Preserving Synagogues in Post-Soviet Georgia

According to local tradition, Jews first came to the Caucasian land of Georgia following the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE. Whatever their actual origins, by the early Middle Ages this mountainous territory with little history of anti-Semitism had a significant Jewish community that would develop its own dialect of one of the local languages. They were joined by Ashkenazi immigrants in the 19th century, as Georgia came under Russian rule.