Bira (Russian: Бира) is an urban settlement in Obluchensky District of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Russia. Population: 4,176 (2006 est.) and 4,111 (1989 Census). In May 1928 the first group of Jewish settlers from cities and villages in Ukraine, Byelorussia and Russia arrived in what became the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.In 1934, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was formed in the Russian Far East to show that Russian Jews could receive a territory with cultural autonomy in a socialist framework. The JAO's capital city was Birobidzhan with Yiddish as its official language.
A Jewish cemetery exists. [2011]