Daniel's been thinking about the minority groups that make Israel's demographic map so unusually intricate. He knows the Druze, he knows the Armenians in Jerusalem. But he's asking about one that's arguably even more niche — the Circassians. Who are they, how did they end up with a presence in Israel, and how does their way of life and belief differ from the many other religious subdivisions in this complicated part of the world? I'll admit, before Daniel raised this I couldn't have given you more than two sentences on them.
And one of those sentences would have been wrong. The Circassians are one of those communities where almost everything the average person thinks they know turns out to be... not quite it. Start with the name. Circassian is what other people call them. They call themselves Adyghe. And they are not Arabs. That's the first thing that throws people — they're Sunni Muslims, they've lived in the Levant for about a hundred and fifty years, and yet ethnically, linguistically, culturally, they are a Northwest Caucasian people whose homeland is on the Black Sea coast of what's now southern Russia.
So the basic picture is: a Muslim community in northern Israel that isn't Arab. That alone makes them an outlier in a region where Muslim identity and Arab identity are almost entirely overlapping circles.
Right. And that distinction is not a technicality — it shapes everything about how they've navigated life in Israel. They arrived as refugees. The Circassian homeland in the Caucasus was conquered by the Russian Empire in eighteen sixty-four after a brutal war that lasted over a century. The Russians carried out what historians now fairly comfortably call ethnic cleansing — somewhere between half a million and a million and a half Circassians were expelled or fled. Most went to the Ottoman Empire, which scattered them across its territories. The Sultan settled some in the Balkans, some in Anatolia, and some in the Levant — including what was then Ottoman Palestine. The two villages in Israel today, Kfar Kama and Rehaniya, were founded in the eighteen seventies.
Kfar Kama and Rehaniya. Those are the only two?
Those are the only two in Israel. There's a larger Circassian diaspora — about seven hundred thousand in Turkey, significant populations in Syria and Jordan, a small community in the United States. But in Israel we're talking about roughly five thousand people. Five thousand. That's smaller than the student body of a mid-sized university. And they've maintained a completely distinct language, dress, cuisine, dance, and social structure for a hundred and fifty years while surrounded by much larger populations.
Five thousand people maintaining a distinct identity across six or seven generations. That either takes extraordinary discipline or... something structural that makes assimilation harder than preservation.
It's both. And the structural piece is the one that's most interesting. Circassian society traditionally operated under a code called Adyghe Khabze — it's an unwritten moral and social code that governs everything from hospitality to marriage to how you treat elders. It predates Islam, and the Circassians integrated Islam into it rather than the other way around. So you have a community that was Muslim, yes, but whose daily life was shaped by a pre-Islamic honor code that had been evolving for centuries in the Caucasus mountains.
That's the kind of detail that makes every neat category break down. They're Muslim, but they don't fit the Muslim-Arab template. They're Israeli, but they arrived decades before the first Zionist congress. They're refugees, but they've been in the same two villages since the eighteen seventies.
And here's where it gets even more interesting. When the British took over Palestine after World War One, the Circassians were in an awkward position. They'd been loyal Ottoman subjects — Circassians had served in the Ottoman military and administration for generations. But they were also a small minority surrounded by Arabs who didn't fully consider them kin, and Jews who were arriving in increasing numbers. So they did something pragmatic. During the British Mandate period, Circassian men began volunteering for the British police and military. They built a reputation as reliable, disciplined soldiers. When the British left and the state of Israel was declared in nineteen forty-eight, many Circassians threw their lot in with the new state.
Wait — they fought on the Israeli side in forty-eight?
Some did, yes. And from nineteen fifty-eight onward, Circassian men have served in the Israeli military. This is the crucial difference between them and most Israeli Arabs. Arab citizens of Israel are exempt from compulsory military service — though Druze men are drafted, and some Bedouin and Christian Arabs volunteer. Circassians, like the Druze, are drafted. They petitioned for this. It wasn't imposed on them — they asked to serve, and the state agreed.
That's a political statement dressed as a practical arrangement. Serving in the military is the single strongest signal of belonging in Israeli society. It's the thing that says "we're in this together."
And they've paid for it. Circassian soldiers have been killed in Israel's wars. The community has a memorial day in Kfar Kama. They fly the Israeli flag. Their children grow up trilingual — they speak Adyghe at home, Hebrew at school, and Arabic from the surrounding society. Some pick up English as a fourth language. And they've managed to do all of this while keeping their villages almost entirely Circassian. Kfar Kama has about three thousand residents, Rehaniya roughly a thousand. Marriage outside the community is... let's say discouraged. Strongly.
That's the preservation mechanism right there. Endogamy plus a distinct language plus military service. You don't assimilate because the community is self-contained, and you don't need to assimilate because your loyalty isn't questioned.
