History of the Jews in Jordan

Transjordan, including the biblical regions of Bashan and Gilead, was an important center of Israelite and Jewish life in antiquity, with Jewish habitation continuing well after the destruction of the Second Temple.[1] Its history encompasses tribal settlement, Jewish communities in Gilead and Perea, Hasmonean expansion, and Jewish participation in resistance to Rome.[1][6] The Jordan River did not consistently mark the outer limit of Jewish settlement or government: the Hasmonean kingdom extended across both banks, and Perea remained a Jewish district associated with Judea under Roman rule.[7]

The modern history follows a different demographic pattern: Jordan did not develop a Jewish community of significant proportions in modern times, although Jewish workers, traders, temporary residents, and visitors appear in accounts of the territory.[8][9] British arrangements for Transjordan excluded the Mandate provisions concerning the Jewish National Home, immigration, and settlement, while the small settlement of Tel Or developed around the Naharayim power station.[3][10]

A geographical distinction is essential: the East Bank territory of Transjordan is separate from the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and East Jerusalem, which came under Jordanian control during the War of Independence.[11] Accounts of displaced Jerusalem residents, Jewish-owned property, and access to the Western Wall under Jordanian rule concern those western territories, not evidence of Jewish population centers in present-day Jordan east of the river.[11][12]

Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh are associated with the Israelite lands east of the Jordan, encompassing parts of the Jordan Valley, Gilead, Bashan, and Moab.[6][13] Reuben and Gad settled in the south, while the Manassite clans of Machir and Jair were associated with Gilead and Bashan.[14] The allocation of these lands followed the Israelite victory over Sihon, and the districts associated with Solomon's administration included Ramoth-Gilead and Mahanaim.[6]

The wider East Bank contained the kingdoms and regions of Edom, Moab, Bashan, Gilead, and Ammon; Ammon's capital, Rabbath Ammon, is modern Amman.[13] David expanded Israel's holdings beyond the earlier tribal lands east of the river, while Solomon's realm extended from the upper Euphrates to the Gulf of Aqaba.[13] After the kingdom divided into Israel and Judah, repeated conflicts involved the Jewish kingdoms and their East Bank neighbors.[13]

Assyrian expansion brought conquest and deportation: Israel fell in 722 BCE, while Judah remained an Assyrian tributary before its later conquest by the Neo-Babylonian Empire.[13] Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BCE and much of its Jewish population was taken to Babylon; Persian conquest subsequently allowed Jews to return to their homeland.[13] The biblical account of the eastern tribes' exile identifies Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh as deportees under the Assyrian kings Pul and Tiglath-Pileser, naming Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river Gozan as their destinations.[15]

Jewish returnees from Babylonia settled particularly in southern Gilead, joining Jews who had remained in the region and others arriving from west of the Jordan.[13][16] These groups formed closely settled communities in the area later known in Greek as Peraea, or Perea, while smaller Jewish communities also existed in non-Jewish cities.[13][16] From the third century BCE to the first century CE, Jews, Greeks, and Nabataeans were among the peoples shaping the region's history.[13]

The Jewish Tobiad family ruled Ammon in the Persian period, with roots in Gilead extending back to the Israelite monarchy.[6] In Hellenistic times, the territory between Philadelphia, or Rabbath-Ammon, and the Jordan was a Jewish-populated area governed by the Tobiads and known as Peraea.[6] Although the river served as a boundary of Judea in Persian and Hellenistic times, the Tobiad lands east of it were also Jewish territory.[7]

Seleucid attempts to impose Hellenization and suppress Judaism provoked the revolt led by Judas Maccabaeus in 166 BCE, followed in the next generation by the restoration of an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmoneans.[13] The East Bank became a battleground in the Jewish–Seleucid struggle.[13] Judah Maccabee and his brother Jonathan campaigned east of the river to assist Jewish communities facing attack; during the campaigns of 165–163 BCE, Judah gathered Jewish men, women, and children from Gilead and brought them to Judea.[16] The Hasmoneans later re-established their position in Perea.[16]

