- Population
- ~1,000,000-1,100,000
- Language
- Russian
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Throughout Israel; largest in Ashdod, Haifa, Beersheba, Rishon LeZion, Bat Yam, Netanya, Ashkelon, northern and southern development towns and Ariel
Russian-speaking Jews are the roughly one million immigrants who came from the former Soviet Union, mostly in the 1990s, together with their children and some 100,000 who arrived after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Because the immigration law admits anyone with one Jewish grandparent, perhaps 400,000 to 500,000 of them are not Jewish by Orthodox law and cannot marry in Israel. Decades of Soviet atheism left most of them secular: they celebrate New Year's Eve with a fir tree and Grandfather Frost, keep Russian at home and read Russian-language newspapers. Engineers and doctors who once swept streets raised a generation prominent in high-tech, and Russian-speaking fellowships are the largest group of Messianic congregations in Israel.
Read more- Population
- ~450,000 (origin); ~100,000-140,000 (heritage speakers)
- Language
- Judeo-Iraqi Arabic
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Ramat Gan, Or Yehuda, Givatayim and the Tel Aviv metropolis; Jerusalem; Kiryat Gat
Iraqi Jews are the descendants of the Babylonian Jewish community, almost all of whom were airlifted to Israel in 1950-1951 after the Farhud pogrom of 1941 and the persecution that followed 1948, leaving behind their citizenship and property. Many spent years in transit camps around Or Yehuda before settling in Ramat Gan, Givatayim and the Tel Aviv suburbs, and today some 200,000 Israelis were born in Iraq or have an Iraqi-born father, with perhaps twice as many counting later generations. Most are Israel-born and speak Hebrew, while the Judeo-Iraqi Arabic of Baghdad survives mainly among the elderly. Families still keep the Sabbath with tbit, rice-stuffed chicken cooked overnight, and pray in the Babylonian rite of the Ben Ish Hai, and the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda preserves a recreated Baghdad alley and synagogue.
Read more- Population
- ~200,000-280,000
- Language
- English
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, Ra'anana, Modiin, Efrat and Gush Etzion, Netanya, Tel Aviv
English-speaking Jews, called 'Anglos' by other Israelis, are immigrants from the United States, Britain, Canada, South Africa and Australia and their children, most of whom came by choice out of religious or Zionist conviction rather than to escape persecution. Since 2002 more than 80,000 have arrived on organised charter flights, and whole neighbourhoods of Beit Shemesh, Ra'anana, Modiin and Jerusalem now run on English, with their own synagogues, schools and Thanksgiving dinners. Most are religiously observant, Modern Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox, and many of their children volunteer for combat units as lone soldiers. They also include more Jewish believers in Jesus than any other Jewish community in Israel.
Read more- Population
- 179,100
- Language
- Hebrew
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Haifa and the Krayot, Bat Yam and Holon, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Beersheba and Ashkelon
Romanian Jews and their children number about 180,000 in Israel, nearly the whole of a community that numbered over 350,000 after the Holocaust; fewer than 2,500 Jews remain in Romania. Most came between 1948 and 1989, many of them released by the communist regime in exchange for payments from Israel, and settled in Haifa, the coastal cities and the new development towns of the south. Their forebears had already founded Zikhron Ya'akov and Rosh Pinna in 1882. They gave Israel the roasted-eggplant salad on every table and Hasidic courts such as Vizhnitz, while the Romanian-speaking generation of survivors of Transnistria and Iași is now passing away.
Read more- Population
- 177,600
- Language
- Amharic
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Central and Southern districts: Netanya, Rehovot, Beersheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Hadera, Kiryat Malakhi
Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel, kept a distinctive biblical Judaism for centuries in the highlands of northern Ethiopia, cut off from the rest of the Jewish world, and were brought to Israel in dramatic airlifts in 1984 and 1991 and in a long stream of later immigration. About 177,600 people of Ethiopian origin now live in Israel, almost half of them born there, mostly in coastal and southern towns such as Netanya, Rehovot, Beersheba and Kiryat Malakhi. They are Israel's only large African Jewish community and still face racism, police violence and poverty, even as their young people reach university at higher rates than the national average. Each autumn thousands gather on a Jerusalem hillside for Sigd, their own festival of fasting and prayer led by white-robed priests called kessim.
Read more- Population
- ~150,000-175,000
- Language
- Judeo-Persian
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Jerusalem, Netanya, Kfar Saba and the Tel Aviv area
Persian Jews have come to Israel since the early nineteenth century, when families from Shiraz settled in Safed and Jerusalem, but most arrived after 1948, some 30,000 in the first years of the state and another 10,000-15,000 after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Today some 150,000-175,000 Israelis are Persian Jews by descent, besides the Mashhadi, Kurdish and Urmia Jews from Iran who form communities of their own, most of them born in Israel, with large communities in Jerusalem, Netanya, Kfar Saba and around Tel Aviv. Many families still cook Persian food such as gondi dumplings and crispy tahdig rice on the Sabbath and set a Nowruz table each spring, and Israel's public radio broadcasts in Persian. The wars with Iran in 2025 and 2026 brought Iranian missiles onto the cities where they live, while they feared for relatives still in Iran.
