Angels, what are they as we humans talk about them?

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

When the Greeks translated our Torah, they wrote it as a Septuagint, "which  is the earliest extant Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures from the original Hebrew." The Hebrew word, Malakh-in English-messenger, was translated as ANGEL.  Angel is now used for many kinds of supernatural beings mentioned in the Scriptures.  We see the words: Cherubim, Seraphim, heavenly host, etc, but the Bible does not suggest any kinship between these classes, at least in the period before the Babylonian exile.  Only the angels (malakhim) appear in human form:  as emissaries they convey G-d's words to mortals which were Abraham, Manoah, etc, and even perform practical missions.  These episodes come before the Israelites in the Exodus smite Sennacherib's army etc.  The place for the angels is heaven as we learn in Jacob's Dream in their human guise they are not always recognized by mortals.  
                                                    

In Genesis 18:2, Abraham was sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day and was three men standing over him.  He ran to them and bowed and asked them to let him bring them water to wash their feet and to sit under the nearby tree.  They replied to "DO SO, JUST AS YOU HAVE SAID. "  Now Abraham didn't have a Burger King nearby.  He had to tell Sarah to make cakes while he picked out a calf to be killed for meat. Then  he took the cream and milk and the calf meat (veal to us) and gave to the 3 men.  The eerie thing is that they then asked Abraham where Sarah, his wife, was.  Abraham answered that she was in the tent.  Now one angel answered for the three and said that when they return this time next year he would have a son.  Sarah was listening and this was the first inclination for her that she would finally conceive.  Sarah laughed when she heard this as she was very old, past the age of conceiving.  She already had wrinkles in her skin.  

One angel asked why she laughed as is anything beyond Hashem?  The angels were heading for Sodom.  It is apparent that these three men were actually angels in the "guise" of men.  "In other passages,  angels appear without wings, looking human in form. For example, the angels in Genesis 18 and 19 that appeared to Abraham looked human, lacking wings. This is why in the Christian Bible, Hebrews 13:2 can state, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
                                                         

While returning home with property accumulated during his absence of 20 years, Jacob struggled with a heavenly emissary and overcame him, being then given the name ISRAEL.  (Gen. 32:29) Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the break of day when he perceived that he could not overcome him, he struck the socket of his hip, so Jacob's hip-socket was dislocated as he wrestled with him.  Then he said, "Let me go, for dawn has broken." and he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." And he said to him, "What is your name?" He replied."Jacob." He said, "No longer will it be said that your name is Jacob., but Israel.  For you have striven with the Divine and with man and have overcome.  Then Jacob inquired, and he said, "Divulge, if you please, your name."..and his answer was that "for I have seen the Divine face to face, yet my life was spared." This confrontation was a cosmic event in Jewish history.  The Rabbis explained that this "man" was the guardian angel of Esau (Rashi said so) in a human guise.  The Sages teach that every nation has an angel that guides its destiny as an "intermediary" between it and God.  

The Jewish belief in angels goes as far back as the Book of Genesis, where we read about angels calling out to Abraham at the binding of Isaac, angels appearing in Jacob's dream, Jacob fighting with an angel, and many more accounts of angelic activity. Angels are then mentioned numerous times throughout the other books of the Torah, Prophets, and Scriptures.

According to Jewish tradition, an angel is a spiritual being and does not have any physical characteristics. The angelic descriptions provided by the prophets – such as wings, arms etc. – are anthropomorphic, referring to their spiritual abilities and tasks.

In Genesis 16, we see an angel mentioned for the first time who speaks to Hagar after she had left Abram's compound after being treated harshly by Sarai, her former mistress, first wife and niece of Abram.  He uses today's words of psychology in saying to her, "Hagar, maid servant for Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" and she tells him that she is running away from Sarai her mistress. Teachers of today when confronted with a child in their class acting out might say, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"  The angel tells her to return and submit to her domination and if she does he will greatly increase her offspring  and they will not be counted for abundance.  He told her that she would conceive and have a son and that she should name him Ishmael because Hashem heard her prayer and that he would be a wild-ass of a man:  his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him:  and over all his brothers shall he dwell.  

