Nadene Goldfoot
Photo courtesy of The Circassian Heritage Center in Kfar Kama, Israel.
When teaching English in Tzfat's (Safed), Israel junior high from 1980 to the end of November1985, I found that some of my students were 14 year old Circassians of kitta Tet (9th graders). They were quiet, polite students and were all boys. In fact, in that particular class, they were a small group, all boys. We were all learning, me with Hebrew that they had aced, and they with English, so I think we had a good tolerance of each other's struggle in language. They lived in their own village, Rihaniya, as I understood, near Safed. Located about 8 km (almost 5 miles) north of Safed, it falls under the jurisdiction of Merom HaGalil Regional Council.
One of my students could have been like Circassian, Madaji, 50, who is proud of his people. After retiring as an officer from the Israel Defense Forces, he decided to devote himself to teaching Israelis about the Circassians “because nobody knows anything about us.”
Madaji explained that "“Boys lived with their families only until they were six years old,” Madaji explained. “Then they were sent to live with another family where they learned not to be spoiled and how to fight. They were given horses to train with. In our language, Adyghe, the word for horse and brother is the same, see-shu. That’s how bonded each fighter was with his horse.”
Safed (Hebrew: צפת Tsfat) is a city in the Upper Galilee region of Israel, and is one of the oldest centers for Jewish learning and spirituality, home to the Kabbalah movement which is popular with celebrities. We had moved here from Haifa after making aliyah in 1980 and becoming certified in a 10 month program. Danny and I were both Jewish teachers from Oregon, and I was a 22 year teacher with much experience.
My understanding of the Circassians was that they had been helping Jewish immigrants who came to farm the land, and they would ride their horses and guard them. "Circassians in Palestine maintained good relations with the Yishuv and later the Jewish community in Israel, in part due to the language shared with many of the First Aliyah immigrants from Russia who settled in the Galilee. Circassians and Jews also sympathized with each other's histories of exile. When conflict between Jews and Arabs began during the British Mandate, the Circassians most often took either neutral or pro-Jewish stances."
Circassians in Israel (Adyghe: Израилым ис Адыгэхэр; Hebrew: הצ'רקסים בישראל) are Israelis who are ethnic Circassians. They are a branch of the Circassian diaspora, which was formed as a consequence of the 19th-century Circassian genocide that was carried out by the Russian Empire during the Russo-Circassian War; Circassians are a Northwest Caucasian ethnic group who natively speak the Circassian languages and originate from the historical country-region of Circassia in the North Caucasus. The majority of Circassians in Israel are Muslims.
Israeli Circassians largely adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam; they number about 4,000–5,000 and live primarily in two towns: Kfar Kama (Кфар Кама), and Rehaniya (Рихьаные). They are descended from two Circassian diaspora groups who were settled in the Galilee by the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s.
"Circassians in Israel – whose population is estimated at 4,000 people – are divided between the two villages of Kfar Kama (Lower Galilee, district of Tiberias) and Rihaniya (Lebanese border, district of Safed).
This population is a unique example of a non-Arab (but Caucasian) Muslim group which claims an active Israeli citizenship and who, contrary to such a situation might imply, retains traditional cultural elements very meaningful while enjoying an indisputable civic integration.
Israelis but not Jews, Muslims but not Arabs, how Circassians of Israel could find their right place facing the two identitary entities competing, without leaving much space vacant, the legitimacy of a presence and whose stories, disasters and pains confront and compete rather than admit and understand each other? “Traitors” and “Muslims in the service of Zionism” for some, “second-class citizens” for others, categorizations at work provoke excluding mechanisms for Circassians. The concepts of nationality or religious affiliation, yet commonly applied in the Israeli-Palestinian space, are not efficient enough to define this “minority within the minority”, unable to recognize itself within any of the two dominant groups but which also seeks to distinguish from the “third way” embodied by Druzes. Circassians of Israel, at the edge of all these borders, eventually built its own ones, although fragile, between nostalgia for a lost Caucasus and identitary reconfigurations." by Eleonore Merza ( is an anthropologist who studies Adygean diaspora communities in Israel and beyond)..
Dr. Merza was born in Paris circa 1980. Her father's family were Circassian, originally from Maykop in Adygea, but who were forced to flee from the region in the 1860s by the Russian government. This era became known as the Circassian genocide, where 1.5 million people were killed, and 90% of the same number who remained were forced to emigrate. Merza's great-grandfather, Mamet Merzamwkhwo, was a refugee who fled, first to the Balkans, then to the Golan Heights where twelve Circassian villages were founded, including Mansoura where the family settled. Later the inhabitants were expelled and moved to Syria. (Eleonore's English is impeccable).
In contrast, Merza's mother's family were Algerian Jews; the two met at a Communist Party meeting in Paris whilst studying abroad. They married and lived in Paris, where Merza and her brother Alexandre-Indar were born. Merza spent her early childhood in Amman, Jordan as her father worked there an engineer. She attended a French school, but lived in a Circassian community.
"In 1976, the Circassian community won the right to maintain its own educational system separate from the Israeli government's Department of Arab Affairs. As a result, the community manages its own separate educational system, which ensures that its culture is passed down to the younger generations In 2011, a bill was passed by the Knesset to allocate NIS 680 million to the development of education, tourism, and infrastructure in Circassian and Druze villages.". I guess we in Safed were lucky that they were able to get to our junior high. These young people had a great system going; the Jewish ones helped the Muslims with their Hebrew and the Muslims helped the Jewish ones with their Arabic. Yes, all three languages had to be learned in this land.
Signs appear in all 3 languages, too.
Circassians are one of only two minority groups in Israel (alongside the Druze) from whom conscripts are drawn for compulsory military service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). However, the IDF restricts conscription for the Circassian and Druze communities to males only; this policy is in contrast to the one applied to Israel's Jewish majority, from which females are also drafted alongside males.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassians_in_Israel
https://journals.openedition.org/bcrfj/5911 by Eleonore Merza
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