Read more- Population
- 159,800
- Language
- Polish
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Throughout Jewish Israel, densest in the Tel Aviv metropolis, Haifa, Jerusalem and Bnei Brak
Polish Jews and their children number about 160,000 in Israel, though only some 23,500 were born in Poland, most of them now over 75. They arrived in waves, from the pioneers of the 1920s who built much of Tel Aviv to Holocaust survivors after 1945 and those expelled in Poland's 1968 anti-Zionist campaign, and they supplied much of the country's founding leadership. Their culture is so absorbed into mainstream Ashkenazi Israeli life that it is rarely marked as separate, but landsmanshaft associations still gather each year to mourn the destroyed towns of Krakow, Warsaw and Bialystok. The Holocaust shapes their memory, and since 2023 thousands of their descendants have also sought Polish passports.
Read more- Population
- ~100,000-160,000
- Language
- Hebrew
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Jerusalem (Bukharan Quarter), Tel Aviv, Or Yehuda, Holon, Lod and other central cities
Bukharan Jews are the Persian-speaking Jews of Central Asia, from the cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Dushanbe. Pious families began coming to Jerusalem in the 1870s and built its Bukharan Quarter of grand stone houses in the 1890s, but most of the community arrived from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and after 1991, and today some 100,000-160,000 live in Israel, especially in Or Yehuda, Holon, Lod, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The older generation still speaks Bukhori, a Jewish form of Tajik Persian, alongside Russian, while the young speak Hebrew. Weddings and family gatherings feature osh plov, the Central Asian rice pilaf, and the classical shashmaqam music in which Bukharan Jewish musicians excelled.
Read more- Population
- 120,600
- Language
- Arabic, Judeo-Yemeni
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Rosh HaAyin, Rehovot (Sha'arayim), Tel Aviv (Kerem HaTeimanim), Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Petah Tikva, Hadera and dozens of moshavim of the central coastal plain
Yemenite Jews are among the oldest Mizrahi communities in Israel: the first families walked and sailed from Yemen in 1881-82, decades before the Zionist pioneers, and settled in Jerusalem's Silwan and in the orange-growing colonies around Rehovot and Petah Tikva. The great majority, about 49,000 people, were flown in by Operation Magic Carpet in 1949-50, and their descendants now number some 435,000. Rosh HaAyin, built on a transit camp of Magic Carpet immigrants, and the Sha'arayim quarter of Rehovot remain Yemenite strongholds. The community kept a distinctive Hebrew pronunciation and liturgy, the poetry of the 17th-century rabbi Shalom Shabazi sung at weddings and the elaborate henna ceremony, and gave Israel foods such as jachnun, malawach and zhug and singers such as Ofra Haza. The unresolved disappearance of hundreds of Yemenite babies from immigrant camps in 1948-54 remains a deep wound.
Read more- Population
- 120,000
- Language
- French
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Netanya, Jerusalem, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ra'anana, Tel Aviv and Bat Yam
French Jews in Israel are immigrants from France and their children, most of them from families that had earlier left Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco for France. Rising antisemitism and terror attacks in France brought waves of immigration that peaked in 2014-2015 and rose again after October 2023, making them the largest Western immigrant community of the past decade. Netanya's seafront, lined with French cafés and bakeries, is the heart of a community that keeps French at home and Sephardi traditions in its synagogues. Many struggle to have French professional diplomas recognised, and some breadwinners still commute to jobs in France.
Read more- Population
- ~100,000-120,000 (estimates 80,000-160,000)
- Language
- Judeo-Tat
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Beersheba, Hadera, Or Akiva, Sderot, Acre, Kiryat Yam, Migdal HaEmek, Nof HaGalil, Ofakim, Kiryat Gat and other towns of the periphery, Haifa bay and south Tel Aviv
Mountain Jews, who call themselves Juhuro and are known in Israel simply as Kavkazim, are a Persian-speaking Jewish people from the foothills and Caspian coast of Azerbaijan and Dagestan, where their ancestors settled some fifteen centuries ago. A few hundred families reached the Land of Israel before 1948 and helped found Be'er Ya'akov, but most came in two waves, about 12,000-20,000 in the 1970s and about 55,000 between 1989 and 2001, so that around 100,000-120,000 Mountain Jews and their children now live in Israel. They settled close to their extended families in development towns such as Hadera, Or Akiva, Sderot, Beersheba and Acre, where they keep about fifteen synagogues of their own. Weddings are held as two separate feasts, one for the bride and one for the groom, and still ring with the lezginka; at Simchat Torah a vow is sealed by wrapping a new embroidered cloth around the Torah scroll.