Jonathan, John Hyrcanus, and Alexander Yannai extended Hasmonean power into Transjordan, conquering areas including Peraea, Madaba, Heshbon, and lands toward the Zered.[6] Yannai's conquests included Gerasa, Pella, and Gadara.[6] Perea formed a Jewish province extending from Pella to Machaerus.[16] Jewish political authority and settlement thus extended across the Jordan rather than being confined to its western bank.[7]

Pompey's intervention in the Hasmonean civil war culminated in the seizure of Jerusalem in 63 BCE and the restoration of autonomy to Greek cities, while Peraea remained under Jewish rule.[6][13] Rome organized the Decapolis, a league of ten self-governing Greek cities dependent on Roman power, including Amman, Jerash, and Gadara, now Umm Qays.[13] Roman policy protected Greek interests against the Jewish kingdom, although Herod, made king of Judah in 37 BCE, subsequently ruled on both sides of the Jordan.[13]

Under Herod Antipas, Perea extended between the Arnon, Jabbok, and Jabesh rivers, roughly corresponding to the modern Balqa district.[16] Together with Judea and Galilee, it was one of the period's three principal Jewish provinces.[16] Jewish pilgrims traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem used the route through Perea rather than passing through Samaria.[16]

Perea's inhabitants joined the people of Judea in the Great Revolt against Rome, and a Roman army invaded the region in spring 67 CE.[2] Rome conquered Peraea during the First Jewish War in 68 CE, but its Jewish population remained.[6] Jewish villages continued on both banks of the lower Jordan until the Byzantine period.[6]

The Jewish population declined rapidly under Byzantine rule, and after the Muslim conquest Jews lived in Transjordan only occasionally.[1] The wider region also experienced population decline during the Arab period, becoming especially pronounced for centuries after the Crusades.[6] Ottoman-era Transjordan had a very low population, with much of the region left to Bedouin communities.[6] This later demographic history contrasts with the closely settled Jewish communities described for ancient Perea.[6][13]

Britain established a separate Arab administration east of the Jordan in March 1921, with Abdullah as amir.[13] Transjordan remained within the Palestine Mandate, but the 1922 administrative separation excluded it from the provisions concerning Jewish settlement; it accounted for approximately 74 percent of the Mandate's territory.[11] The territory's population at the time was about 200,000, mostly Bedouin.[1]

Article 25 of the Mandate authorized Britain, with League of Nations Council consent, to postpone or withhold provisions east of the Jordan.[17] A September 1, 1922 order excluded Transjordan from the Palestine Order-in-Council, and on September 16 the League Council approved the British memorandum specifying which Mandate provisions would not apply.[10] The exclusions included provisions concerning the Jewish National Home, the Jewish Agency, and Jewish immigration and settlement, while Britain retained Mandatory responsibility and the provisions not excluded continued to apply.[10][17]

On April 25, 1923, the British High Commissioner recognized an independent government under Abdullah, conditional on constitutional government and an agreement enabling Britain to fulfill its international obligations.[10] An agreement was signed in 1928 and ratified in 1929.[10] Transjordan remained a British protectorate until independence in 1946, when Abdullah became king; the state was renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1949.[18]

Jewish entry was limited in practice: in 1927, Jews had no Palestine-related right of entry into Transjordan and were subject to the regulations applying to other foreigners.[9] Few sought entry, generally for special work, and permanent Jewish settlement was very small, with petty trading rather than agriculture the principal occupation identified in the contemporary proceedings.[9] These observations were impressions rather than a census enumeration.[9]

Transjordanian premier Hassan expressed support for Jewish investment in a July 1926 interview in London, declaring that “Transjordania, as well as Palestine, cannot be developed without Jewish capital.”[18] His remarks favored Arab–Jewish cooperation and economic activity, rather than announcing a new Jewish settlement.[18]