There's a fascinating quote from a Circassian community leader — I'm going from memory here, but it was something like "we are Muslims, but we are not Arabs. We are Israelis, but we are not Jews. We are Circassians, and that is enough." That triple identity would tear most communities apart. For them it seems to be the thing that holds them together.
So how does the religious piece actually work? You said Islam was layered on top of Adyghe Khabze. What does that look like in practice?
They're Sunni Muslims, but they don't build mosques with minarets. In Kfar Kama, the mosque looks almost like a community center from the outside — it's a modest stone building that doesn't broadcast its religious function. Prayer is important, Ramadan is observed, but there's no clerical hierarchy telling people how to live. Adyghe Khabze handles most of what religion would handle elsewhere. It's a code that emphasizes respect for elders, hospitality to strangers, restraint in speech and conduct, and a kind of quiet dignity that they consider the defining Circassian trait.
Restraint in speech. That's... not a value I associate with this part of the world.
No, and it's part of what makes them stand out. Circassian social events are famously orderly. The elders sit in specific positions based on age and status. Younger people don't speak unless addressed. You don't eat until the eldest person begins. You don't leave until the eldest person rises. It's almost... I don't want to say rigid, but it's formal in a way that feels like it belongs to a different century. Which it does — it's a code that evolved in a mountain society where survival depended on tight social cohesion.
The Caucasus mountains are not a gentle environment. You're describing a culture built for a place where your neighbors might be your only lifeline through a hard winter.
And then you transplant that culture into the Galilee hills, which are... not that. Milder climate, more connected to trade routes, surrounded by larger and more powerful groups. And yet the code persists. It's like bringing a heavy winter coat to the Mediterranean and wearing it for six generations because taking it off would mean forgetting who you are.
That's a good image. The coat isn't practical anymore, but it's not about practicality.
The language piece deserves more attention too. Adyghe is a Northwest Caucasian language — it's related to Abkhaz and to the now-extinct Ubykh language. These languages are famous among linguists for having absurdly complex consonant systems. Adyghe has something like fifty to sixty consonant sounds depending on the dialect, and only three phonemic vowels. Three vowels. English has roughly twenty vowel sounds depending on your accent. So you have this language that is brutally hard for outsiders to learn, spoken by five thousand people in a country of nine million, and they've kept it fully alive. Children learn it at home before Hebrew. There's a Circassian cultural center in Kfar Kama that teaches traditional dance and music. They have Circassian-language WhatsApp groups.
WhatsApp groups doing more for language preservation than any government program ever could.
Unironically, yes. The Circassian diaspora worldwide uses social media to stay connected. A Circassian in Kfar Kama can watch a dance performance from a community in Turkey, share it with cousins in Jordan, and discuss it in Adyghe. The internet has been a preservation boon for small language communities.
Let me pull on the military thread a bit more. You said they petitioned to be drafted. When did that happen, and why?
In nineteen fifty-eight, David Ben-Gurion — then prime minister — agreed to a request from Circassian leaders to apply mandatory conscription to their young men. The Druze had made a similar arrangement a few years earlier. For the Circassians, it was partly about proving loyalty and partly about practical citizenship — military service opens doors in Israeli society. Veterans get access to housing benefits, education subsidies, employment preferences. For a small community trying to secure its place, those material benefits matter. But I think the deeper motivation was existential. They'd been expelled from one homeland. They weren't going to be passive residents in a second one.
That's a reading of history that probably makes some people uncomfortable — a Muslim minority choosing to fight for a Jewish state. But the logic is internally consistent. If your experience is that empires expel you, you don't wait to see what the new state thinks of you. You make yourself indispensable.
And it worked, on those terms. Circassians are generally viewed positively by Jewish Israelis. There's no political movement agitating against them. They're too small to be a threat and too integrated to be alien. The average Israeli might not know much about their history, but they know "the Circassians serve in the army, they're on our side."
Which is both a compliment and a kind of erasure, right? "They're on our side" is a political judgment, not a cultural one. It doesn't require knowing anything about Adyghe Khabze or the Circassian genocide or why their cheese is different.
Their cheese! I'm glad you mentioned that. Circassian cheese is a thing. It's a fresh, mild white cheese that's traditionally smoked. In Kfar Kama there are a couple of dairy shops that produce it, and it's become a minor culinary attraction. Israelis drive up to the Galilee specifically to buy Circassian cheese. It's one of those small cultural exports that gives a community visibility without requiring them to explain their entire history.
Smoked cheese as soft diplomacy.