Read more- Population
- ~65,000-80,000
- Language
- Judeo-Georgian
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Ashdod, Lod, Bat Yam, Holon, Or Yehuda, Rehovot, Jerusalem
Georgian Jews are an ancient community from the Caucasus who trace their presence in Georgia to the Babylonian exile and came to Israel in two waves, about 30,000 in the 1970s and most of the rest after the Soviet collapse. They arrived as extended families and whole town communities, insisted on living together and on their own synagogues, and remain more traditional and tightly knit than most immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Ashdod now holds the largest Georgian Jewish community in the world, with others in Lod, Bat Yam, Holon and Jerusalem. Family celebrations follow the Georgian supra feast, with a toastmaster leading toasts and polyphonic song over khachapuri and khinkali.
Read more- Population
- ~60,000-80,000 by descent
- Language
- Marathi
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Beersheba, Dimona, Yeruham, Ramla, Lod, Kiryat Gat, Ashdod, Petah Tikva, Haifa
The Bene Israel are Marathi-speaking Jews from the Konkan coast of western India, who by their own tradition descend from Judeans shipwrecked there more than two thousand years ago and lived for centuries as Sabbath-keeping oil-pressers among Hindu villagers. Most emigrated to Israel between the 1950s and the 1970s and were settled in Negev development towns such as Beersheba, Dimona and Yeruham and in Lod and Ramla, where some 60,000-80,000 people of Bene Israel descent now live. In their early years the Rabbinate questioned their Jewishness until protests won full recognition in 1964. Their signature rite is the Malida, a platter of sweetened flattened rice, coconut and fruit offered in thanks to the prophet Elijah at births, weddings and other milestones.
Read more- Population
- 67,700
- Language
- Hebrew
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Tel Aviv-Yafo (Florentin, Jaffa), Bat Yam, Holon, Yehud-Monosson, Jerusalem; kibbutzim and moshavim such as HaGoshrim, Nahsholim, Gvulot, Burgata, Avital, Geva Carmel, Givat Nili and Tal Shahar
Turkish Jews in Israel are mostly Sephardim whose ancestors found refuge in the Ottoman Empire after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. About 7,300 came during the British Mandate, and in 1949-51 some 34,500 arrived, nearly 40 percent of Turkey's Jews, settling in Jaffa, the Florentin quarter of Tel Aviv and the southern suburbs, while others founded kibbutzim such as HaGoshrim in the Hula Valley. A steady trickle has continued ever since, quickening in the Erdogan era as antisemitism and the breakdown of Turkish-Israeli relations pushed Istanbul's shrinking community to leave. The older generation speaks Ladino, Turkish and French, and many families keep Turkish food, music and an affection for Turkey that makes them strong advocates of good relations between the two countries.
Read more- Population
- 61,100
- Language
- Arabic, Judeo-Tripolitanian
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Netanya, Bat Yam, Ashkelon, Or Yehuda and the Tel Aviv area; a dozen or more moshavim (Dalton, Zeitan, Hatzav and others)
Libyan Jews, who call themselves Tripolitanians, are the descendants of a community of about 38,000 that moved almost in its entirety to Israel between 1949 and 1951, among the fastest and most complete migrations of any Jewish community. Unlike most North African immigrants they settled mainly in the centre of the country, in Netanya, Bat Yam, Ashkelon and Or Yehuda, while about a quarter founded moshavim, often whole small-town communities from the Tripolitanian hinterland transplanted together, such as Zeitan, founded by Jews of Zliten. Their Judeo-Arabic dialect, Yudi or Tripolita'it, is now heard only among the elderly, but customs such as the Bsisa blessing of the new month of Nisan and the local Purim of Tripoli are still kept. The Heritage Center of Libyan Jewry in Or Yehuda and the Or Shalom center in Bat Yam preserve their manuscripts, Torah scrolls and memory of the Italian racial laws and the Giado concentration camp.
Read more- Population
- 61,000
- Language
- Judeo-Moroccan Arabic
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Nationwide; strongest in southern and northern development towns (Netivot, Sderot, Dimona, Ofakim, Kiryat Shmona), Beersheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon and Jerusalem
Moroccan Jews are the largest Jewish origin community in Israel after immigrants from the former Soviet Union: about 458,000 people were born in Morocco or have a Moroccan-born father, and close to a million Israelis claim Moroccan descent. Most arrived between 1948 and 1967, the later waves through the clandestine Operation Yachin, and were sent to transit camps and new development towns on the Negev and Galilee frontiers, where many of their grandchildren still live. Their traditional Sephardi-Maghrebi Judaism shapes the Israeli calendar: the Mimouna feast at the end of Passover, once a Moroccan home custom, is now a national event attended by politicians, and the annual hillula at the tomb of the Baba Sali in Netivot draws more than 100,000 pilgrims. Hebrew is the language of all generations; Judeo-Moroccan Arabic and French survive mainly among the elderly.
Read more- Population
- 49,000
- Language
- Hebrew
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Bat Yam, Holon, Haifa, Ashdod
Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews in Israel, about 48,000 people who still carry the language, descend from the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 who found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Old Sephardi families have lived in Jerusalem since Ottoman times, but most came after 1948 from Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece and the former Yugoslavia, settling in Jaffa, Tel Aviv's Florentin quarter, Bat Yam, Holon and Haifa, where Salonika dockworkers had come in the 1930s. Their medieval Spanish ballads, burekas and slow-cooked brown eggs are woven into Israeli life, yet fluent speakers of Judeo-Spanish are now mostly elderly. Israel has the largest Ladino-speaking population in the world and a state authority working to keep the language alive.
