The Forsaken Converts of Russia: Pioneers and Fighters

"The Subbotniks" is a general term for a number of groups of Russian Christians that embraced Judaism, some of whom then underwent formal conversion. All of the researchers agree that the Vysoki descendents belong to one of these groups. Documents from the Russian archives clearly testify to the fact that the forefathers of those that are known as Subbotniks (from the term, Subbot, or Sabbath, in Russian), observed at least some of the Jewish commandments in the first half of the 18th century. The church described the members of the Judaizing sect as follows: They observe the Sabbath as is the Jewish custom, they do not eat pork, they deny belief in Jesus, and they perform ritual circumcision.

In the 1820’s, the persecution of the Subbotniks by the Russian church and state increased, until the majority of them were exiled from the European part of Russia to Siberia, the Caucasus and the southern Volga region. Most of their children were turned over to Christian families and were baptized against their will. The men were drafted by force into the Czar’s army. The exiled Subbotniks established new communities in the regions of their exile.

Since the middle of the 19th century, a portion of them returned to Judaism. Since then these have been divided into two main groups: the Subbotnik Gerim (Hebrew for converts) and Subbotnik Karaites. A significant number of Subbotnik Jews even took an active part in the Zionist movement. The Subbotniks moved to Israel during both the First and Second Aliyah and settled in the pioneering settlements in the Galilee. Amongst these, the most famous are the Dubrovin and Korkin families.

Lieutenant Colonel Yossi Korkin, a descendant of the famous Korkin family, was killed in Lebanon in a tragic accident involving an elite IDF naval unit. Even the legendary guard, Alexander Zaid, is a descendant of a Subbotnik Jewish family on his mother’s side. He was born in the village of Zima in eastern Siberia, where until today there are descendants of Subbotnik Jews who are not being allowed to make aliya to Israel. Stubborn rumors also suggest that former IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan is a descendant of a Subbotnik Jewish family.

Alek Ron, a senior police officer who previously served as Commander of the Northern District, also comes from a Subbotnik family. His maternal grandmother converted at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia and made aliya to Israel with her family. According to him, his grandmother never spoke of her origins. Over the years, his family encountered many people who claimed they were not Jewish.

“When my mother was in school, one of the students insulted her by saying ‘you are gentiles’ ”, he recounts. “When my parents wanted to get married, some people approached my paternal grandmother and said, ‘How can your son marry the daughter of a gentile?’ My grandmother spoke up and did not allow them to denigrate my mother and her family.”

In the 20s and 30s a number of Subbotnik families succeeded in making aliya. During the Second World War, many were exterminated by the Germans, who viewed them as Jews in every sense of the word.

When the Soviet regime was repressing religion and forbade any type of religious rituals, most of the Subbotnik villages, which were quite isolated, succeeded in observing the Jewish commandments discretely, much more so than in the other Jewish population centers in the Soviet Union. However, at the beginning of the sixties, the regime succeeded in suppressing Subbotnik Jewish life in various ways.

In the seventies, the inhabitants of the village Ilyinka, which is not far from Vysoki, launched an effort to make aliya, and even merited a visit from Natan Sharansky and his patron, the scientist and famous dissident Andrei Sakharov. By the middle of the 1990s, most of the residents of Ilyinka had succeeded in making aliya to Israel. Today, just five Jews remain in the village.

Dr. Velvel Chernin, a former Jewish Agency emissary who researched the Subbotniks and now works with the Shavei Israel organization, estimates that some 20,000 Subbotnik Jews and their descendants reside today in various villages throughout the Caucasus, Siberia and southern Russia, with Vysoki being one of the larger ones.

The village was established in 1921 by Subbotnik Jews who hailed from three other villages in the Voronezh district. They had been persecuted by the local Christian population and at a certain stage decided that they would be better off living on their own.

“Our parents lived at the time in villages that were divided into two. One street was for Jews and the other was for Christians”, recounts Eliezer Yakovlevich (68), the cantor of the village. Lubov Yakovlevna adds that "the gentiles harassed them incessantly, and made it difficult for them to support themselves. They did not understand how in the middle of Russia, there were people who could live as Jews”. In response to the persecution, the Subbotnik Jews decided to leave the mixed villages and establish their own towns which would be separate. “Our parents realized that in order to preserve our faith and remain Jewish, they would have to leave”, she says.

Those days were at the beginning of the communist regime. Four extended families – Chernich, Voronin, Grindeev, and Bocharnikov - moved to a more rural area and stopped at the site which became Vysoki. “Our parents gathered together sacks of wheat which they used to pay bribes, and that is how they acquired the plot of land of Vysoki”, relate the elders of the village.