The Jewish Community of Afghanistan

Afghanistan

افغانستان

د افغانستان اسلامي جمهوریت - Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
Khorasan or Khurasan in medieval Muslim and Hebrew sources

A state in central Asia.

21st Century

In 2018 there were no Jews living in Afghanistan. 

HISTORY

Early Karaite and Rabbanite biblical commentators regarded Khorasan as a location of the Lost Ten Tribes. Afghanistan annals also trace the Hebrew origin of some of the Afghan tribes, in particular the Durrani, the Yussafzai, and the Afridi, to King Saul (Talut). This belief appears in the 17th century Afghan chronicle Makhzan-i-Afghan and some British travelers in the 19th century spread the tradition. Because of its remoteness from the Jewish center in Babylonia, persons unwanted by the Jewish leadership, such as counter-candidates for the exilarchate, often went to live in or were exiled to Afghanistan.

Medieval sources mention several Jewish centers in Afghanistan, of which Balkh was the most important. A Jewish community in Ghazni is recorded in Muslim sources, indicating that Jews were living there in the 10th and 11th centuries. A Jew named Isaac, an agent of Sultan Mahmud (ruled 998-1030), was assigned to administer the sultan’s lead mines and to melt ore for him. According to Hebrew sources, vast numbers of Jews lived in Ghazani but while their figures are not reliable, Moses ibn Ezra mentions (1080) over 40,000 Jews paying tribute in Ghazani, and Benjamin of Tudela (c.1170) describes “Ghazni the great city on the river Gozan, where there are about 80,000 (8,000 in a variant manuscript) Jews.”

A Jewish community in Firoz Koh, capital of the medieval rulers of Ghur or Ghuristan, situated halfway between Herat and Kabul, is mentioned in Tabaqai-i-nasiri, a chronicle written in Persian (completed around 1260) by al-Juzjani. About 20 recently-discovered stone tablets, with Persian and Hebrew inscriptions dating from 1115 to 1215, confirm the existence of a Jewish community there. The Mongol invasion in 1222 annihilated Firoz-Koh and its Jewish community. An inscription on a tombstone from the vicinity of Kabul dated 1365 , erected in memory of a Moses b. Ephraim Bezalel, apparently a high official, indicates the continuous existence of a Jewish settlement there.

The Mongol invasion, epidemics, and continuous warfare made inroads into Jewish communities in Afghanistan throughout the centuries, and little is known about them until the 19th century when they are mentioned in connection with the flight of the anusim of Meshed after the forced conversions in 1839. Many of the refugees fled to Afghanistan, Turkestan, and Bukhara, settling in Herat, Maimane, Kabul, and other places with Jewish communities, where they helped to enrich the stagnating cultural life. Nineteenth century travelers state that the Jewish communities of Afghanistan were largely composed of these meshed Jews. Mattathias Garji of Herat confirmed: “our forefathers used to live in meshed under Persian rule but in consequence of the persecutions to which they were subjected came to Herat to live under Afghan rule.”

The language spoken by Afghan Jews is not the Pushtu of their surroundings but a Judeo-Persian dialect in which they have produced fine liturgical and religious poetry. Their literary merit was recognized when Afghan Jews moved to Eretz Israel toward the end of the 19th century. Scholars of Afghanistan families such as Garji and Shaul of Herat published Judeo-Persian commentaries on the Bible, Psalms, the Torah, piyyutim, and other works, at the Judeo-Persian writings press established in Jerusalem at the beginning of this century. The Jews of Afghanistan did not benefit from the activities of European Jewish organizations . Economically their situation in the last century was not unfavorable; they traded skins, carpets, and antiquities.

Approximately 5,000 Jews were living in Afghanistan in 1948. Of these, about 300 remained in 1969. They were concentrated in Kabul, Balkh, and mainly Herat. Jews were banished from other towns after the assassination of King Nadir Sah in 1933. Though not forced to live in separate quarters, Jews did so and in Balkh they even closed the ghetto gates at night. A campaign against Jews began in 1933. They were forbidden to leave a town without a permit. They had to pay a yearly poll tax, and from 1952, when the military service law ceased to apply to Jews, they had to pay ransoms for exemptions from the service (called harbiyya). Government service and government schools were closed to Jews, and certain livelihoods forbidden to them. Consequently, most Jews only received a heder education. There were only a few wealthy families, the rest being poverty-stricken and mostly employed as tailors and shoemakers. Until 1950 Afghan Jews were forbidden to leave the country. However, between June
1948 and June 1950, 459 Afghan Jews went to Israel. Most of them had fled the country in 1944, and lived in Iran or India, until the establishment of the State of Israel. Jews were only allowed to emigrate from Afghanistan from the end of 1951. By 1967, 4,000 had gone to Israel. No Zionist activity was permitted, and no emissaries from Israel could reach Afghanistan. There was a hevrah (community council) in each of the three towns in which Jews lived. The hevrah was composed of the heads of families; it cared for the needy, and dealt with burials. The hevrah sometimes meted out punishments , including excommunication. The head of the community (called kalantur), represented the community in dealings with the authorities and was responsible for the payment of taxes.

According to the reports of the Institute of the World Jewish Congress there were 10 Jews living in Afghanistan in 1997.