Historical Necropolis of Jewish Subbotniks in the Town of Zima, Irkutsk Region

Abstract

The Subbotniks, or gers, were Russian Sabbatarians. The article describes a necropolis of exiled Jewish Subbotniks founded in the village of Zima, Irkutsk Province, in the early 1830s. The Subbotniks shared the necropolis with the Jews since both exile communities maintained close routine and religious contacts. The research objective was to catalog the authentic tombstones of 1865–1947 and determine the influence of Judaism on the religious life the Subbotniks. The article gives a general description of the Sabbatarian sects that appeared among Russian peasants at the turn of the XVIII–XIX centuries and explains how they ended up in the Irkutsk Province. The author studied the Jewish burial and mourning practices adopted by the Subbotniks and compared the Zima necropolis with traditional Jewish cemeteries. The descriptions of tombstones and epitaphs were collected during the expeditions of 2017 and 2019.The surviving tombstones were cataloged, and the epitaphs were translated from Hebrew into Russian to compile a list of those buried in the cemetery during the period in question. The research also included the tombstones that belonged to the Jews who lived in Zima in the XIX – early XX centuries.

Keywords

• subbotnik sectarians
• gers, traditional jewish cemetery
• burial in judaism
• epitaphs
• tombstones
• town of zima