(Jewish Group) A time when Tbilisi, Georgia, had a rich Yiddish cultural life

[Behind the Aegis]

A Yiddish school in Tbilisi, published in 1928. The city is referred to here by its Russian name, Tiflis Photo by the Forward

“Yiddish is a language of our memory and migration trails.”

So said 72-year old Elena Schechter, a lifelong resident of the city of Tbilisi, Georgia, during a recent interview with the Forverts.

Schechter’s father had fled Moldova in the early 1930s and found Georgia to be a place where he could be openly proud of his Jewish heritage. During the era of the USSR, Jews in Georgia were allowed to study Hebrew and Yiddish, while many others across the Soviet Union were prohibited from doing so. Georgia had its own Ashkenazi synagogue, along with a theater staging performances in the Yiddish language.

These days, Georgia’s Ashkenazi Jewish community is almost gone. The vast majority of Schechter’s relatives and friends of Jewish origin migrated to Israel in the 1970s and 1990s, while she and her immediate family remained. What’s left is only a small group of elderly people as well as some teenagers living with their grandparents, waiting to graduate from high school and join their parents who already reside in Israel or elsewhere.

“Sometimes, I like to joke that if Georgians treated us badly, I would have had more courage and reasons to make aliyah, but I actually feel accepted and welcome in our country,” Elena said.

more...