Pakistani Jews in Israel

Pakistani Jews in Israel are best understood as immigrants from the historic Karachi Jewish community and their descendants, many of whom belonged to the Bene Israel. Sources document their settlement and communal institutions in Israeli cities including Ramle and Lod, but they do not provide a reliable current count of Pakistani-origin Jews or their descendants in Israel.[1][2]

A country-by-country aliyah table estimates that 1,500 immigrants came from Pakistan during 1949–1953, while government data cited in 2019 recorded only three immigrants from Pakistan since 2012. These figures cover different periods and methodologies and should not be treated as a present-day population count.[3][4]

Jewish life in what is now Pakistan was centered almost entirely in Karachi, where approximately 2,500 Jews lived at the beginning of the twentieth century, working as tradesmen, artisans, and civil servants.[1] The community’s primary institution was the Magain Shalome Synagogue, built in 1893.[1] Their mother tongue has been identified as “Marachi,” cited as an indicator of Bene Israel origins.[1]

The Bene Israel are one of the historically distinct Jewish communities of India. A World Jewish Congress overview places their settlement in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Karachi around 2,500 years ago and says they maintained Jewish practices while adopting local customs and the Marathi language.[5] In the nineteenth century, after renewed contact with other Jewish communities, Bene Israel families moved from villages into cities including Mumbai, Pune, and Karachi.[6]

Accounts differ concerning the Karachi community’s composition. JNS identifies most Jews who settled there as Bene Israel whose families began arriving from Bombay and nearby areas during the nineteenth century, while The Times of Israel describes Pakistani Jewry mainly as migrants from Iraq.[2][7] The available accounts do not establish whether they refer to different segments or periods of the community.

British census records counted 153 Jews in Sindh in 1881 and 482 in 1901, nearly all in Karachi. Some accounts place the community’s peak at about 2,500, while former residents recalled higher numbers.[2] Israel Hayom reported that fewer than 3,000 Jews lived in the districts that became Pakistan in 1947, most in Karachi and a few dozen in Peshawar.[8] The Karachi synagogue’s cantor, David Hai Moshe Madai, was a Malabari Jew appointed in 1923 who served for thirty years before making aliyah, settling in Moshav Taoz, and dying in 1966.[9]

During the late 1940s and into the 1950s, Karachi’s Jewish community maintained an organized religious life but faced mounting external pressure. Pakistan’s original capital after independence in August 1947 was Karachi, a diverse city whose religious landscape included a Jewish synagogue alongside mosques, Catholic and Protestant churches, Zoroastrian fire temples, and Jain and Hindu temples.[10]

Contact with Pakistan’s Jewish community was re-established during the 1949–1951 reporting period after a two-year interruption attributed to the repercussions of Israel’s establishment. The report placed 400 Jews in Karachi, organized around the Magen Shalome Synagogue and led by Simon A. Reuben.[11] By 1953, Pakistan was listed among the World Jewish Congress’s Asian “cooperating bodies” rather than its affiliates, indicating friendly but limited ties with the organization.[12]

On January 14, 1953, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Sir Zafrulla Khan, met Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban and diplomat Gideon Rafael in New York.[13] Khan said Pakistan’s government had retreated from a more favorable approach toward recognizing Israel under Liaquat Ali Khan because the Nazimuddin government was more vulnerable to pressure from Muslim extremists. He also said Karachi’s small Jewish community had not been harmed during periods of anti-Israeli incitement.[13]

Despite Khan’s assurances, the community’s position was precarious. After Israel declared independence in 1948, Jews in Pakistan were attacked and Karachi’s synagogue was set alight. Demonstrations and disturbances directed against Jews also occurred during the Arab-Israel wars of 1956 and 1967.[1] A Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs account reports that in November 1956, following Egypt’s defeat in the Sinai Campaign, incitement and rioting occurred against approximately 500 Jews remaining in Karachi. Israel’s Foreign Ministry suggested that international Jewish organizations press Pakistan to protect them.[14]