Read more- Population
- ~42,000 (est. 38,000-47,000)
- Language
- Hindi
- Religion
- Hinduism
- Location
- Construction sites and company housing in the Tel Aviv metropolis, Jerusalem, the central towns (Be'er Ya'akov, Rishon LeZion), Haifa, Ashdod and Beersheba; caregivers in private homes across the country
Indians in Israel other than the Malayalis of Kerala, roughly 42,000 people, are the larger part of a community that has nearly tripled since the October 2023 war. About 16,000 are young men from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and Rajasthan who came from 2024 onward to work on building sites after Israel barred Palestinian labourers, recruited in mass screening drives in Lucknow, Rohtak and Kanpur, and Hindi has replaced Arabic as the language of many construction crews; they live together in company housing near the sites and cook their own dal and roti. Most of the others are live-in caregivers for elderly Israelis, among them women and men from Mizoram and other north-eastern states, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. India and Israel agreed in February 2026 to bring 50,000 more Indian workers by 2030.
Read more- Population
- 40,000
- Language
- Hungarian
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Tel Aviv metropolis, Haifa, Jerusalem, Netanya, Bnei Brak; heritage museum in Safed
Hungarian-speaking Jews in Israel, about 40,000 people, are survivors of the 1944 deportations and later emigrants from Hungary, Transylvania and Slovakia, with their children. They brought the coffee-house culture of Budapest, the satire of Ephraim Kishon and a Hungarian-language newspaper, Új Kelet, that has appeared in Tel Aviv since 1948, as well as strict Orthodox and Hasidic courts such as Kiryat Sanz in Netanya. Hannah Szenes, the poet-paratrooper executed in Budapest in 1944, is one of Israel's national heroes. Hungarian is now spoken mostly by the elderly.
Read more- Population
- 38,000
- Language
- Thai
- Religion
- Buddhism - Theravada
- Location
- Farming moshavim and kibbutzim of the Arava, the western Negev near Gaza, the Jordan and Beit She'an valleys, the Upper Galilee and the Sharon
Thai farm workers, around 38,000 people, do much of the planting, picking and packing on Israel's farms and are the country's largest foreign agricultural workforce. Nearly all are young men from the poor rice-farming villages of Isan in north-east Thailand, who come on five-year contracts under a bilateral agreement and send most of their wages home. They live in caravans and barracks beside the greenhouses of desert and border communities, from the date and pepper farms of the Arava to the kibbutzim beside Gaza. On 7 October 2023 Thais were the largest group of foreigners killed and taken hostage, yet the workforce has since grown past its pre-war size.
Read more- Population
- ~30,000-40,000
- Language
- Hebrew (Judeo-Arabic among the Egyptian-born elderly)
- Religion
- Judaism (Karaite)
- Location
- Ashdod, Ramla and moshav Matzliah, Beersheba, Kiryat Gat, Ofakim, Arad, Jerusalem's Old City
Israel is home to most of the world's Karaite Jews, about 30,000-40,000 people who follow a form of Judaism that accepts only the written Hebrew Bible and rejects the Talmud and rabbinic Oral Law. Most descend from the Arabic-speaking Karaite community of Cairo, which came to Israel after the wars of 1948, 1956 and 1967, with smaller groups from Iraq, Turkey and Crimea. In 1950 Egyptian Karaites founded the farming village of Matzliah near Ramla, and Ramla, Ashdod and Beersheba became their main centres, with fourteen synagogues in twelve towns and a 12th-century synagogue in Jerusalem's Old City. Worshippers take off their shoes and prostrate themselves in prayer, carpets cover the synagogue floor, no fire is kindled on the Sabbath, and the calendar follows the sighting of the new moon and the ripening of barley in the land. Their own council of sages and religious court rule on marriage, slaughter and burial, independent of the Chief Rabbinate.
Read more- Population
- ~30,000-35,000 Rabbanite Jews of Egyptian origin (two generations); 49,300 with the Egyptian Karaites (2023)
- Location
- Haifa (Kiryat Haim), Holon, Bat Yam, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and southern towns such as Kiryat Malakhi
Egyptian Jews came to Israel in three waves that followed the wars of 1948, 1956 and 1967: about 14,000 in 1948-1950, some 13,500 refugees expelled after the Suez war of 1956, and over 10,000 after 1967, when hundreds of Jewish men were held in Egyptian prison camps. They came from a cosmopolitan, largely urban community in Cairo and Alexandria that spoke French, Italian, Ladino and Egyptian Arabic, and many were educated in French and Alliance schools. In Israel they settled mostly in Haifa and the Tel Aviv area and assimilated quickly into Hebrew-speaking life, while associations of Jews from Egypt record testimonies, commemorate lost synagogues and seek recognition for property left behind. At Passover, many families retell the Exodus with their own story of leaving Egypt with nothing.
