Jewish religious community leader wishes Azerbaijan prosperity

Milikh Yevdayev, chairman of the Mountain Jews Religious Community in Baku, has stated that the Almighty will always support Azerbaijan, and that success and good fortune will follow.

"I wish the Almighty to grant Azerbaijan so many happy days for all the peoples in the country to live in prosperity. We have been living in Azerbaijan for thousands of years. We will continue living with Azerbaijanis in peace, brotherhood and harmony," he told journalists, Caliber.Az reports.

According to the Azerbaijani Jewish community, approximately 24,000 Jews, including Mountain Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, and Georgian Jews, live in Azerbaijan. Mountain Jews settled primarily in Baku and the northern Guba district. The majority of Ashkenazi Jews live in Baku and Sumgayit. Jews have been present in Azerbaijan for more than two millennia.

The Jewish community has thrived in Azerbaijan, where 97% of the population is Muslim. Girmizi Gasaba (or Krasnaya Sloboda, meaning "red village") is Azerbaijan's only all-Jewish town outside of Israel and the United States. The village got its name from the use of red tiles on many of the roofs. This village, which is considered the world's last surviving shtetl, is home to approximately 3,200 Mountain Jews. Before the Holocaust, a shtetl was a small town in Central and Eastern Europe populated by Jews.

Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani government has been assisting Jewish communities living outside of the country. The Azerbaijani Consulate General in the United States helped Jews rebuild the fire-damaged Chabad synagogue in California. In 2016, the Azerbaijani embassy in Washington was one of the venues for the Jewish religious Hanukkah celebration.