- Population
- ~100,000-120,000 (estimates 80,000-160,000)
- Location
- Beersheba, Hadera, Or Akiva, Sderot, Acre, Kiryat Yam, Migdal HaEmek, Nof HaGalil, Ofakim, Kiryat Gat and other towns of the periphery, Haifa bay and south Tel Aviv
Mountain Jews, who call themselves Juhuro and are known in Israel simply as Kavkazim, are a Persian-speaking Jewish people from the foothills and Caspian coast of Azerbaijan and Dagestan, where their ancestors settled some fifteen centuries ago. A few hundred families reached the Land of Israel before 1948 and helped found Be'er Ya'akov, but most came in two waves, about 12,000-20,000 in the 1970s and about 55,000 between 1989 and 2001, so that around 100,000-120,000 Mountain Jews and their children now live in Israel. They settled close to their extended families in development towns such as Hadera, Or Akiva, Sderot, Beersheba and Acre, where they keep about fifteen synagogues of their own. Weddings are held as two separate feasts, one for the bride and one for the groom, and still ring with the lezginka; at Simchat Torah a vow is sealed by wrapping a new embroidered cloth around the Torah scroll.