The Six-Dome Synagogue (Altı Günbəz). Built 1888, closed under the Soviets, reopened as a synagogue in 1991 and restored in stages since; published sources put the main works variously at 1995, 2000 and 2005. It runs mainly through the summer, when the town is full. We arrange private visits with the gabbai, or, for groups travelling over a Friday in season, a Kabbalat Shabbat service followed by a kosher dinner with the community.
Jewish heritage · Krasnaya Sloboda · Baku
Jewish heritage programs in Azerbaijan, run on the ground.
Birtour runs heritage itineraries in Krasnaya Sloboda, one of the last all-Jewish towns outside Israel and the United States, and in Baku's three working synagogues. We handle the community access, the kosher catering, and the guides. You sell the program.
Photo: Asif Masimov · CC BY-SA 3.0
Why this niche
Access, kosher, and a community that does not stage itself.
Krasnaya Sloboda sits across the Qudyalçay river from Quba, about 170 km and two hours twenty north of Baku by road. The community there, the Mountain Jews, has lived in the eastern Caucasus for more than a thousand years. The settlement itself dates to the 18th century, when the Khan of Quba chartered it as a refuge.
Most heritage operators have never put a program there. The reason is access, not interest. The community is small and it moves with the season: roughly 500 people live there through the winter, and the town fills back past 3,000 in summer as families return from Moscow and Israel. The synagogues are working houses of worship rather than tourist sites, and the museum opened only in 2020. Without a relationship on the ground, a buyer cannot promise more than a one-hour walk-through to their guests.
We built that relationship starting in 2018. The result is private synagogue visits with the gabbai, family hosting arrangements that are real (not staged), and an after-hours museum slot that does not put your guests in a tour queue.
Two more details worth knowing. First, wartime evacuation reshaped Jewish Baku: by the postwar years the Azerbaijan SSR counted close to 30,000 Ashkenazi Jews, which leaves a real WWII heritage walking story in the centre of the city that almost no Jewish heritage program currently tells. Second, Azerbaijan has full diplomatic relations with Israel and a Jewish community that practices openly, put at about 5,000 by the 2019 census and higher by community bodies, so groups can travel visibly Jewish without the discomfort that surfaces in some other Muslim-majority destinations.
What you can build around
Four anchor experiences in Quba, plus the Baku synagogue circuit.
The Hilaki Synagogue. Smaller, built 1896, named for the Gileki neighbourhood of original Gilan-born settlers. Better suited to family programs and B'nai Mitzvah travel than the Six-Dome, where the scale is wrong for a small ceremony.
The Museum of the History of Mountain Jews. Opened 2020 by three Mountain Jewish businessmen (Zakharyaev, Iliev, Nisanov). The only museum of its kind anywhere. Covers Juhuri language, the Persian-Gilan migration, dress, the Soviet period, and contemporary life. We arrange after-hours visits with the curator.
A family hosting lunch. The most-requested part of every program we have run. Three- or four-generation family meal, traditional Juhuri food, real conversation. Not a performance for tourists. We rotate the host families to avoid wearing them out.
Baku has three working congregations across two buildings. The Ashkenazi and Georgian synagogue at 171 Dilara Aliyeva street opened on 9 March 2003 and is counted among the largest in Europe; it houses both of those congregations and the Chabad house. The Mountain Jews synagogue on Ali Mardan Topchubashov street in Nasimi has held its congregation since 1945 and moved into a new building in 2011. Baku's first choir synagogue opened back in 1910, which is the historical layer the walking program covers. A community historian connects the whole circuit in half a day.
Optional additions that buyers ask for less often but should: a kosher wine tasting at a Mountain Jewish family vineyard; a CSR contribution to the mikvah restoration fund in Quba; an academic session at the museum with one of the resident researchers.
Sample five-day itinerary
Illustrative only. Every program is built around the brief you send.
Day 1. Arrive Baku. Private transfer to a 4- or 5-star hotel in the city centre. Welcome dinner under kosher supervision.
Day 2. Baku synagogues, morning. Lunch at the Choir Synagogue community hall, kosher. Afternoon: the WWII refugee walking program through the Sovetski quarter, with a community historian. Free evening.
Day 3. Drive to Quba (2h40). Private visit to the Six-Dome Synagogue with the gabbai. Lunch with a Mountain Jewish family in their home. Afternoon: Hilaki Synagogue and the historic cemetery. Overnight in Quba town (Rixos Quba, or a boutique guesthouse for smaller groups).
