History of museum

A few years ago, a group of Mountain-Jewish businessmen and community leaders led by God Nisanov, Zarah Iliev and the president of the Mountain Jews Fund “ STMEGI” - German Zakharyaev, decided to establish historical and ethnographic museum in the Red Village -suburb of Azerbaijani city Guba (a unique settlement, the only one in the former USSR, where the majority of the population are representatives of the Jewish ethnos). Initially, the museum was supposed to present artifacts collected from all over the Caucasus, including cult utensils, printed and manuscript documents, and other things demonstrating the Jewish life of this region.

Due to the wide emigration of Jews from Red Village and generally from all the Caucasus, many experts believe that the museum will become a kind of memorial to the disappearing community.

Exhibits for the museum gathered from the different part of Caucasus. The museum will demonstrate household items, such as, horse-drawn carriages of the 19th century, as well as various documents of a spiritual and secular nature.

A unique exhibit is the so-called “Chopped book” - a copy of the Torah, which took the blow of the blade of a Persian military leader. Thus, the book saved the life of the rabbi of the Red Village a few centuries ago.

Books in Juuri were also collected for the museum; a special place was assigned for dictionaries. The museum intends to create the world's largest library in this language, which should develope linguistic research on this unique dialect, which is spoken by no more than 100 thousand people around the world.

The founders of the museum hope that it will become not just a repository of artifacts, it is also will become important cultural and educational center