This spring, along with just under 120 of my nearest and dearest fellow Cabinet Chevre, I embarked on a Jewish Federations of North America mission to Baku, in the Republic of Azerbaijan.   

Wait… where?   

The same Azerbaijan that shares borders with Iran and Russia? A delegation of Jews traveling to a Muslim-majority, former Soviet country in the post-October 7th world?   

Well, actually, yes.  

Each spring, members of the National Young Leadership Cabinet travel to a foreign country to visit, learn from, and engage with a local Jewish community. Cabinet is the Jewish Federation system’s premiere leadership and philanthropic development program, and the yearly International Study Mission gives us first-hand experience of the humanitarian work done by Federation and its core partners, including World ORT, The Jewish Agency for Israel, and the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). Our recent missions have taken us to Argentina and Uruguay, to Hungary and Latvia, and to Israel. And in Spring 2025, this cadre of American Jews touched down in the Southern Caucasus country of Azerbaijan.  

In today’s post-October 7th world, as global antisemitism is more in the spotlight than ever in recent memory, the focus of our mission was on Jewish life in Azerbaijan and the country’s relationship with Israel. As many countries have weakened or cut ties with the Jewish State, Azerbaijan has not. In fact, Azerbaijan is Israel’s largest supplier of oil, and the two countries recently signed a strategic energy agreement, in which Israel awarded Azerbaijan’s state oil company (SOCAR) a license for gas exploration off Israel’s Mediterranean coast. Azerbaijan somehow walks a tightrope as a Shi’ite-majority country with strong ties to the Jewish State, and the relationship has only strengthened in recent years. And as increasing daylight shines on Iran’s role in the violence and barbarity of October 7th, Iran’s historical and cultural tensions with Azerbaijan have grown.  

There we were, delegates on behalf of the North American Jewish community, in a Muslim-majority country that shares a 428-mile border with the country whose proxies caused the largest destruction of Jewish life since the Holocaust. We would learn that Azerbaijan has become an unexpected model of religious tolerance for Jews in the region, a country in which a small Jewish community has lived and often thrived for generations.  We’d also learn that in 2025, Azerbaijan will send its band Mamagama to compete in Eurovision – the lead singer is a proud Jew who says he never faces antisemitism in Baku.  In fact, our group was told repeatedly by members of the local Jewish community that today “there is no antisemitism in Azerbaijan.”  

Yes, it is tough to gauge the depth of truth in this statement from just a week of visits, but our tour of the well-funded and highly regarded Ohr Avner School only helped to support the concept that antisemitism at least seems to not be a major concern. Many of the students celebrate Ramadan and Pesach at home, since, we were told, it is common for Jewish kids to have one Jewish parent and one Muslim parent. How (un)usual is intermarriage with Jews in other Muslim-majority countries?  

The idea that “there is no antisemitism in Azerbaijan” was further reinforced when we danced the hora at a JDC Chesed center with warm and sassy Azerbaijani seniors who looked remarkably like our own bubbes and zadies. Even though these cheerful octogenarians spoke little-to-no-English (and Azeri wasn’t in high school foreign language programs for most of us in Cabinet), it struck home that Jewish customs, prayers, and songs like hava nagila transcend language, borders, and time. And with Pesach just after the Mission, our group packed hundreds of care-packages destined for Jews in need in and around Baku, all powered by Federation’s support of the JDC.  

One of Jewish Federations’ proudest ongoing accomplishments is helping Jews around the world make Aliyah in partnership with The Jewish Agency for Israel. For Jews in or near the Caucasus wishing to make Aliyah, Azerbaijan has been a welcome resting spot on the way, and our group enjoyed thought-provoking conversations with Jewish teens from nearby countries who were trained to help prepare these Jews for a move to Israel. We were consistently reminded how our faith, customs, and values connect us to Jews around the globe, and it was notable that retreats were hosted in Azerbaijan, of all places.  

For many of us, one of the most memorable experiences was our day trip to Quba, known as “Jerusalem of the Caucasus,” and one of the ancient towns in which the Mountain Jews lived mostly in isolation from the rest of the Jewish world for over two millennia. Quba is home to 11 communities and at one point had 13 synagogues. The main Jewish section, renamed “Red Village” in Soviet times, sits just across the Qudyal River from a Muslim community. Today, it is still home to synagogues like the Gilaki Synagogue and the 6-Dome Synagogue, a Jewish museum, and summer homes of Jewish Azerbaijanis, many of whom now live abroad or elsewhere in the country but maintain real estate roots there. In Quba, the Jews adapted, but did not assimilate, and like in a mosque, when entering the synagogues, women wore head coverings, and we were all asked to remove our shoes.  

Our visit to Baku offered a snapshot of a Jewish ecosystem held together by customs and traditions similar to our own at home. Since October 7th, conversations about increasing incidents of antisemitism worldwide, the way Jews can and should relate to the rest of the world, and the war in Gaza are commonplace in many circles. Visiting Azerbaijan, whose southern neighbor freely calls for the destruction of Israel, of the Jews, and of America was eye-opening. While understood in the context of an authoritarian country, it does seem possible, that, in fact, “there is no antisemitism in Azerbaijan” today. In partnership with the JDC and The Jewish Agency’s work on the ground, Federation’s support helps this small Azeri Jewish community to thrive. Cabinet’s trip to Baku illuminated how our resources really do make a difference in sustaining Jewish life around the world, even in the most surprising of places.