Honestly, it works. People try the cheese, they get curious, they visit the village, they learn a little. The Circassian heritage center in Kfar Kama runs tours now. They'll show you traditional clothing — the men used to wear a long coat called a cherkeska with cartridge holders across the chest, the women wore elaborate embroidered dresses — and they'll explain the dance traditions. Circassian dance is... it's worth describing. Men dance on their toes, very upright, with precise, controlled movements. Women glide, barely lifting their feet. It's all restraint and precision. No spinning, no wild gestures. The aesthetic matches the social code perfectly.
Of course it does. A culture that values restraint produces dance that looks restrained. The surprising thing would be if they did the polka.
The polka would be a scandal in Kfar Kama. Someone would have to convene the elders.
So we've got a Sunni Muslim community of five thousand people, originally from the Black Sea coast, living in two villages in the Galilee, speaking a language with three vowels and fifty consonants, serving in the Israeli military, making smoked cheese, and dancing on their toes. Daniel's question was how their way of life differs from other religious subdivisions in the region. I think the answer is: in almost every way it's possible to differ.
But the most important difference might be the one that's hardest to see from outside. Most religious or ethnic minorities in the Middle East define themselves in opposition to something — they're not the majority, not the ruling sect, not the dominant ethnicity. The Circassians seem to define themselves in terms of what they ARE rather than what they're not. Adyghe Khabze is a positive code. It tells you how to behave, not who to oppose. That's rare.
It's a survival strategy that doesn't require an enemy. Which might explain why they've survived as a distinct community through Ottoman rule, British rule, Israeli rule, and everything in between. They're not fighting anyone. They're just... being Circassian, very deliberately.
There's a historical irony here too. The Circassians were famously admired by European travelers in the nineteenth century. Circassian women were romanticized in Western literature as the epitome of beauty — there's a whole orientalist genre of "Circassian beauties" that's deeply uncomfortable to read now. Circassian men were sought after as soldiers and bodyguards by Ottoman sultans and Persian shahs. They had this reputation as a noble warrior race. And then their homeland was destroyed, their population was scattered, and most of the world forgot they existed.
The "noble warrior" stereotype is always a prelude to tragedy. It's a compliment that sets you up to be used.
And they were used. The Ottoman Empire settled them on its frontiers deliberately — put the tough mountain people on the border with the Bedouin, let them absorb the raids. The British used them as police. Everyone had a job for the Circassians. Nobody gave them a country.
Until they helped build one. That's the end of the arc that Daniel's question points toward. They're not just a curiosity or a demographic footnote. They're a case study in how a small community can navigate displacement, preserve its identity, and find a place in a region that doesn't have an obvious slot for them.
The slot they found is interesting because it's not assimilation and it's not separatism either. They're fully Israeli citizens, they vote, they serve, their kids go to Israeli schools. But they go home to villages where the street signs are in Adyghe, where the social hierarchy is determined by age, and where the most important rules were written centuries ago in mountains three thousand kilometers away.
And nobody's asking them to choose. That's the part that stands out to me. In most places, a community like this would face constant pressure to pick a side — are you Muslim or are you loyal to the state, are you Arab or are you something else. The Circassians seem to have found a way to say "yes" to all of it without contradiction.
I think the Druze comparison is useful here, since Daniel mentioned them. The Druze are also a distinct ethno-religious group that serves in the Israeli military and maintains a separate identity. But the Druze religion is a closed faith — you can't convert in, and the doctrines are secret even to most Druze. Circassian identity is different. It's not a religion, it's a culture with a religion attached. If you learned Adyghe, adopted Adyghe Khabze, and married in... you'd still be an outsider, probably for a generation or two, but the boundary is cultural rather than theological. That's a different kind of fence.
A fence you can see over, even if you can't cross it easily. A secret doctrine is a wall.
Right. And the Circassians in Israel have been fairly open to visitors and researchers. They're not trying to hide. The heritage center, the cheese tourism, the dance performances — they're sharing the culture, just not inviting you to join it.
The other comparison Daniel raised was the Armenians in Jerusalem. That's a different model entirely. The Armenians have been in Jerusalem since the fourth century. They have a quarter in the Old City. They're Christian. They're connected to a global diaspora and a nation-state. The Circassians have no quarter in Jerusalem, no nation-state, and a diaspora that's mostly in countries where they're gradually being absorbed.
Turkey's Circassian population is large but heavily assimilated. Intermarriage is common, Adyghe language use is declining. The Israeli Circassians might be the most culturally intact community in the diaspora precisely because they're so small and concentrated. There's a paradox — being a tiny minority in a small country made them more cohesive, not less.
Because you can't fade into the background when the background is entirely different from you. In Turkey, a Circassian can pass as Turkish. In Israel, a Circassian is obviously not Jewish and obviously not Arab. The distinctness is enforced by the environment.
That's a smart way to put it. The environment does the boundary work for you.