Hagar responded by calling the name of Hashem (THE NAME) (G-d) "You are the God of Vision," for she said, "Could I have seen even here after having seen?"

According to the aside notes in my Tanakh, Hagar was the daughter of Pharaoh. ( Remember that Moses was the adopted son of another daughter of Pharaoh later in time.)  Abram's wife, Sarai, had been abducted from Abram and taken to the Pharaoh to be an added asset in his harem when the Pharaoh discovered she was a married woman and returned her.  After seeing the miracles that were wrought on Sarah's behalf when she was abducted and taken to his palace, he gave Hagar to Sarah saying, "Better that she be a servant in their house than a princess in someone else's," so it was that Hagar, an Egyptian princess, became Abraham's wife and bore him Ishmael.  (This bit of knowledge comes from our Midrash's RASHI, famous biblical commentator  whose whole name was Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki ben Isaac, born in 1040 in Troyes, France, studied in the Rhineland (Germany).  
                                                       

Aliens may exist in a parallel universe, say some today
That's even farther out in imagination than space travel
which the USA is contemplating now.  

Today in our time of being able to reach the moon, learn about the makeup of stars, and the possibility of reaching the planets in space travel and the mysteries unfolding about time in space, there are people who wonder if angels might have been aliens from outer space giving a hand to lesser developed people on planet earth to head in the right directions. 
                                                             

Today, STAR TREK is an old show which shows
Spock here doing the ancient Cohen sign on the graves
of Jews who are Cohens (descendants of Aaron, brother
of Moses who was the high priest or Cohen.) Spock was
one one the crew members of a space vehicle that visited many
new planets.  

President Trump has created a Space Force
as the 6th Military Branch of the Armed Forces. 

                                                          

 After all, 4,000 years ago is nothing when contemplating space travel.  Couldn't some of these visions our ancestors had that came from G-d had been helped out by other life forms that could reach them?  That mystery of how Moses was led by day and by night on the Exodus could have been from outer-space help.  

The characteristics of angels recorded in the Torah and other books in the Tanakh (Old Testament) are that angels are partly human.  They speak Hebrew.  They are also partly superhuman.  They participate in the important events of human life such as pregnancy, birth, etc.  G-d consults his household which includes the angels on every subject.   Our Kabbalah that originated around the town of Safed in Israel had rabbis that greatly extended the theory of angels.  

Reverence to angels is due to them only as the envoys of G-d.  Their superhuman character inspire awe, as in Is: 6;  Ezek.I, this attitude does not extend to individual angels as until the 2nd Temple period after an absence of over 50 years which would be after 586 BCE when the Israelites returned from Babylon and their captivity by Nebuchadnezzar and were able to build the 2nd Temple.  No angel had a personal name even though he may sometimes exercise a permanent function like" the angel who redeems me from all evil" found in Gen. 48:16.  
                                                           

This is the Zoroastrian symbol of a guardian spirit.
Faravahar is winged.   

What ideas did our Jews pick up while held in Babylon?  Zoroastrianism was around then.  This is from ancient Persia.  The religion probably spread to Babylon, too.  Zoroaster rejected the religion of the Bronze Age Iranians Persians) , with their many gods and oppressive class structure, in which the Karvis and Karapans (princes and priests) controlled the ordinary people. He also opposed animal sacrifices and the use of the hallucinogenic Haoma plant (possibly a species of ephedra) in rituals, but held the rooster as a "symbol of light" and associated it with "good against evil" because of his heraldic actions.  Note that our chicken soup is a cure-all for many ills.  
                                               Often in our Tanakh angels were mistaken as humans.  Other biblical passages speak of the travel of angels as if they were flying (Daniel 9:21). However, a supernatural angel could fly with or without wings.  
                                                   

 Seraphim have six wings and cherubim have wings (four in Ezekiel 1 and 10), but most other angelic appearances in Scripture do not include this description.  Didn't somebody else in today's news describe this Ezekiel description as something of a space vehicle and not a person?  
"The Spaceships of Ezekiel (1974) is a book by Josef F. Blumrich (March 17, 1913 – February 10, 2002) about a spaceship that was supposedly observed by the prophet Ezekiel, written while the author was chief of NASA's systems layout branch of the program development office at the Marshall Space Flight Center.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} It was originally published in German by Econ Verlag GmbH under the title Da tat sich der Himmel auf (March 1973)." 