In 1931, Transjordan's Legislative Council granted Abdullah approximately 67,000 dunams of land, including 62,000 dunams of underdeveloped, unoccupied land in the Jordan Valley.[16] Abdullah negotiated an option with Jewish Agency representatives for a 33-year lease, renewable for two further periods of the same length.[16] The proposed agricultural development did not proceed after publicity brought opposition from Palestinian Arab and British authorities.[16] Abdullah publicly disavowed the proposal under pressure, although negotiations and option payments continued for a time without implementation of the lease.[16]

Tel Or at Naharayim was the only Jewish village in Transjordan during the War of Independence.[3] It housed permanent employees of the power station and their families; workers also cultivated nearby land.[3] Despite its small number of resident families, the village had a clinic, kindergarten, and school.[3] The settlement therefore combined an industrial purpose with the institutions of a small family community.[3]

Engineer Pinchas Rutenberg submitted a plan for hydroelectric plants on the Jordan River to the British in 1920 and subsequently obtained water-power rights.[19] Naharayim was his first power station and operated from 1930 until its destruction during the War of Independence.[19] An Iraqi brigade entered the Naharayim area on May 15, 1948; the station was occupied and looted, and the village and plant were subsequently destroyed.[3] Tel Or's inhabitants were displaced as refugees.[20]

Transjordan's Arab Legion entered the War of Independence, and after the fighting Transjordan controlled the West Bank and Jerusalem's Old City.[13] The war also brought approximately 500,000 Palestinian Arab refugees into Transjordan or the West Bank.[13] Elections in April 1950 gave old Transjordan and the Arab-controlled parts of Palestine equal representation in a parliament that adopted a resolution incorporating the western territories.[21] Abdullah formally annexed the West Bank in April 1950.[13]

A 1951 account recorded no Jews living either in old Transjordan or in the annexed territory, which included the Nablus area, the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Hebron district.[21] A subsequent survey of Jewish communities in Arab countries described Jordan as never having had a Jewish community of significant proportions in modern times, without providing a Jordanian population count.[8]

The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs argues in an account of Nahlat Shimon that the neighborhood, founded in 1891 and home to hundreds of Jewish families, was evacuated to the Israeli side as security deteriorated in 1948.[22] The account describes Palestinian refugees being settled there after Jordan took control, and Jewish-owned property in Sheikh Jarrah and Shimon HaTzadik passing to the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property.[22] It further maintains that Arabs settled in former Jewish homes in the mid-1950s paid rent to the custodian.[22]

Israel took the West Bank and reunited Jerusalem in the June 1967 war.[13] King Hussein formally abandoned Jordan's claim to the West Bank in July 1988.[13] These changes ended Jordanian territorial claims west of the river without changing the distinction between the history of Jewish communities there and the history of Transjordan proper.[11][13]

The Israel–Jordan General Armistice Agreement, signed at Rhodes on April 3, 1949, established a Special Committee with two representatives from each party to develop arrangements for implementing the agreement.[23] Article VIII included free access to holy places and cultural institutions, use of the Mount of Olives cemetery, and access to cultural and humanitarian institutions on Mount Scopus.[23] Israelis nevertheless could not visit the Western Wall during Jordanian rule over East Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967; international tourists, initially also excluded, were allowed to visit after some years.[12]

The Israel–Jordan peace treaty, signed on October 26, 1994, established a new framework for religious access.[4] Article 9 committed each party to provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance.[4] It also recorded Israel's respect for Jordan's special role in Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem and promised high priority for Jordan's historic role in those shrines during permanent-status negotiations.[4] Both countries committed themselves to interfaith relations, religious understanding, freedom of worship, tolerance, and peace.[4]