Karachi-born Emanuel Matat recalled in a 2019 interview that Karachi still had 500 Jewish families in 1972. He said that after an American sponsor offered free ship passage to the United States, the community departed en masse, leaving only his family and a handful of elderly Jews.[15] Matat described maintaining Jewish observance despite the community’s small size: his family attended synagogue each Shabbat, a mohel came from Italy for circumcisions, matza for Passover was ordered from America, and his father knew Torah and tefillin by heart.[15]

The departure of Karachi’s Jews was gradual and followed different routes. Anti-Jewish violence and disturbances after Israel’s establishment contributed to large-scale emigration, mainly to India but also to Israel and the United Kingdom.[1] Some families moved first to India and later to Israel, others went to Britain, Canada, or the United States, and a smaller number remained in Karachi into the 1960s and 1970s. Because Pakistan did not recognize Israel, some families left under other stated destinations and continued to Israel through Bombay or Tehran.[2]

After 1948, most Bene Israel migrated to Israel, although this is a general statement about the broader community rather than a figure specific to those from Karachi.[6] An aliyah table lists Pakistan’s principal immigration period to Israel as 1949–1953, with an estimated 1,500 immigrants, and gives Pakistan’s Jewish population in 1945 as approximately 1,500.[3] Most of Pakistan’s historic Jewish community had emigrated by the time of a 2016 U.S. Department of State report, but that source did not specify a count, timeframe, or destination.[16]

Many Karachi Jews settled in Ramle, where they built a synagogue named Magen Shalome.[1] A separate account records that Pakistani Jews established a Ramle congregation called Magain Shalome Karachi, preserving its connection to the original Karachi community.[2] Ramle was also among the Israeli cities with large Bene Israel communities, alongside Ashkelon, Beersheba, and Kiryat Ata.[17]

A separate congregation, Shaar E Shalom in Lod, developed a significant connection to the Karachi community.[9] After George Shalom Solomon and his family made aliyah in early 2003, they financed the refurbishment of a Torah scroll from Karachi’s former Magen Shalom Synagogue and donated it to Shaar E Shalom at a dedication ceremony later that year.[9]

Emanuel Matat said he immigrated to Israel roughly three decades before his 2019 interview, following his Israeli wife after she had spent four years in Pakistan. The rest of his family gradually followed.[15] Matat said that he and his ten siblings were the only Jews he knew who had been born in Pakistan, while other Pakistani Jews he encountered had mostly come originally from India. He later brought three of his father’s Torah scrolls to his synagogue in Elad.[15]

Data from Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority, cited in a 2019 Ynet report, recorded that only three immigrants had come to Israel from Pakistan since 2012.[4]

As emigration accelerated, the organized Jewish presence in Pakistan shrank steadily. By 1968, Pakistan’s Jewish population had fallen to approximately 250, almost all in Karachi, where one synagogue, a welfare organization, and a recreational organization continued to function.[1] Karachi’s last synagogue, Magen Shalome, was demolished in the 1980s to make way for a shopping plaza.[1]

A 2006 U.S. Department of State report described Pakistan as having “very few Jewish citizens” and said antisemitic articles were common in the vernacular press.[18] A 2025 review of Pakistani textbooks, citing a secondary report, stated that fewer than 200 Jews remained in Pakistan and claimed that Karachi had one known synagogue.[19] Ynet reported in 2016 that 2014 media accounts had placed the number of Jews at about seven, while Fishel Benkhald said in 2022 that only a few remained.[20][21] A 2025 Maariv interview attributed an estimate of perhaps a few dozen to Ratnadeep Chakraborty, without identifying a separate demographic source.[22]