"After ufologists such as Erich von Däniken had pointed to the possibility of interpreting Ezekiel's vision as a report of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, Blumrich decided to disprove the hypothesis. However, a thorough examination convinced him that Ezekiel had, in fact, seen a spaceship. He then made detailed drawings of the alien craft. He decided the technology of the builders must have been somewhat higher than mankind's at the present, and added he had seldom felt as delighted, satisfied, and fascinated by being proven wrong."
                                                 

This is the best of art from the Hellenistic period
It it Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.
Now we can understand our Nike shoes out of Portland better
from 200-190 BCE now in Paris. She has wings.   .  

They were given names first found in the Book of Daniel where GABRIEL and MICHAEL were first mentioned.  The Hellenistic period (323 BCE to about 330 CE) brought out more names such as Uriel and Raphael who were very close to G-d and so were archangels.  The importance of angelology grew under foreign influence.  I imagine this is when they sprouted wings as well.  

It also could be that Moses, when he wrote the Torah dictated to by Hashem, was way ahead of time travel in introducing the angels or messengers.  It remains to be that angels, appearing in human form, were emissaries conveying G-d's words.  

Resource:  https://www.biblehub.com/genesis/18-2.htm
https://www.learnreligions.com/angel-who-wrestled-with-jacob-124068
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/692875/jewish/What-Are-Angels.htm
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/287612/jewish/angels-human-beings-and-the-torah.htm
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/angels/
https://www.compellingtruth.org/angels-wings.html
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/06/18/its-official-trump-announces-space-force-6th-military-branch.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Victory_of_Samothrace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spaceships_of_Ezekiel
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia; angels
Updated 3 hours after publishing.  

ZADOK High: Priest of Judah and Descendant of Aaron, Brother of Moses

Nadene Goldfoot                            

Priests of the Temple, the Cohens from Aaron
Do you see how the back row holds their hands?
That is the sign one sees in a cemetery that the deceased is a Cohen.  

Moses was born c1391 BCE and died 120 years later in c1271 BCE.  His brother, Aaron, was older than he, and lived until the age of 124.  About 50% of Jewish men today bear the Y haplogroup or branch on the genealogy tree that belongs to the Jewish men who were descended from Aaron and were the Cohens, a position of serving in the Temple.  Moses had used the tribe of Levi that they were part of and had Aaron as the 1st Cohen to serve.  It was a inherited position with all the men of Aaron's descendants to serve in the Temple and were Cohens.  Today we see that we all bear tags in our DNA that can be read, and as it turns out, both many Jews and many Arabs are Cohens.  The ancestor of Moses and Aaron was Abraham, and he of course had sons by Hagar, an Egyptian and Sarah, his niece.  He created this fact, so that one of my Arab friends deeply into DNA turned out to be a J1c3d, which is also a tag for many Jews.  It's the J1 and J2 who are found to be Cohens.
                                                    

One exciting fact is that my 1st cousin, son of my father's brother, had a mother who said her family was a family of Cohens.  Up until today, this knowledge has had to be passed down orally from father to son, and her line was said to be a line of Cohens.  I met up with her 2nd cousin by her same surname of Hochfeld- not Cohen, and there just happens to be more surnames of Cohen running through the Jewish family than any other surname.  He was not a Cohen by name but served today in the synagogue as a Cohen because of the oral history.  He tested with a minimal of testing, the 12 alleles, and was found to be a J1.  The tag read as a J-M267.  Indeed, science proved the oral history to be correct.  He was a descendant of Aaron.  

