Skip to Atlas content
PlacesPeople & PlacesLiving · since 500

GEORGIA · 41.7°N 44.8°E · CITY

Tbilisi

Kingdom of Georgia · to 1801Russian Empire/USSR · 1801-1991Georgia · 1991-present

Capital of Georgian Jewry - one of the oldest Diaspora communities (tradition holds 6th c. BCE exile origins) - which uniquely suffered no recorded medieval pogroms and where the vernacular was Georgian, not a Judeo-language.

Modern locality anchor

Tbilisi

Georgia · City · 41.7°N 44.8°E

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

View location

Where is Tbilisi?

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 Tbilisi?

500–1801

Georgian Jewish community (origins dated to 6th c. BCE exile by tradition; medieval era documented)

1801–1991

Russian Empire and Soviet era

1991–present

Post-1991 mass aliyah; small community

Today

Today

Small community; 26 centuries of memory (mostly in Israel now). Note: the community vernacular was Georgian (Judeo-Georgian outside the 12-canon) - described here in prose, not tagged.

LANGUAGES & COMMUNITY

What did Tbilisi sound like?

Hebrew (עברית, Ivrit)

AFTER · IN FULL COLOR

What survives today?

In Tbilisi

Small community; 26 centuries of memory (mostly in Israel now). Note: the community vernacular was Georgian (Judeo-Georgian outside the 12-canon) - described here in prose, not tagged.

  • Great Synagogue of Tbilisi

    synagogue · public landmark

    Built 1895-1904.

  • David Baazov Museum of History of Georgian Jews

    museum · museum

In Israel & the diaspora

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

MoscowSaint PetersburgKyivMinskOdessaTel AvivHaifaJerusalemBeershebaNew York CityBerlin

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.

Open the place story

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.

Open the place story

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.

Open the place story

SOURCES & REVIEW

  • Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (place entry)

    Macmillan Reference USA · 2007

  • YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

    YIVO Institute for Jewish Research / Yale University Press · 2010 · open source

  • Vital Statistics: Jewish Population of the World (2024 country figures)

    Jewish Virtual Library · 2024 · open source

  • Georgia - Virtual Jewish History Tour

    Jewish Virtual Library · open source

Reviewed 2026-07-30

Reading about Hebrew (עברית, Ivrit)? Baba can help you understand the languages in context →