Some remaining families concealed their Jewish identity by passing as Parsis, a practice attributed to intolerance toward Jews in Muslim Pakistan.[1] Fishel Benkhald, born Faisal and raised in a Jewish home in Karachi, petitioned from 2014 to change his official religious status from Muslim to Jewish. Pakistan permitted the registration in March 2017, the first such recognition since the 1980s.[21] In May 2022, Benkhald visited Israel openly as part of an official American delegation with the knowledge of Pakistani authorities. Ynet described it, to the newspaper’s knowledge, as the first open visit to Israel by Pakistani citizens with their government’s knowledge.[21] Benkhald said there were no active synagogues left in Pakistan and that the last had been demolished in the 1980s. He also worked to protect Jewish heritage sites, including Karachi’s Jewish cemetery.[21]

Zuriel Ben Israel, another Pakistani resident who sought to immigrate to Israel, described in 2016 how he practiced Judaism, celebrated holidays, and taught his six children Jewish traditions within his household.[20] He said Pakistan had no rabbi, Jewish community, or synagogue through which he could take formal steps toward conversion.[20] When his wife died in 2018, she was buried in a Muslim cemetery because no Jewish cemetery was available to him; he hoped eventually to have her reburied in Israel.[23] His case remained unresolved because he could not establish eligibility under Israel’s Law of Return without documentary proof of Jewishness.[23]

For people claiming Pakistani Jewish descent who seek to settle in Israel, formal recognition can be a significant obstacle. The absence of an active Jewish community or rabbinic authority in Pakistan can leave applicants without the documentary evidence, communal affiliation, or access to conversion procedures required to establish Jewish status under Israeli rules and halakha.[20][24]

Ynetnews reported that Sajid and Farah Samuel and their three children arrived in Israel in March 2022 after fleeing Karachi, where they said they had faced threats and practiced Judaism secretly. The family spent several months in Dubai before settling in Alon Shvut.[24] Israeli authorities did not recognize them as Jewish under state rules or halakha, rejected their request for permission to convert, and did not renew their tourist visa; their attorney said they were appealing.[24]

Sajid Samuel had been raised in a Christian family and became interested in Judaism as an adult, undergoing circumcision after meeting one of the last Jews in Pakistan.[24] Farah said she had been raised in the Jewish religion and that her father had learned Torah from his grandparents. The family was taking online Torah classes while preparing for an Orthodox conversion.[24]

The Samuel and Ben Israel cases illustrate how claimed Jewish ancestry or multigenerational private observance may not by itself establish eligibility under Israeli immigration law or recognized halakhic status, especially when applicants lack documents and access to a functioning Jewish community.[23][24]

Several details about the Pakistani Jewish community remain disputed. JNS identifies most Karachi Jews as Bene Israel whose families arrived from western India, while The Times of Israel describes Pakistani Jewry mainly as Iraqi migrants.[2][7] The accounts do not establish whether they describe different segments or periods of the community.

Population estimates vary by date and scope. The Jewish Virtual Library places about 2,500 Jews in Karachi at the beginning of the twentieth century and approximately 3,000 Bene Israel Jews in Pakistan in 1948.[1] Israel Hayom reported fewer than 3,000 Jews in the districts that became Pakistan in 1947, while an aliyah table lists 1,500 Jews in Pakistan in 1945.[8][3] The sources do not explain their methodologies, and the figures should not be treated as directly comparable.

Accounts of the Magain Shalome Synagogue distinguish between violence after 1948 and its final destruction. The Jewish Virtual Library says the synagogue was set alight after Israel’s establishment and was later demolished in the 1980s for a shopping plaza.[1] JNS describes it as having been attacked during anti-Jewish demonstrations and demolished in 1988 for commercial development.[2] These descriptions may refer to damage in 1948 and final demolition four decades later rather than mutually exclusive events.

The timing of mass emigration is also uncertain. Some accounts describe large-scale departure beginning after 1948, while others portray a gradual decline extending into the 1960s and 1970s.[1][2] Emanuel Matat recalled 500 Jewish families in Karachi in 1972 followed by a mass departure, but the interview did not independently document that figure.[15]

Finally, the traditional claim that the Bene Israel descend from biblical Lost Tribes of Israel who settled on India’s Malabar coast after the Assyrian conquest of the Kingdom of Israel is presented by the World Jewish Congress as a belief rather than an established historical fact.[5]