Cohen is a common  spelling for this surname but they have also used Cahan, Cohan, Kagan, Kahn, Kogen, Kohn, Kohen, Katz.  Jews didn't use surnames until a government forced them to do so.  They had to buy names.  They had been calling  themselves names like David, son of Moses.  The Scandinavians do this to this day.  Certain names might have been posted in their town to buy.  
                                                     
A new fact has just been discovered in that DNA testing reveals a group who bear J2a1 and this is a direct line to ZADOK who was a major priest in the Temple and descendant of Aaron.  J2a1i is a subset of this and is just a more recent form with newer descendants.  It's also from Zadok.  

A group of people descending from Pinchas Ben El Azar are J2a1, and this Pinchas is found to be an important connection.    It was " 3,300 years ago, the precisely time of birth of Pinchas Ben El' Azar, the grandson of Aaron HaKohen" that has been found to be the origins of people with J2a1. 
                                                        

High Priest: Zadok

"And HaShem spoke to Moses saying, "Pinchas, son of El a zar (Elazar), son of Aharon (Aaron) the priest, has turned back my wrath from the children of Israel because he was ardent with my ardent in their midst....Numbers 25:10-29:40. "
"Phinehas son of Elazar son of Aaron the Kohen saw, and he stood up from amid the assembly and took a spear in his hand."He followed the Israelite man into the tent and pierced them both, the Israelite man and the woman into her stomach---and the plague was halted from upon the Children of Israel."  Those who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand. "  

The scientists discovered not one but two Cohen Modal  Haplotypes.  They were J1 and J2.  ""Pinchas, the zealot mentioned in the Bible, may be the origin of J2" he suggested. 
J2 Cohanim serves as the deep background of the priestly Jewish caste. “The finding of J2 among contemporary Cohanim can lend credence that today’s Cohanim (J1,J2) may be descendants of two different founding dynasties – including coalescence to Pinchas as the founder of J2 Cohanim” concluded Dr. Karl Skorecki. "                                                                                         

Aaron, brother of Moses, 1st high priest-Cohen ha gadol. 

Zadok the high priest's first duty was probably officiating at the altar in Gibeon but after King Saul's death, went to David at Hebron and together with another priest, ABIATHAR, was David's chief priest.  David later became King David, of course, Israel's 2nd king, ruling from 1010 BCE to 970 BCE. 

Zadok remained loyal during Absalom's rebellion.  Absalom was King David's 3rd son.  He had killed his half-brother, Amnon to avenge the rape of his sister, Tamar.  Those that think the Tanakh (OLD TESTAMENT) is boring should read it.  It reads better than any soap on TV with situations one could not dream up.  It's a thriller, and true at that!  
                                                          

Abiathar, another high priest, son of Ahimelech, chief priest at Nob,
was able to escape the masssacre of his family by King Saul
and took refuge with David who later appointed him HIGH PRIEST.
He also remained loyal during Absalom's rebellion.  He was not
for Solomon but for his brother, Adonijah's claim to be king.
Solomon then transferred his priestly rights to Zadok and banished Abiathar from Jerusalem.  

On David's command, Zadok annointed David's son, SOLOMON, as king.  He ruled from 961 BCE to 920 BCE.  Solomon in turn appointed Zadok's son a high priest in the Temple and from that time the high priesthood remained in the Zadokite family until the period of the Hasmonean rising.  " Between c. 140 and c. 116 BCE the dynasty ruled Judea semi-autonomously from the Seleucids. From 110 BCE, with the Seleucid Empire disintegrating, the dynasty became fully independent, expanded into the neighbouring regions of Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Perea, and Idumea, and took the title "basileus". Some modern scholars refer to this period as an independent kingdom of Israel. 
                                                      

 I think of it as the time of the Chanukah history when Judaism was almost wiped out by the Roman invaders from Syria, then the Syrian Greeks , led by Antiochus Epiphanes, who took control of the Temple and placed their idol in there.  One Jewish family with many sons took control of the situation and formed a fighting force against them.  

We remember Judah the Maccabee.  Judah was the son of Mattathias, military leader of the revolt against Syria in 168 BCE.  In Sunday School, children learn to call Judah THE HAMMERER.  He invented or used the warfare of a different nature, guerrilla warfare.  

