(Jewish Group) Azerbaijan's Mountain Jews museum is part of a dying community's rescue plan

[Behind the Aegis]

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Azerbaijan (JTA) — For one day each summer, the hills overlooking this centuries-old Jewish town echo with the sound of wailing women.

The women ascend up a narrow path from this town of several hundred residents in northern Azerbaijan to its vast cemetery. It’s an annual procession on Tisha b’Av, the Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

At the cemetery, each woman sits next to a loved one’s grave – usually a husband or child, but sometimes a parent or sibling. She sings mournfully for hours in Juhuri, a dying Jewish language made up of Farsi and Hebrew with Aramaic and Turkic influences that is spoken only by the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus.

Hundreds perform the ritual each year; some travel halfway across the world to attend. It is a testament to how Krasnaiya Sloboda’s Mountain Jews have endured for about a millennium since Persian Jews established the town with the blessing of a local Muslim ruler.

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