The community, which numbered almost 60,000 as recently as the 1970s, has largely emigrated to Israel, the United States, the Russian Federation and Belgium (in Antwerp).

The most popular view is that the first Jews made their way to southern Georgia after Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and exile in Babylon.

This claim is supported by the medieval Georgian historical account by Leonti Mroveli, who writes: Then King Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem.

The chronicle describes a version similar to that offered centuries later by Leonti Mroveli, but the period of Jewish migration into Georgia is ascribed to Alexander the Great: ...the warlike seed, the Honni [Jews], exiled by the Chaldeans, [came to Kartli] and requested the land for tribute from the Lord of the Bun T'urks [suburb of Mtskheta].

And they possessed it...[3]Georgian sources also refer to the arrival of the first Jews in Western Georgia from the Byzantine Empire during the 6th century CE.

Approximately 3,000 of the Jews fled to Eastern Georgia, which by that time was controlled by the Persians, to escape severe persecution by the Byzantines.

A Georgian Jew called Elias was said to be in Jerusalem during the Crucifixion and brought Jesus' robe back with him to Georgia.

The Jews spoke Georgian, and later Jewish traders developed a dialect called Kivruli, or Judaeo-Georgian, which included a number of Hebrew words.

In the second half of the 7th century, the Muslim Empire conquered extensive Georgian territory, which became a province of the Arab caliphate.

[12] The nature of Georgian Jew's observance to rabbinic law was also noted by Benjamin of Tudela and Abraham ben David (also known as the RABAD or RAVAD).

[5] After the Six-Day War, huge numbers of Soviet Jews began protesting for the right to immigrate to Israel, and many applied for exit visas.

Although Prime Minister Golda Meir criticized the Georgians' desire to "isolate themselves into ghettos", the Israeli Immigrant Absorption Ministry eventually bowed to their demands, and began to create concentrations of around 200 families in twelve areas of the country.

In Georgia, these include Georgian and Russian; in Belgium, Dutch; in the United States and Canada English; and in Israel, Modern Hebrew.