"Even after their deposition from their high office, many aristocratic priestly families claimed kingship with this family.  It is not known whether the sons of Zadok mentioned in the DEAD SEA SCROLLS have any connection with this family or not. 
                                                      

 The Jewish population was either too afraid to defend themselves from the pagan Greeks or to used to their ways and were themselves changing into Greeks, but Mattathias broke the pattern and fought for their rights to their own religion.  A growing fear is that this delusional event is creeping up and taking over many populations today.  The Hasmonean family ruled until  the time of John Hyrcanus or Alexander Yannai in c 31 BCE.  Hyrcanus II was the oldest son of Alexander Yannai and his mother was Salome Alexandra.  When the Parthians invaded Judah in 40, Hyrcanus II was taken prisoner and maimed so as to disualify him fo the priesthood and was sent to Parthia where he was honored by the Babylonian Jewish communities.  Parthia was an empire of Iranic people.  It ruled over the vast mass of the Jewish population in Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Media.  They had restored Antigonus Mattathias to the throne of Judah in 40 BCE.  Under their rulings, the famous rabbinic schools in Mesopotamia began to flourish.  

Zadok was also the name of one of the Pharisees who with JUDAH THE GALILEAN founded the SECT OF ZEALOTS in 6CE.  

Zadok, son of Ahitub, Kohen under David
  II Sam  8:17, 15:29
    I Kin    1:8,  34-40, 2:35,4:4,
    1 Chr    18:16
Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Ebiathar were Kohanim:  They were Cohens, direct descendants of Aaron, brother of Moses.  (from Samuel) this was in the time of King David.  (Melech is a Hebrew word meaning "King.")  There is a song I learned in Israel: (David, melech Israel, chai, chai, ....).  I learned this in 1980. Chai is "life" or "living."  He lives on in our hearts.  
                                                       

The Cairo Genizah, alternatively spelled Geniza, is a collection of some 300,000 Jewish manuscript fragments that were found in the genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt. From this,
the fragments below were found. 

In 1952 fragments or scraps of some sort of material were found in a cave near Khirbet Kumran.  They are now called the ZADOKITE FRAGMENTS or the DAMASCUS DOCUMENT and the CAIRO DAMASCUS COVENANT.  From this, it is certain that the Zadokite fragments form part of the literature to which the DEAD SEA SCROLLS belong.  It is unknown how they came to be copied in about 1,000 CE.  The Zadokite Fragments preserve parts of 2 works.  One is a sermon on the history of mankind and of the sect that created them.  The other is a collection of sectarian laws and rules.  The sermon alludes to an emigration of the sect to the LAND OF DAMASCUS. "

" Wouldn't this be saying something about an emigration to what is now Syria?  
Damascus is a name that is very ancient and is the capital of Syria.  Perhaps this was the sect's name for an entirely different place and was a NEW COVENANT there.                          

What had happened was that 2 GENIZAH MANUSCRIPTS,  1st published in 1910 by S.Schechter had been found.  What had been found in the cave were fragment of other copies that the manuscripts.  ZADOK had been mentioned.   

Going through the Bible; beginnings of creating Aaron's family tree.

Descendants of son of Amram Aaron
1  son of Amram Aaron b: in Egypt c1395 BCE d: in Mt. Hor, (Hor Hahar) border of Edom
.. +Elisheba
. 2  Nadab
. 2  Abihu
. 2  Eleazar ben Kohen
..... +Daughter of Putiel
..... 3  Jehoiarib
..... 3  Harim
..... 3  Malchijah
..... 3  Hakkoz
..... 3  Jeshua
..... 3  Eliashib
..... 3  Huppah
..... 3  Bilgah
..... 3  Hezir
..... 3  Hapizzez
..... 3  Pethahiah
..... 3  Jehezkel
..... 3  Jachin
..... 3  Gamul
..... 3  Delaiah
..... 3  Maaziah
.....   3  Phineas
. 2  Ithamar Issamar ben Kohen
..... 3  Jedaiah
..... 3  Seorim
..... 3  Mijamin
..... 3  Abijah
..... 3  Shecaniah
..... 3  Jakim
..... 3  Jeshabeab
..... 3  Immer

