History of the Jews in Vietnam

Jewish life in Vietnam has included colonial-era merchants, professionals, teachers, and administrators.[1] Contemporary communities consist largely of foreign residents, while Chabad institutions also serve Jewish visitors and travelers.[2][3] Its historical setting was often French Indochina, which encompassed present-day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos; regional population figures therefore do not necessarily describe Vietnam alone.[1][4]

The colonial Jewish population experienced Vichy restrictions during the Second World War, followed by emigration after the war and at the end of French rule.[1] Contemporary communal life is centered on small expatriate populations and institutions providing prayer services, Jewish education, kosher food, and hospitality for travelers.[2][5] Connections between Vietnam and the wider Jewish world also include Jewish American assistance to Indochinese refugees and individual Vietnamese experiences of conversion to Judaism abroad.[6][7]

Jewish settlement in French Indochina began during French colonization from the 1840s.[1] Jules Rueff, who arrived in 1872, became a prominent French Jewish entrepreneur in the colony.[1] His activities included promoting a railway between Saigon and Mytho and helping found a shipping company operating along the Mekong.[1] Jewish participation also extended to scholarship: Sylvain Lévi was involved in establishing the Hanoi branch of the École française d’Extrême-Orient in 1902.[1]

A population estimate for 1924 placed approximately 1,000 Jews collectively in Haiphong, Hanoi, Tourane, and Saigon, without providing separate totals for the four cities.[8] An estimate for the eve of the Second World War likewise placed about 1,000 Jews in those cities, within a total population of roughly 15 million.[1] Jews worked in trade, the professions, teaching, banking and finance, and the French colonial administration; a few served in the French army.[1] Henry Samuel Waterman, a Jewish diplomat, served as United States consul in Saigon from 1929 to 1932.[3]

The colonial-era account contains no reports of Jewish communal organizations, synagogues, other communal facilities, or Jewish cemeteries in Hanoi, Haiphong, or Saigon during the period it covers.[1] The record of Jewish residents and their occupations is thus more substantial than the surviving account of organized religious life.[1]

After France’s collapse in 1940, French Indochina remained under a French colonial administration responsible to the Vichy regime.[1] Japan occupied northern Vietnam in 1940 and the rest of Indochina in 1941, while the local Vichy government remained in office until March 1945.[4]

Vichy’s anti-Jewish statutes extended to French territories and threatened occupations Jews had held in Indochina for decades.[1] Restrictions barred Jews from civil-service, military, diplomatic, teaching, media, and various financial-sector positions, limited Jewish participation in education, and required detailed declarations of ancestry and property.[1] Jews were removed from government positions and faced prohibitions on their activities.[9]

Restrictions introduced in November 1940 limited the professions open to Jews; in July 1941, Jewish children were restricted to 2 percent of pupils in public schools.[3] Fifteen Jewish government employees were dismissed in October 1942, and the anti-Jewish laws were repealed in January 1945.[3]

Implementation under Governor General Jean Decoux was uneven.[1] Some officials ignored particular restrictions, and some Jews continued operating businesses after making payments to the colonial administration.[1] In other cases, Jewish property or bank accounts were seized.[1] Jews in Indochina were not interned, and the local Jewish population survived the war virtually intact.[1]

Japanese authorities requested restrictions on Jews and on citizens of neutral countries who held anti-Axis views, including surveillance and limits on entry into Indochina.[9] The wartime account also records Japanese requirements that the French monitor Jews and prevent additional Jewish immigration, but identifies no evidence of Japanese involvement in the French administration’s treatment of Jewish residents.[1]

Most Jews in Indochina emigrated to France after the Second World War; the remaining Jews left when Vietnam was divided in 1954 and the French presence ended.[1] Postwar population tables nevertheless record a regional Jewish population during the intervening years: one estimated 1,500 Jews in French Indochina using data mostly from 1947–1948, and another gave the same estimate in a compilation covering 1950 and 1951.[10][11] Neither figure is a Vietnam-only count.[10][11]

In 1946, David Ben-Gurion and Ho Chi Minh met in Paris while both were seeking independence for their peoples.[12] In Ben-Gurion’s later recollection, Ho proposed that he establish a Jewish government-in-exile in North Vietnam.[12] Ben-Gurion recalled that the Zionist leadership remained committed to establishing a state in Palestine, and the proposal was not pursued.[12]

Ben-Gurion also recalled meeting Ho daily for approximately two weeks at the Le Royal Monceau hotel.[13] He remembered following the course of Ho’s negotiations with France through the gradual disappearance of the red carpet outside Ho’s room.[13] When the carpet was removed, Ben-Gurion understood that the negotiations had failed; Ho then told him that “nothing remained but to fight.”[13]