Read more- Population
- 31,500
- Language
- Hebrew
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Holon and Bat Yam, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem (Nachlaot), Kiryat Tivon, Ashkelon and other towns
Syrian Jews in Israel, about 31,500 people by their own or their father's birthplace and many more by older descent, are the families of Aleppo and Damascus who came in the Ottoman and Mandate years, after the riots of 1947, and by secret escapes until the 1990s. Aleppo Jews founded Jerusalem's Ades synagogue in 1901, where the all-night winter baqashot hymns, sung to Arab melodies, still draw worshippers; later arrivals settled in Holon, Bat Yam and Kiryat Tivon. They speak Hebrew today, keep the Aleppo and Damascus rites and their own heritage centres, and take pride in the Aleppo Codex, the ancient Bible their community guarded for six centuries and smuggled to Israel. The Halabi and Shami communities still keep separate associations.
Read more- Population
- 31,000
- Language
- Tagalog
- Religion
- Christianity - Roman Catholicism
- Location
- Tel Aviv (weekend community hub in Neve Sha'anan, south Tel Aviv), Jerusalem, Haifa; caregivers live in employers' homes throughout the country, including Netanya, Rishon LeZion, Rehovot and Beersheba
Filipinos in Israel, around 31,000 people, are mostly women working as live-in caregivers for elderly and disabled Israelis, and they are the largest group among the country's home-care workers. They began arriving in the 1990s, and many have stayed for a decade or more; some raised children in Israel, several hundred of whom were granted residency. During the week they live in their employers' homes across the country, and on Saturday, Israel's day of rest and their day off, they gather in south Tel Aviv for Tagalog and English Mass at the Our Lady Woman of Valor pastoral centre, for shared 'weekend flats', karaoke and Filipino food. Filipino caregivers have died beside their patients in the 7 October 2023 attack and in Iranian missile strikes in 2026, and Israelis widely admire their loyalty and care.
Read more- Population
- ~28,000 (est. 27,000-30,000)
- Language
- Sinhala
- Religion
- Buddhism - Theravada
- Location
- Farms of the Arava, western Negev and north; construction sites in the Tel Aviv metropolis, Jerusalem and Haifa; caregivers in private homes nationwide
Sri Lankans in Israel, about 28,000 people and most of them Sinhalese, are a workforce that more than doubled after the October 2023 war, when Israel turned to Sri Lanka for farm hands, builders and caregivers to replace barred Palestinian labourers and departing Thais. Earlier arrivals were mostly women caring for elderly Israelis; since 2024 young men have come by the thousand under government agreements to work on farms and building sites. Most are Theravada Buddhists who keep their faith privately, while Sinhalese Catholics join Sri Lankan nuns and Filipino caregivers at migrant Masses in Tel Aviv, and a minority are Tamil Hindus and Muslims. Wages several times those at home have made Israel one of Sri Lanka's fastest-growing labour destinations despite the wars.
Read more- Population
- 23,000
- Language
- Ukrainian
- Religion
- Christianity - Eastern Orthodox
- Location
- Mainly the Russian-speaking cities of the coastal plain and Haifa: Bat Yam, Holon, Rishon LeZion, Ashdod, Netanya, Haifa and Tel Aviv
Ukrainians in Israel who are not eligible to immigrate as Jews or their relatives number about 23,000 and live under temporary group protection from deportation. Some came years ago as caregivers, cleaners and builders; about 14,000 more, mostly women and children, fled after Russia's invasion in February 2022 to join relatives or friends in Israel's large Russian-speaking cities. Without refugee status they receive almost no state support or health insurance and depend on relatives, volunteers and aid groups, and many have slid into poverty since Israel's own war began in 2023. The war followed them: five Ukrainians, three of them children, were killed when an Iranian missile struck a Bat Yam apartment block in June 2025.
Read more- Population
- ~15,000-19,000
- Language
- Tigrinya
- Religion
- Christianity - Tewahedo Orthodox
- Location
- South Tel Aviv (Neve Sha'anan, Shapira, Hatikva, HaHagana Street), with communities in Petah Tikva, Bnei Brak, Ashdod, Jerusalem and Eilat
Tigrinya-speaking Eritreans are the largest African community in Israel, refugees from indefinite military conscription who crossed the Sinai between 2006 and 2012, many after being held for ransom and tortured by traffickers there. Some fifteen to nineteen thousand remain, concentrated in the neighbourhoods around Tel Aviv's central bus station, where storefront churches fill on Sunday with white-shawled worshippers chanting the Ge'ez liturgy of the Eritrean Orthodox Church. Under group protection that shields them from deportation but rarely grants asylum, they work in hotels, restaurants and cleaning and are raising a generation of Hebrew-speaking children. The community is split between supporters and opponents of the Eritrean government, a rift that erupted into street battles in Tel Aviv in 2023 and 2024.