The treaty created a special regime for Naharayim/Baqura, under Jordanian sovereignty, where Israelis held landownership rights or agricultural interests.[24] Israeli farmers could continue cultivating land there under an arrangement renewable for successive 25-year periods.[24][25] In 2018, King Abdullah announced that Jordan would not renew the arrangement, using the treaty's provision allowing termination with one year's notice.[24] The special regime was subsequently abolished.[25]

A small number of American Jewish aid workers and Arabic-language students were living in Amman in 2015, alongside Israeli embassy officials.[26] Some kept their Jewish identity private, and one student described a program director changing his name on a student register to sound less Jewish.[26] These temporary residents did not constitute a substantial established community of the kind described for ancient Perea.[8][26] A 2024 assessment recorded no resident Jewish community in Jordan.[5]

Travelers have reported obstacles involving visibly Jewish religious practice and objects.[27] In June 2019, an Israeli tour-industry representative said tourists crossing into Jordan were being told not to bring objects bearing Jewish symbols, including ritual articles, and requested official clarification.[28] Jewish travelers subsequently reported confiscation of religious items at Jordanian ports of entry.[27] In April 2023, a Haredi Israeli traveler said he was denied entry after refusing to cut or conceal his sidelocks.[27] In July, Orthodox Israeli travelers alleged that officials detained them and warned that identifiable Jewish clothing or hair was unsafe.[27]

Antisemitic rhetoric and tropes were prevalent in local media in 2024, while antisemitic hate speech circulated on social media, in schools, and at demonstrations.[5] Government officials publicly condemned antisemitism.[5] Some commentators distinguished references to “Jews” used in place of Israel as political language intended to avoid normalization, rather than necessarily as antisemitism.[5]

Perea demonstrates that Jewish historical life extended east of the Jordan through settlement, political government, pilgrimage routes, and shared participation in the struggle against Rome.[2][7] The survival of Jewish villages into the Byzantine period also places that presence beyond the end of independent Jewish rule.[6] These communities form part of the Jewish historical connection to the broader land on both banks of the river.[1][7]

Tel Or represents a different, modern chapter: a small Jewish industrial and agricultural settlement centered on Rutenberg's hydroelectric enterprise, with educational and medical institutions despite its limited population.[3][19] The later Naharayim/Baqura arrangement preserved Israeli agricultural interests under Jordanian sovereignty for a further period after the peace treaty.[24][25] Together, these episodes connect the area's Jewish history with both infrastructure development and the practical arrangements of Israeli–Jordanian peace.[19][24]

Ancient tribal allocations and royal boundaries belong partly to biblical tradition and historical reconstruction; the older secondary histories' demographic descriptions are not equivalent to archaeological verification or modern censuses.[6][14] Ancient Perea and Transjordan also should not be mapped directly onto modern Jordan's borders.[6][11]

Mandate-era disagreements concerned both entry rights and the distinction between withholding Jewish National Home provisions and imposing a blanket legal prohibition on settlement.[9][16] In 1927, Mandates Commission member M. Van Rees argued that Article 18 entitled Jewish nationals of League member states to equal entry rights, while British official Sir Stewart Symes maintained that they received ordinary foreign-national treatment without special Palestine-related privileges.[9] The 1950 incorporation was contested: Britain recognized it, while Israel and most Arab states characterized the move as a unilateral annexation.[1]

Holy-site access disputes require distinguishing Israeli citizenship from Jewish religious identity: in 1967, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ahmed Touqan rejected claims that Jordan excluded Jewish worshippers, stating that the demarcation line barred reciprocal Israeli–Jordanian travel but that many Jewish tourists had entered Jordan.[29] The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs argues in its holy-sites account that Jews could not visit several major sites until 1967 and that Mount of Olives gravestones were shattered or reused as building material.[30] Contemporary border allegations also remain distinct from officials' explanation that restrictions protect visitors' safety; the 2019 reports did not establish a formal prohibition, and claims of religion-based citizenship or property bans lack supporting legal text in the material available here.[27][28]