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasmonean_dynasty
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/cohenbrazil/about/background
http://www.messengerofthename.com/pinchas/
Tanakh, Stone Edition, also used for the genealogy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/zadok
Book: Finding Our Fathers by Dan Rottenberg

Jews From the Soviet Republic of Georgia

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Georgian Jews in the Caucasus Mountains

In our genealogy searches many of us Jews see that "RUSSIA" on the USA census as place of origin meant countries that had been taken over by Russia such as Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine, etc.  I hadn't run any history about Georgia being it was not part of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT, an area Catherine II had come to own and set aside as a place for Jews in order to keep them out of her Russia.  

Georgia is a country in the Caucasus Mountains.  The origins of the Jewish community are shrouded in legend.  "They can trace their migration into the country during the Babylonian captivity in 6th century BC. " That took place in 597 BCE and then in 586 BCE. "This claim is supported by the medieval Georgian historical account by Leonti Mroveli, who writes:
                                                      

King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon
605-562 BCE, conquered all the lands
from Euphrates River to Egypt including Judah

Then King Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem. The Jews who fled thence come to Kartli and requested from the mamasakhlisi [local ruler] of Mtskheta territory in return for tribute. He gave [a place] and settled them on the Aragvi, at spring which was called Zanavi, which was later renamed as Zanavi, the quarter of Jews.".  Another history which could also have some truth to it is that "

During their [Bartom and Kartam's] reign, Vespasian, the emperor of the Romans (from  69 to 79 CE) who had conquered the Galilee by 68CE, captured Jerusalem. From there refugee Jews come to Mtskheta and settled with the old Jews." This shows that Jewish refugees from both time periods went to 

 Georgia.  

 "The Kingdom of Georgia flourished during the 10th to 12th centuries under King David IV the Builder and Queen Tamar the Great, and fell to the Mongol invasion by 1243, and after a brief reunion under George V the Brilliant to the Timurid Empire. "  Interesting that Israel was ruled by a King David.  Tamar in biblical history was the daughter of David and sister of Absalom, a woman who was raped by her stepbrother Amnon.  Another Tamar in the bible was the wife of Er, eldest son of Judah, and later Er's brother, Oman.  Tamar had to disguised herself as a prostitute and conceived twins by Judah.  It's a story explaining the need to marry a deceased brother's wife.  If Jews have become a thorn in different religious groups' sides, we certainly are remembered kindly by their use of our historic names, keeping alive our history.  From this ruling family, I'd wager a guess that they had Jewish origins. 
                                                  

1900: Jews of Tbilis, Georgia

 Prior to Georgia's annexation by Russia, the 2600 year history of the Georgian Jews was marked by an almost total absence of anti-semitism and a visible assimilation in the Georgian language and culture. The Georgian Jews were considered ethnically and culturally distinct from neighboring Mountain Jews. They were also traditionally a highly separate group to the Ashkenazi Jews in Georgia, who arrived following the Russian annexation of Georgia."

Before the 12th century, the Jews of Georgia were under the religious authority of the BABYLONIAN EXILARCH.  The Exilarch was leader of the Jewish community in Babylon during the era of the Parthians, Sassanids and Abbasids up until the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, with intermitent gaps akin to political developments.  The government of Babylonian Jewry for the first 12 centuries C.E. lay in the hands of the exilarch. Rabbinic traditions incorporated in the *Seder Olam Zuta, trace the origin of the institution to the last years of the exile of Jehoiachin (598-597 BCE of rule) , on the basis of II Kings 25:27. Further data were derived from I Chronicles 3:17ff. Whether such an institution actually existed before Parthian times is not known, and certainty is impossible. Sources on Jewish life in first-century Parthian Babylonia, however, leave little ground to suppose there was an exilarch then. Josephus' account of the Jewish "state" of *Anilaeus and Asinaeus suggests, to the contrary, that no state-sanctioned Jewish government functioned at that time. "The question is if the Jews were able to keep up this leadership from the time of exile to the 12th century CE?  It's possible.  They had left knowing the groundwork of how to maintain their Jewish culture and religion though they were without the Temple in Jerusalem, which was a main center.  
                                                      

  They suffered persecution in the 14th century. " By 1490, Georgia was fragmented into a number of petty kingdoms and principalities, which throughout the Early Modern period struggled to maintain their autonomy against Ottoman and Iranian (Safavid, Afsharid, and Qajar) domination . This persecution had been  intensified in the 15th century when they became dependent on and partly enslaved to the great landlords, a situation which continued until the Russian annexation in the 19th century.  Some European Jews now settled in Georgia, so you had a mixture of Jews living there from other periods.  