Read more- Population
- 16,000
- Language
- German, Standard
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Tel Aviv, Haifa (Carmel), Jerusalem (Rehavia), Nahariya and the western Galilee, Sharon moshavim
German-speaking Jews, called Yekkes in Israel, arrived mostly in the 1930s, when about 60,000 fled Nazi Germany and Austria, and today number about 66,500 with their children. They are known for punctuality, formality and order, and they built much of the country's legal system, universities, orchestras and the Bauhaus-style White City of Tel Aviv. They founded Nahariya and Shavei Zion in the Galilee, and the newspaper Haaretz has been in German-Jewish hands since 1937. The generation that fled is almost gone, but their association, active since 1932, and the Yekke Museum keep the heritage alive.
Read more- Population
- 14,000
- Language
- Portuguese
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Ra'anana, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa; Kibbutz Bror Hayil near Sderot
Portuguese-speaking Jews in Israel are almost all Brazilian immigrants and their families, about 14,000 people. They have come steadily since the 1950s, when Brazilians settled Kibbutz Bror Hayil near Sderot, still called the Brazilian kibbutz, and in record numbers since 2015 as recession and crime pushed Jews out of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Ra'anana, a sister city of Rio since 2021, has the largest community, some 300 families. They bring samba, churrasco and a warm sociability, and Brazilians were among those killed in the attack of 7 October 2023.
Read more- Population
- 13,000
- Language
- Lishana Deni
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Jerusalem (Katamon and southern neighbourhoods), Jerusalem-corridor and Galilee moshavim, Gush Dan
The Jews of Iraqi Kurdistan came from the mountain towns of Zakho, Amadiya and Duhok, where for centuries they spoke Lishana Deni, a Jewish form of Aramaic close to the language of the Talmud, and lived much like their Kurdish neighbours as weavers, raft-men, peddlers and farmers. Nearly all were airlifted to Israel in 1950-1951, and many were sent to build farming villages in the hills around Jerusalem and in the Galilee or settled in Jerusalem's Katamon neighbourhood. Today they form the core of Israel's Kurdish Jewish community, though their Aramaic survives only among a few elderly speakers. Every autumn thousands gather for Saharane, a Kurdish Jewish festival of drums, circle dances, kubba and Aramaic songs.
Read more- Population
- 12,000
- Language
- Tunisian Arabic
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Netivot, Ofakim, Beersheba and moshavim of the western Negev (Eitan, Zimrat, Gilat, Sharsheret, Beit HaGadi, Tlamim, Brakhia); Jerusalem, Or Akiva, Haifa, Bnei Brak
Tunisian Jews came to Israel mainly between 1948 and 1967, about half of a community of some 100,000; the other half went to France. Many Djerba families settled together on new farming villages of the western Negev, such as Eitan, Zimrat, Gilat and Beit HaGadi, and in the nearby towns of Netivot and Ofakim. Djerban Judaism, known for its strict traditionalism and its rabbinic scholarship, continues in Israel through the Kisse Rahamim yeshiva of Bnei Brak, moved from Tunis in 1971. Each year Tunisian and Moroccan Israelis gather at the Beersheba grave of the Djerba-born sage Rabbi Haim Houri for his hillula, and families still keep Tunisian customs such as the girls' festival of Rosh Hodesh Tevet and the Se'udat Yitro feast.
Read more- Population
- ~10,000 speakers; est. 30,000-50,000 by descent
- Language
- Hebrew
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Jerusalem; Upper Galilee (Safed area); Gush Dan and moshavim
The Jews of Iranian Kurdistan come from Sanandaj, Saqqez, Bijar and Kerend, where for centuries they spoke Hulaula, a Jewish dialect of Aramaic, alongside Kurdish and Persian. Almost all moved to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, many by way of Tehran, and settled in Jerusalem and in farming villages, where they joined the much larger community of Kurdish Jews from Iraq. Fewer than 10,000 people, nearly all elderly, still speak Hulaula, while their children and grandchildren speak Hebrew. Each autumn during Sukkot thousands of Kurdish Jews gather in Jerusalem's Sacher Park for Saharane, a festival of drums, circle dances and Kurdish food that their ancestors once held by the rivers of Kurdistan after Passover.
Read more- Population
- ~10,000 (est. 5,000-12,000; no count)
- Language
- Hebrew
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Jerusalem (Bukharan Quarter), Bnei Brak, Holon, Herzliya and north Tel Aviv
Mashhadi Jews in Israel, perhaps 10,000 people, descend from a community in north-east Iran that was forced to convert to Islam in 1839 and kept its Judaism in secret for generations, praying in hiding and even making the Hajj to Mecca. Some of those pilgrims went on to Jerusalem in the 1890s and built two synagogues with courtyards for newcomers in the Bukharan Quarter, where families from Mashhad gathered until the community left Iran after a second blood libel in 1946. Today they are Hebrew-speaking Israelis, still closely knit: a central committee runs a synagogue in Holon, an old-age home in Herzliya, welfare and burial funds, and yearly scholarships and grants to soldiers paid for together with the Mashhadi communities of New York, London and Italy.
