Looking for Jewish Communities in Deepest Siberia 🇮🇱 (Jewish Autonomous Oblast)

Ever since I was a kid, I dreamt of visiting the regions of the world that were the farthest away from where I grew up. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was one of them.

I made it to Birobidzhan 😊

#davelegenda #russia #travel

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In this video, I set out to the far lands of the Far East of Russia. 🛹

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This was easily one of the best trips of my life.

In my quest to set foot in every single federal subject in Russia, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast' was number 40 out of 85! Don't forget to follow me on Instagram for live updates @davelegenda 📷

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Here's where I stand as of now:

Moscow ✔️
Moscow Oblast' ✔️
Saint Petersburg ✔️
Leningradskaya Oblast' ✔️
Vladimirskaya Oblast' ✔️
Yaroslavskaya Oblast' ✔️
Ivanovskaya Oblast' ✔️
Krasnodarskij Kraj ✔️
Tulskaya Oblast' ✔️
Tatarstan Republic ✔️
Tverskaya Oblast' ✔️
Nizhegorodskaya Oblast' ✔️
Kaluzhskaya Oblast' ✔️
Murmanskaya Oblast' ✔️
Smolenskaya Oblast' ✔️
Ryazanskaya Oblast' ✔️
Astrakhanskaya Oblast' ✔️
Kalmykia Republic ✔️
Volgogradskaya Oblast' ✔️
Bryanskaya Oblast' ✔️
Udmurtia Rebublic ✔️
Yekaterinburgskaya Oblast' ✔️
Tyumenskaya Oblast' ✔️
Karelia Republic ✔️
North Ossetia-Alania Republic ✔️
Rostov Oblast' ✔️
Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug ✔️
Republic of Crimea ✔️
Sevastopol ✔️
Permskij Kraj ✔️
Chelyabinsk Oblast' ✔️
Kirov Oblast' ✔️
Komi Republic ✔️
Udmurtian Rebublic ✔️
Bashkortostan Republic ✔️
Ulyanovsk Oblast' ✔️
Amur Oblast ✔️
Khabarovsk Kraj ✔️
Primorskij Kraj ✔️
Jewish Autonomous Oblast' ✔️

Which means I'm at 40/85. Still 45 to go! Hopefully a lifetime will be enough ⚠️

I spent so much time in my childhood and school years reading about the most remote regions of Russia. I'm ever so happy to have the chance now to travel in Russia and see with own eyes these places that I spent countless days reading about. Places like the Jewish Autonomous Oblast are definitely some clear examples. Especially Birobidzhan- a city so far from where I was born and grew up, with such a fascinating history. 😊

As I found myself in Khabarovsk, in the very Far East of Russia, I had the perfect chance to go and visit the Jewish Autonomous Oblast by simply jumping on a two-hour train ride across the Far East of Russia 🔥🔥🔥

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast is the only autonomous oblast in the entirety of Russia. Even more curiously, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast is the only federal subject in Russia where Yiddish is an official language.

It was set up by Stalin in 1934 as part of a policy to provide minority nationalities within the Soviet Union with territories in which they could be free to pursue their cultural heritage.

The Jewish population of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Soviet Union peaked at around 45,000 to 50,000 Jews in 1948. After that, due to the harsh climate of the Russian Far East, the majority of the Jewish population in and around Birobidzhan started emigrating to Israel and other destinations. Nowadays, Jews constitute less than 2% of the local population in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

Birobidzhan is very much often one of the stops on the traditional route of the transiberian. Although trains do not stop here for long, you're always pretty much guaranteed to pass through via Birobidzhan if you will ever be on a train traveling from Moscow to Vladivostok, on the Pacific Ocean.

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My goal is to reach all of the federal subjects of Russia. I'm currently halfway through my goal, and by visiting the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, and its capital Birobidzhan, I ticked another federal subject off the list.

What is coming up next? Stay tuned to find out!