- Population
- ~10,000 (est. 5,000-12,000; no count)
- 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.