Jewish American organizations later participated in relief efforts during the Indochinese refugee crisis.[6] Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum visited major refugee camps in February 1978 as the first official Jewish representative to do so.[6] On August 30, 1979, the American Jewish Committee announced “Operation Boat People,” involving its 86 branches.[6] These activities concerned assistance to refugees rather than the maintenance of a resident Jewish community in Vietnam.[6]

An individual connection between Vietnamese refugee experience and Jewish life is the story of Nhi Aronheim.[7] As a young child, she escaped Communist Vietnam through Cambodia and a Thai refugee camp before being adopted by a Christian family in Kentucky.[7] She later married a Jewish man and converted to Judaism, recounting her experiences in a memoir.[7]

In 2005, Vietnam’s Jewish population was described as small and composed almost entirely of expatriates.[14] By 2010, small Jewish expatriate communities were identified in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with a permanent Chabad-Lubavitch center in the latter.[15] A separate 2010 account described one Jewish temple serving about 150 Jews in Ho Chi Minh City, most of them foreign residents, and characterized the congregation as growing.[16] Accounts for 2011 and 2013 continued to describe approximately 150 Jews, mainly foreign residents, served by a single temple or synagogue in the city.[17][18]

Rabbi Menachem and Rebbetzin Racheli Hartman arrived in Ho Chi Minh City approximately 16 years before a 2022 account to establish a Chabad house.[3] By 2022, the city’s only synagogue was located there, alongside a mikveh, kosher restaurant, and kosher shop.[3] Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the city’s Jewish community was estimated at about 300 people; many left during the crisis.[3] The same account estimated approximately 20,000 Jewish visitors annually, including Israelis traveling for tourism and business.[3]

Descriptions in 2016 and 2023 continued to identify a small, mostly foreign Jewish population in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, without providing a national population estimate.[19][2] Small communities of Jewish foreigners in both cities were again identified in 2024.[20] A contemporary international Jewish community directory also lists Chabad in Ho Chi Minh City.[21]

Regular Shabbat and holiday prayer services were held at the Ho Chi Minh City Chabad synagogue by 2022.[3] A small international Jewish community in the city also observed Jewish holidays.[22] In 2010, the community celebrated its first circumcision of a Vietnamese child.[16]

A bar mitzvah for Israeli traveler Omri Rafaeli was described as the first in Vietnam’s history.[23] His father sought help from the Israeli Embassy in Hanoi, and difficulty assembling a minyan led to the ceremony being held at a hotel hosting an Israeli government delegation.[23] The ambassador’s deputy brought a 150-year-old Torah scroll, and members of the small local Jewish community attended.[23]

By 2020, Chabad houses were described in Hoi An, Saigon, and Hanoi, with Saigon serving as the operational center for rabbinic coverage and kosher food supplies.[5] Two rabbis and their families were stationed full-time in Saigon, where the operation also maintained a school, kosher restaurant, and bakery.[5] A new Chabad center opened in Sa Pa shortly before November 2025, and Rabbi Akiva and Giti hosted more than 150 Israeli travelers for a Shabbat gathering there.[24] That attendance figure concerned travelers at the gathering, not the resident Jewish population.[24]

The Hartmans established a small Jewish school in Ho Chi Minh City for their children despite limited demand within the community.[3] Its enrollment fell from ten pupils to seven after families left Vietnam during the pandemic: four Hartman children and three children of the rabbi’s nephew.[3] In 2022, the children studied with a qualified teacher in the mornings and continued remotely online in the afternoons.[3] In a January 2026 interview, Israeli resident Nissim Tal described opening Kosher Saigon in partnership with Chabad and participating in four Chabad houses in Vietnam.[25]

The careers of Jules Rueff and Sylvain Lévi illustrate Jewish participation in the commercial and scholarly life of French Indochina.[1] Contemporary institutions serve a different setting: small expatriate communities alongside Jewish travelers needing religious services, kosher food, and opportunities to observe Shabbat and holidays.[5][3] The school in Ho Chi Minh City provides a particularly small-scale example of maintaining Jewish education abroad, including through online study.[3]

Jewish connections with Vietnam also extend beyond residence within the country.[6][7] Refugee relief mobilized Jewish American organizations, while Nhi Aronheim’s life connects Vietnamese displacement with adoption, marriage, and conversion to Judaism in the United States.[6][7]

Historical population figures have different geographic scopes and levels of precision.[1][8] French colonial documents counted 140 Jews, including 18 children, when Vichy policies were introduced; the figure may have referred to families rather than individuals.[1] Postwar regional tables likewise relied on estimates of varying accuracy and did not always use data from the same year.[10][11] These figures should not be treated as a continuous census series for Vietnam.[1][10]

No antisemitic incidents were reported for the periods covered by the 2005 religious-freedom and 2010 human-rights accounts.[14][15] A 2024 account reported that a Hanoi coffee-shop owner denied service to a Jewish couple and their two children in June and reportedly shouted and cursed at the family.[20] This was presented as a reported incident rather than an independently adjudicated finding.[20]