Kutaisi

The second center of Georgian Jewry (Imereti region) with a famed synagogue square; nearly emptied by the 1970s-90s aliyah.

Modern locality anchor

Kutaisi

Georgia · City · 42.3°N 42.7°E

This anchor orients the sourced locality record. It is not a reconstructed historical position or border; the single map below provides geographic context.

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Where is Kutaisi?

Land geometry: Natural Earth 1:50m via world-atlas. Pins mark modern localities or representative regional anchors stored on Atlas place records, not historical borders and not reconstructed positions. · Sources & methods

THE COMMUNITY TIMELINE · EVERY NODE DATED

What happened to the Jewish community of Kutaisi?

1600–1970

Imereti-region community

1970–1999

1970s-90s mass aliyah

2000–present

Vestigial community

Today

Vestigial community; Kutaisi Jews prominent in Israel.

LANGUAGES & COMMUNITY

What did Kutaisi sound like?

Hebrew (עברית, Ivrit)

AFTER · IN FULL COLOR

What survives today?

In Kutaisi

Vestigial community; Kutaisi Jews prominent in Israel.

Kutaisi synagogue
synagogue · public landmark
Jewish quarter
historic quarter · public landmark

In Israel & the diaspora

The community's story continued elsewhere — these places carry it now.

Moscow Saint Petersburg Kyiv Minsk Odessa Tel Aviv Haifa Jerusalem Beersheba New York City Berlin

KEEP GOING

Related places & stories

Moscow

Russia

Outside the Pale until 1917, then the Soviet Jewish capital - GOSET Yiddish theater, the Choral Synagogue (1906), Stalinist persecution (1952 Night of the Murdered Poets), the refusenik movement, and a post-1991 institutional revival.

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Saint Petersburg

Russia

Court Jews and capital elite under residence quotas (Gunzburg, Polyakov); home of the Grand Choral Synagogue (1893, second-largest in Europe) and Russia's second-largest community today.

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Kyiv

Ukraine

From the 10th-century Kievan Letter to Sholem Aleichem's Jewish Kiev and Babi Yar (29-30 Sept 1941: 33,771 Jews murdered in two days) - today Ukraine's largest, war-affected community.

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SOURCES & REVIEW

Georgia - Virtual Jewish History Tour
Jewish Virtual Library · open source
Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (place entry)
Macmillan Reference USA · 2007

Reviewed 2026-07-30

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