first Christian nation.
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