Akaki about Jewish matter, who was Jacob Chorni?

Abstract

In August of 1871 in newspaper “Droeba” (#31) was published Akaki’s article “Hot news” (“Our village is good...”), in which he arose Jewish matter and he also mentions popular issue in that time – wrong understanding of trade and commerce. Author directs attention to the circumstance, that trade and commerce is wrongly understood by us: Instead of exporting local goods in foreign countries, and importing useful stuff, local merchants, particularly Jewish ones, are busy selling totally useless things two and three times higher price and this way damage interests of both country and citizens. Akaki discusses this topic very directly and unbiased, and sometimes he is being very harsh when it comes to expressing his position, which is very typical of him. At a glance, one may think that the poet tries to show everything in darker colors on purpose and by that he gives readers anti-Semitic emotions. Supposedly that was the reason why Niko Nikoladze decided to publish an article called “State of Jews in Georgia” – remark on Akaki’s “Hot News” in next edition of newspaper (“Droeba”, 1871, #32). Author agrees with Akaki in everything, but in much softer way; He also agrees with him that it is possible to improve the situation but only Jewish people cannot manage it without any help from society and authorities. As we mentioned, in article “Hot news” Akaki’s attitude towards Jewish people is very critical and sounds biased, but if we look through publications of Jewish ethnographer and traveler Jacob Chorni, we will see that he mentions almost exactly the same topics. For instance, in his work „Горские еврей“ published in 1869, Jacob mentions not only absence of civil rights and no protection from Authorities of Jewish people, but their main problem – lack of education. No one can consider Jacob Chorni as a biased person. Observations of him and Akaki Tsereteli are practically identical; so is their solution of the problem – getting education. This is what “Society for the Spreading of Education among Jews” was doing at that time, but it did not have a representation in Georgia and this had to be fixed by local intellectuals.