Subbotniks
During the reign of Catherine the Great (1729–1796), they adopted elements of Mosaic Law from the Old Testament and were known as "Sabbatarians", part of the Spiritual Christianity movement.
[13][14] Subbotniks, meaning sabbatarians for their observance of the Sabbath on Saturday, as in the Hebrew Bible, rather than on Sunday, arose as part of the Spiritual Christian movement in the 18th century.
According to the testimony, private and official, of all those who studied their mode of life in tsarist times, the Subbotniks were remarkably industrious; reading and writing, hospitable, not given to drunkenness, poverty, or prostitution.
But the Russian clergy opposed them and killed about 100 Subbotniks and their spiritual leaders in Mogilev, in present-day Belarus, including the former archbishop Romantzov[citation needed].
In 1826, the government decided to deport those who lived openly as Subbotniks to internal exile in the above-mentioned regions in the Caucasus, Transcaucasia, and Siberia.
During the First Aliyah at the end of the 19th century, thousands of Subbotniks settled in Ottoman Palestine to escape religious persecution due to their differences with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Within a short period, the descendants of Subbotnik Jews who arrived in Ottoman Palestine in the late 19th century had completely blended and inter-married into the wider Jewish population of Israel.
[16] Subbotniks in Nazi-occupied areas of Ukraine were killed by SS Einsatzgruppen troops and local Ukrainian collaborators due to their Jewish self-identity.
They were relatively recent migrants to Ukraine from areas of Voronezh and considered outsiders by the peasants, who noted their practice of some Jewish customs.
In the 21st century, the Shavei Israel organization for outreach to "lost Jews" and related communities, appointed a rabbi for the Subbotniks at Vysoky in Voronezh Oblast.
[13] In the early 21st century, the issue arose of the Jewish identity of some members of Moshav Yitav, located in the Jordan Valley north of Jericho in the West Bank, who were Subbotniks, immigrants from former Soviet Georgia.
In 2004, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar ruled the Subbotniks were not defined as Jewish and would have to undergo an Orthodox conversion.
The Interior Ministry classified the Subbotniks as a Christian sect and ineligible for aliyah to Israel, because no one knew if their ancestors had formally converted to Judaism.
[20][21] From 1870 they began to use the "Everyday Prayers for Karaites" by Abraham Firkovich (1870, Vilnius) for their liturgy, which in 1882 they were allowed to publish in Russian as "Порядок молитв для караимов" (tr.
"[21] Due to tsarist persecution, Subbotniks spread out creating a wide diaspora, living since the 19th century in the following countries and regions:[23]