Day 4. After-hours visit to the Museum of the History of Mountain Jews, with the curator. Workshop on Juhuri language for guests who want one. If the day is a Friday in season: Kabbalat Shabbat at the Six-Dome and Shabbat dinner with the community. Out of season we move Shabbat to Baku. Overnight Quba.
Day 5. Quba Genocide Memorial Complex in the morning, for twentieth-century context. Transfer back to Baku. Farewell mezze under kosher supervision. Airport.
Per-person pricing on request. We do not publish programme rates because every program contracts directly with the venues and suppliers under your brand. Two figures are published anyway, the Quba day out and the bar mitzvah band, because a planner needs somewhere to start.
Logistics
The four things heritage operators always ask about first.
Kosher catering. Coordinated through Chabad of Baku and the Choir Synagogue kitchen. Documented hashgacha in your program book. Glatt kosher service in Baku is straightforward. In Quba, we run supervised transport with fourteen days' notice.
Shabbat-observant itineraries. Walking-only routes inside the Baku old city. Pre-arranged Shabbat meals. Low-floor rooms with manual key alternatives where required. Eruv guidance for the Sovetski-to-Icherisheher corridor.
Guides. Heritage-licensed by the Ministry of Culture, with structured coursework completed through the Krasnaya Sloboda museum. We staff in English, Hebrew, Russian, French, and German. For Yiddish, we co-staff with a partner in Tbilisi on advance notice.
Community access. A signed cooperation agreement with the Krasnaya Sloboda community council covers private synagogue access, family hosting, and the museum after-hours slot. Your guests are not put through the tourist door.
Who buys this
Federations, synagogue programs, family heritage, and study tours.
We work with North American Jewish federation travel; UK and European synagogue programs; Israeli outbound operators building Caucasus extensions; family and B'nai Mitzvah heritage planners; academic study tours; private heritage advisors.
References on signed NDA. Our buyer references run across the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada.
Baku, GMT+409:00 — 19:00
What happens when you send an inquiry
Replies within 1 hour. Proposal within 3 days.
The single complaint we hear about other Azerbaijan DMCs is response speed. We publish ours.
- 1h
Step 01
A named account manager replies
Every inquiry gets a human reply within 1 hour, GMT+4, with a 30-minute discovery call booked alongside.
- 3d
Step 02
Tailored proposal arrives
Within 3 business days you receive an itinerary, pricing, and named suppliers, all built around your brief. No recycled decks.
- 7d
Step 03
Operational handover
Within 7 business days of confirmation, contracts are signed, blocks are held, and your on-site manager is assigned.
Why Birtour
Signed access, documented kosher, named human replies.
A heritage manager on the team since 2018, with more than sixty inbound heritage programs completed in this niche. Weekly contact with the leadership in Quba. A signed access agreement, not a casual relationship. Documented kosher chain of custody, not improvisation.
We answer inquiries in under an hour during Baku business hours (GMT+4), with a named human reading the brief. A draft itinerary and named suppliers reach you within three business days.
Operator FAQs
What heritage planners ask first.
Go deeper
The pages under this hub.
The five-day shape, day by day
The Baku and Quba programme with the reasoning behind each decision rather than a brochure listing: why one overnight in Quba changes the trip, where Shabbat goes in each season, and the three ways this gets shortened badly.
Krasnaya Sloboda, season by season
The Mountain Jewish town across the Qudyal from Quba. Roughly 500 residents in winter, over 3,000 in summer, and why that single fact decides which month a community programme belongs in.
Kosher and Shabbat in Baku and Quba
What the Chabad house supplies and on what notice, why Quba is a supply problem rather than a source, and the sunset table that shows Shabbat starting up to an hour later here than in Israel.
The synagogues of Azerbaijan
Every working synagogue with the dates and streets right, including the two in Oghuz no heritage itinerary currently includes, and the four errors most published lists still carry.
Bar and bat mitzvah in Azerbaijan
Which synagogue holds a family of thirty and which one swallows them, what ninety days of lead time is actually spent on, and the four things to settle before booking anything.
Ground partner for Israeli tour operators
The four-day working-week overlap nobody puts in a contract, the visa timing that changes what you can promise, and why 44% of Israeli visitors staying three nights or fewer is your margin problem.
Other specialist programs
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Tell us about your program
Send a brief. Get a named human reply within 1 hour.
A short intake form: six fields, three required. Not a mailing list signup. A real account manager reads every one.