 Georgia was finally annexed by the Russian Empire in the 19th century."  
Georgian Jews began to emigrate to Palestine in 1863.  1,700 Jews arrived by 1921. 
                                                 

Jews in Tbilis, Georgia

 Jews received equal rights when the republic of Georgia was established in 1918 after World War I.  By 1926 there were 21,105 Jews in the Soviet Republic maintaining a communal organization.   Ontario, Oregon, a small city on the Oregon border, USA, has 11,366 for a population today.  I was there when they had 6,000.  All of the Jews of Georgia were enough to make up a small town.  It's known that Jews even today make up 0.02% of the world population with about 14 million.  
                                                        

A Jewish ethnographic museum was established at Tiflis, now called (Tbilisi) in 1933, just before World War II started.  The Jewish population increased considerably since the 2nd World War started during the end of the 30s.  Jewish population in Georgia was 55,382 by 1970.  After that date many Jews left Georgia and emigrated to Israel. In 1989 there were 24700 Jews in Georgia of whom 14,300 were those who spoke Georgian, showing they may have been born there to parents speaking this native language.  

Georgia is a small country. It's population today is: 3,905,010.

Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia at the border of Western Asia and Eastern Europe. Georgia is bordered by the Black Sea, Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. In 2019, Georgia's population is estimated at 3.90 million, which ranks 133rd in the world.

Georgia is different from other countries because of its location on our planet.  "What's the highest mountain range in Europe? The Alps? Wrong. It is the Caucasus Mountains marking the border between Georgia and Russia. While the highest peak is in Russia, Georgia lays claim to the second highest, Shkara, which at 5,193m (17,040 ft) beats Mont Blanc by nearly 400m (1,312 ft). These dramatic mountains, with their terrifying hairpin roads and hidden villages cut off at winter, are the stuff of legend. In Greek mythology they were one of the pillars holding up the world. And it was here that Zeus tied up Prometheus, to have his liver eaten by eagles. Today they are increasingly becoming a destination for climbers, walkers or skiers looking for adventure. "

                                                                       

                         Ilia II of Georgia

Ilia II (Georgian: ილია II), also transliterated as Ilya or Elijah (born January 4, 1933), is the current Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia and the spiritual leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church

"A guest is a gift from God, goes the saying in Georgia."  The Christian religion is doing well here. " "While many European nations have seen religious adherence fall in recent decades, the Orthodox Church in Georgia is booming. Attendance, adherence and respect for the Church are all growing. Over 80% of Georgians say they belong to the Church while its head, Patriarch Ilia II, is the most respected public figure by far, with popularity ratings over 90%. Dating back to the 4th Century, the Church helped the country keep its ancient musical traditions during the Soviet era and has been central to Georgians' sense of themselves since independence.  This means that ever since Christianity was created by the Roman Empire in the middle 300s, the religion has been strong here.  

The numbers of Georgian citizens travelling to Israel and applying for asylum has skyrocketed over the past few years; only four Georgians sought asylum in Israel during the entirety of 2013, compared to 5,505 between January and November 2016.  3,200 Jews were counted in 2010 living in Georgia.  

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/exilarch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Georgia
https://www.georgianjournal.ge/discover-georgia/23968-10-things-you-might-not-know-about-georgia--bbc.html
Update: 6/4/19 on relationship with Maronite Christians from Lebanonfile:///C:/Users/Home.DELL.000/Downloads/Are%20the%20Maronites%20of%20Lebanon%20really%20Jews.pdf, possible Maronite origins-being Georgia in early period.