Read more- Population
- ~10,000 (est. 7,000-14,000; no count)
- Language
- Malayalam
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Live-in caregivers in the homes of elderly Israelis across the Tel Aviv metropolis, Jerusalem, Haifa, Herzliya, Ashkelon and other towns; a few farm workers in the north
Malayalis in Israel, perhaps 10,000 people, are mostly Christian women from Kerala who work as live-in caregivers for elderly Israelis, many of them trained nurses who could not get nursing licences. They came from the 2000s onward through private agencies, and some arrived on Holy Land pilgrimages and stayed on to work. Most are Syro-Malabar Catholics and other Kerala Christians from the hill districts of Idukki and Kottayam, and they see their years in the land of the Bible as both a job and a blessing. The community has suffered war losses: caregiver Soumya Santosh was killed by a rocket in Ashkelon in 2021, and farm worker Pat Nibin Maxwell by a Hezbollah missile in the Galilee in 2024.
Read more- Population
- ~6,000-12,000
- Language
- Arabic, Egyptian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Arab towns of the Galilee (Nazareth) and the Triangle (Tayibe), fewer in southern Arab towns and mixed cities
Egyptians in Israel are a small, little-seen community of men who came for work from the late 1960s and in greater numbers after the 1979 peace treaty, many of them after meeting Arab Israeli women in the 1990s, when tourism between the two countries peaked. Nearly all married into Muslim or Christian Arab families and live in Arab towns such as Nazareth and Tayibe, where their children grow up as Arab Israelis speaking Palestinian Arabic and Hebrew. Roughly 6,000 to 12,000 live in Israel; most are Sunni Muslims, with a Christian minority. They live with divided loyalties: Egypt regards Israeli citizenship as betrayal and has stripped some of them of Egyptian nationality, so visits home need security permits and can leave them waiting months to return.
Read more- Population
- 8,000
- Language
- Malayalam
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Moshavim Nevatim, Shahar, Yuval, Mesilat Zion; Beersheba, Jerusalem and other cities
The Cochin Jews come from the Malabar coast of Kerala in southern India, where Jews lived for at least a thousand years under the protection of Hindu rulers, and almost the entire community moved to Israel in the 1950s. They were sent to farm, and still give their character to a string of villages from Yuval in the Upper Galilee to Nevatim in the Negev; with descendants they number about 8,000. Their heritage language is a Jewish form of Malayalam, kept alive mainly in the songs women sing at weddings and on Simchat Torah. In Nevatim a replica of a Cochin synagogue, built with fittings brought from Kerala, houses a heritage centre and a restaurant serving Cochini food.
Read more- Population
- ~5,500-6,000
- Language
- Thadou-Kuki and other Kuki-Chin languages (Mizo); Hebrew in Israel
- Religion
- Judaism (Orthodox, by conversion)
- Location
- Galilee (Nof HaGalil, Karmiel, Maalot-Tarshiha, Afula), Sderot and Nitzan, Kiryat Arba
The Bnei Menashe are Kuki, Chin and Mizo people from the hills of north-east India who believe they descend from the lost Israelite tribe of Manasseh, and who turned from Christianity to Judaism from the 1950s onward. About 5,000 had moved to Israel by 2025, converting formally to Judaism on arrival, and in 2026 the government began flying in the rest of the community, about 5,800 people, in an operation called Wings of Dawn. New arrivals start in an absorption centre in Nof HaGalil, joining relatives in Galilee towns and in Sderot near Gaza. Their young men serve in large numbers in combat units, and several were killed or wounded in the wars of 2023-2024.
Read more- Population
- 5,000
- Language
- Nepali (individual language)
- Religion
- Hinduism
- Location
- Caregivers in private homes and long-term care centres in the Tel Aviv area, Jerusalem, Haifa and other towns; agricultural students on kibbutzim and moshavim in the Arava, Negev and Galilee
Nepalis in Israel, about 5,000 people, are mostly caregivers looking after elderly Israelis, many of them women selected by lottery under a government-to-government agreement, along with a few hundred young agricultural students on 'learn and earn' programmes on kibbutz farms. On 7 October 2023 ten Nepali students were killed at Kibbutz Alumim near Gaza and a classmate, Bipin Joshi, was taken hostage; his body was returned two years later. The killings briefly halted migration, but Nepalis have kept coming, drawn by caregiver wages several times what they could earn at home or in the Gulf.
Read more- Population
- 4,500
- Language
- Hebrew
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv area and small towns and villages across Israel
The Nash Didan, meaning 'our people', are the Jews of Urmia and Salmas in Iran's Azerbaijan province, who for centuries spoke their own dialect of Aramaic, Lishán Didán, alongside Turkish, Kurdish and Persian. They came to Israel in waves, from the early twentieth century through the mass emigration of 1950-1951 to the last families who fled the Iranian revolution in 1979, and today live mainly in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv area. Their Aramaic is now spoken by only a few thousand elderly people and has not been passed on to children. A community website keeps an online Hebrew-Aramaic dictionary, folk tales and the stories of each family's journey from the shores of Lake Urmia.
