The book was the result of an expedition to Georgia in 1929-1930, carried out under the leadership of the author. That expedition brought rich museum collections (“a significant number of exhibits”) and extensive photographic material, partly analyzed in the book, but largely still unpublished. Its conception and implementation lie within the framework of the standard of ethnographic research of the U.S.S.R. that existed in 1920s. The researchers visited all areas of the compact settlement of Jews in Georgia. The main goal was to study religion, community structure, and economic life of the surveyed groups. The allocation of religion in the first place runs against the traditional ethnographic approach, which emphasized the ‘originality’ of the studied people in the sphere of material culture, everyday life, clothing, occupations, etc., but it is completely justified in this case, since the Jews of Georgia did not stand out among the surrounding of the Georgian population in the usual ethnographic respect, but at the same time they retained their religious and communal specifics, it was Judaism that was “the main regulator of the life of the districts of Georgian Jews”. At that, it is precisely religion and the communal nature of life that, according to P., turn out to be the culprits of the backwardness and unsanitary conditions of the Jewish districts, the isolation of which has been most severely criticized.

On the other hand, in the ethnographic collection of materials brought by P., the influence of the program of L.Ya. Sternberg is noticeable, where the need to describe transformations in Jewish communities in the post-October period and the degree to which Jews entered a new life was stressed.