05/09/2025
A Look at Jewish Life in Azerbaijan
Jewish Clevelanders Barry Guttman and Rafi Mahilnitski, participating in the upcoming Cabinet Study Mission to Azerbaijan.
Barry Guttman and Rafi Mahilnitski, two Jewish Cleveland young leaders recently returned from a once-in-a-lifetime journey, visiting the Jewish community in Azerbijan with Jewish Federations of North America's National Young Leadership Cabinet (NYLC).
Read a reflection on the trip from Rafi Mahilnitski below:
Pesach (Passover) is a time when we talk about oppression and freedom. If you think about it, with the amount of time Jews spent in Egypt, they could have easily been absorbed into the country and taken on its culture. They would no longer have been Jews, and they would have lost their Jewish identity. Our sages emphasize that the exodus from Egypt was not only about freedom from oppression – it was also crucial in allowing us to maintain our Jewish identity.
If a person is in a foreign land for too long and is surrounded by that culture, that environment begins to affect them, and they slowly blend into it. This is an important lesson for us today as well: if we as Jews don’t have proper support and resources to understand and take pride in our Jewish identity, we risk losing our connection to Judaism altogether. That is why it is so important for us to support people living in Jewish “deserts” – areas with limited access to Jewish life and resources. Preserving Judaism is a central theme we highlight on Passover and carry with us throughout the year.
I, along with 120 most amazing Jews from all over the US, had an opportunity to go to Azerbaijan on my first National Young Leadership Cabinet mission right before Pesach. It’s a fascinating country that was part of the Former Soviet Union, with massive geopolitical significance, located between Iran and Russia. It’s an authoritarian Muslim state with large natural resources – and yet Azerbaijan uniquely embraces its Jewish population and Israel like no other country in the region. The country has strong economic ties with Israel, supplying 60% of Israeli oil and importing Israeli weaponry to help contain Iran.
For me, the trip was deeply personal – it took me back 20 years to growing up in Belarus, in a community very similar to the one in Baku. We had nearly identical Jewish schools, synagogues, old ladies at the Joint day programs, and most importantly, proud and eager youth, looking to leave their mark on the Jewish nation.
During our visit to the Jewish Agency’s training camp, we met counselors from all over the FSU. One of them, Ksenia, grew up thinking she was Muslim until she discovered at 17 that her family’s original last name was Koyfman. Since then – and for the past five years – she has been actively involved in her Jewish community, organizing summer camps and volunteering as a toddler teacher at a Sunday school. After October 7th, she began wearing a Magen David necklace, making sure its visible to all wherever she rides the subway. Her dream is to gather her entire family – now spread across several countries – at one Shabbat table.
At the The Jewish Agency for Israel Aliyah dinner celebrating new Olim moving to Israel, I met 22-year-old Maga. He works as a risk analyst at the country’s largest bank and loves his job. He feels financially and socially secure, but still, he’s been desperate to learn Hebrew to help him integrate when he moves to Israel in the coming months. After October 7th, he made the decision to make Aliyah and be closer to the people he feels deeply connected to – even though he’s never met them. He is planning to serve in the IDF. In 2024, over two hundred Olim came from Azerbaijan, with many Russians using the country as a transit hub on their journey to Israel.
We also visited old bubbies who showered us with hugs and kisses and thanked Joint for their Passover packages and daily programs. They proudly showed us the smartphones JDC gave them, which allow them to join programs remotely and FaceTime with their kids and grandkids – in their words, helping them be the “cool” grandparents. They were eager to share their life stories, their families, and their worries about the Russia/Ukraine conflict, as many have relatives in those countries.
Lastly, we visited a Chabad Jewish day school and met with high schoolers. They were shy at first, but once warmed up, spoke fluent English and Hebrew. We talked about their lives and were surprised to learn that they’ve never experienced antisemitism and are proud to be Jewish in front of their non-Jewish peers.
It was an unbelievable experience to witness a once-oppressed Jewish community revived and thriving in this tolerant Muslim country. Azerbaijani Jews are maintaining their proud Jewish identity despite historical and geographical challenges – with the unwavering support of Jewish Federation of Cleveland and its partner agencies.
National Young Leadership Cabinet (NYLC) is the premier leadership philanthropic program of JFNA for dedicated men and women, ages 30 to 45, from across the United States and Canada who are deeply committed to building a strong, vibrant future for the Jewish people. For more information, please contact Jessie Bruder at jbruder@jewishcleveland.org.