Read more- Population
- ~3,000-5,000
- Language
- English (African American English); Hebrew
- Religion
- African Hebrew Israelite faith (Torah-based, non-Rabbinic)
- Location
- Dimona (2,000-3,000, c. 500 in the Village of Peace), with small groups in Arad, Mitzpe Ramon and Tiberias
The African Hebrew Israelites are African Americans, most of them originally from Chicago, who believe that Black Americans descend from the ancient Israelites and who came to Israel by way of Liberia from 1969, following their founder Ben Ammi Ben-Israel. Some 3,000 to 5,000 live in Israel, two to three thousand of them in the Negev town of Dimona, where their Village of Peace is run as an urban kibbutz; they keep the Torah's Sabbath and festivals without rabbinic Judaism and call themselves Hebrews rather than Jews. They live by a strict vegan diet without alcohol or tobacco, wear natural-fibre clothing with ritual fringes, and are known across Israel for their gospel and soul choirs. Most received permanent residency only in 2003, the last families threatened with deportation were given temporary residency in 2025, and their young people serve in the army, where Sergeant Elishai Young became the first of them to fall in 2024.
Read more- Population
- 3,900
- Language
- Inter-Zab Jewish Neo-Aramaic
- Religion
- Ethnic Religions
- Location
- Jerusalem (Bukharim quarter and other neighbourhoods) and nearby towns
The Arbili Jews come from Arbil (Erbil) in Iraqi Kurdistan, an ancient city whose royal house converted to Judaism two thousand years ago, and from the small towns between the Great and Little Zab rivers. Some 3,000 of them were airlifted to Israel in 1950-1951 with the rest of Iraqi Jewry and settled mainly in Jerusalem, where they had kept their own synagogue in the Bukharim quarter since the 1930s. Their Jewish dialect of Aramaic, Lishanid Noshan or 'the language of our people', survives only among a few elderly speakers, and their children speak Hebrew. The community lost its Jerusalem synagogue in 2020-2021, when the land was sold to a developer.
Read more- Population
- 3,500
- Language
- Levantine Arabic
- Religion
- Christianity - Maronite Catholic
- Location
- Northern Israel: Nahariya, Kiryat Shmona, Tiberias, Ma'alot-Tarshiha, Karmiel, Safed, Haifa, Acre
The Lebanese of Israel are the former South Lebanon Army fighters and their families who crossed the border when Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in May 2000, fearing Hezbollah reprisals. Of some 7,000 who fled, about 3,500 remain, most of them Maronite Catholics with smaller numbers of Shia Muslims, Druze and other Christians, living in northern towns within sight of the hills they left. They hold Israeli citizenship and are registered simply as Lebanese; many reject an Arab label and speak of a Phoenician heritage. Their children grew up in Hebrew-language schools, often serve in the army and text in Hebrew or in Lebanese Arabic written in Hebrew letters, while their parents still sing Lebanese songs at memorial gatherings and hope one day to return.
Read more- Population
- 2,700
- Language
- Dutch
- Religion
- Judaism
- Location
- Jerusalem, Tel Aviv area, Haifa, Beersheba and the south
Dutch Jews in Israel are a small community of a few thousand, mostly Holocaust survivors from the Netherlands, where three in four Jews were murdered, and later immigrants with their families. They keep their own association, which in 1945 had already rescued 222 Dutch Jews with immigration certificates and today publishes a Dutch-language magazine read in more than a thousand homes. The association runs branches in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and the south and supports homes for Dutch-born elderly such as Beth Joles in Haifa. Their sober Dutch style and the memory of Westerbork and the deportations set them apart from other Ashkenazi Israelis.
Read more- Population
- ~1,000-2,000
- Language
- Masalit
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- South Tel Aviv (Neve Sha'anan and the central bus station area), with smaller numbers in other cities
The Masalit in Israel are Darfuri refugees who crossed the Sinai on foot between 2006 and 2012, fleeing the attacks on their villages around El Geneina in western Darfur. A community of perhaps one to two thousand, most of them young men and their families, they live in south Tel Aviv, where they run their own Masalit community centre and elect a tribal head. They are Sunni Muslims whose ancestral sultanate in Dar Masalit kept its independence until 1922. Since 2023 the community has followed in anguish the massacres of Masalit in El Geneina by the Rapid Support Forces and raises money for relatives in the refugee camps of eastern Chad.
Read more- Population
- ~600-1,200
- Location
- Tel Aviv-Jaffa and other central cities, dispersed
The Krymchaks are the Turkic-speaking Rabbanite Jews of Crimea, a tiny people nearly destroyed in 1941-42, when the Nazis murdered three-quarters of them. Most survivors and their descendants emigrated to Israel after the Soviet collapse, where several hundred to about 1,200 now live among the Russian-speaking immigrant community. Their language, a Jewish form of Crimean Tatar written once in Hebrew letters, is remembered only by a few elderly people. A Krymchak association founded in Tel Aviv in 2021 keeps their memory, their own medieval 'Kaffa' prayer rite and their 11 December Holocaust remembrance day alive.
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