So what's the future look like for them? Five thousand people — that's not a sustainable population long-term without some kind of growth or immigration.
The population has actually grown. It was around two thousand at Israel's founding, now it's roughly five thousand. That's healthy growth for a small community. The villages are prosperous — Kfar Kama in particular has done well economically. There's a Circassian museum, a restaurant scene, the cheese business. Young people do leave for university and jobs in Tel Aviv or Haifa, but many come back. The community is tight enough that the gravitational pull is strong.
And the military service creates a pipeline back to the village. You serve, you get benefits, you come home and build a house near your parents. The state subsidizes the return.
Unintentionally, yes. The system that was designed to integrate immigrants and reward military service happens to align perfectly with the Circassian preference for staying put. It's a happy accident of policy.
Let me ask the uncomfortable question. They're Sunni Muslims in a country where the largest Sunni Muslim population — Israeli Arabs — has a complicated and often strained relationship with the state. Has that ever put the Circassians in a difficult position?
It has, actually. During periods of heightened tension between Israel and its Arab citizens — the October two thousand events, for example, when thirteen Arab citizens were killed by police during protests — the Circassians were in an awkward spot. They're Muslim, they share a religion with the protesters, but they're not part of the Arab national narrative. Some Arab activists have accused them of being collaborators or traitors. Some Jewish Israelis have lumped them in with Arabs out of ignorance. The Circassian response has generally been to keep their heads down and emphasize their distinctness.
"We're not who you think we are, and we're not who they think we are either." It's a lonely position.
It is. But it's also a position of clarity. They know exactly who they are. The confusion is everyone else's problem.
That might be the most Circassian sentence we've said all episode. Clarity through restraint.
Hilbert: I've heard this one.
Go on.
Hilbert: Not the Circassians. This conversation. The shape of it. Small community, military loyalty, nobody quite knows what to make of them. I sat through the same discussion about the Gurkhas in nineteen ninety-three. I was running sound for a documentary crew in Nepal. The producer had this theory about how the British army's Gurkha regiments were the same story — a warrior minority that made itself indispensable to a foreign state because the alternative was irrelevance.
That's... an actual parallel. The Gurkhas have been in the British army since eighteen fifteen. They're recruited from specific ethnic groups in Nepal, they have their own distinct culture and language, and they've maintained that identity across two centuries of service to a state that isn't theirs.
Hilbert: The producer's theory was that it works until it doesn't. We interviewed a retired Gurkha sergeant in Pokhara. He was seventy years old, had served in the Falklands and Hong Kong, had a British pension, spoke fluent English. And he said — I wrote this down, still have the notebook — he said "I gave them my best years and they gave me a pension. But my grandson doesn't know the old songs. So who won?"
That's the trade, isn't it. Security in exchange for... something that erodes over generations.
Hilbert: The documentary never got made. Funding fell through. But I kept thinking about that sergeant. The Circassians have something the Gurkhas don't — they're not a regiment, they're a community. The village is the unit, not the battalion. That might make the difference.
The village as the preservation mechanism. You can retire from a regiment. You can't retire from Kfar Kama.
Hilbert: The sergeant in Pokhara couldn't retire to his regiment's village because there wasn't one. He retired to a town where the young people were all leaving for Dubai. The songs died with him, probably.
So the question is whether Kfar Kama in thirty years still has children learning Adyghe at home, or whether it becomes a place where the old people remember the dances and the young people have moved to Tel Aviv.
Hilbert: The cheese helps.
The cheese does help. It's not nothing to have a product that people drive two hours to buy. It puts the village on the map for a reason that isn't politics or military service. It's just... good cheese.
Hilbert: I'd try it.
If you take one thing from this, it's that the Circassians solved a problem most people don't even recognize exists. How do you belong to a place without disappearing into it? Their answer is a social code that predates every state they've lived under, a language that's almost impossible for outsiders to learn, and a willingness to serve that makes their loyalty impossible to question. It's a formula that shouldn't work. It does.
And the thing I'd add is that it works precisely because it's not a formula anyone designed. It's an accident of history — genocide, exile, pragmatic choices by community elders in the nineteen fifties, a cheese tradition that happened to appeal to Israeli palates. Nobody planned this. But the result is a community that's more intact than groups a hundred times their size.
I wonder what Adyghe Khabze has to say about smoked cheese as a cultural preservation strategy.
Probably something about hospitality. You feed the visitors, the visitors go home and tell people you exist, the next generation has a reason to stay. It's all hospitality in the end.
This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop for keeping us on track, and for the notebook he's apparently been keeping since nineteen ninety-three.
If you want to send us a question like Daniel did — about a community, a bit of history, anything that makes you curious enough to write in — email the show at show at my weird prompts dot com. We read everything.
We'll be back soon.
