Some of the cities that lie along the river are Birakan, Londoko, Teploozyorsk, Bira, Birobidzhan and Nadezhdinskoye.
One result of the revivial of Jewish and Yiddish community life in Birobidzhan has been increasing calls from extremists such as Christopher Bollyn and Michèle Renouf to have the area replace Israel as the Jewish state.
As Chairman of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee for the aid of Jews in Europe Marley became deeply involved in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Birobidzhan, an area in eastern Siberia which was designated by Joseph Stalin as an autonomous area for the Jewish people.
In 1941, they finished the construction of the Birobidzhan-Leninsk line and Partizansk-Nakhodka section and commissioned the Smolyaninovo-Dunai, Partizansk-Sergeyevka, and Baranovsky-Gvozdevo lines.
In another instance, a government-produced Yiddish film called Seekers of Happiness told the story of a Jewish family that fled the Great Depression in the United States to make a new life for itself in Birobidzhan.