Cities, communities and people of Jewish Kazakhstan

Several organisations and networks take part in Jewish life in Kazakhstan

Jewish life in Kazakhstan is not represented by a single synagogue or organisation. It includes several religious, cultural and social networks.

There are registered religious associations and synagogues, cultural and ethnocultural organisations, community and charitable centres, social programmes, libraries and clubs. International organisations have supported particular programmes at different times. There are also people who identify as Jewish ethnically or culturally without necessarily taking part in religious life.

Here, “community” does not automatically mean “synagogue”, “Chabad”, “Mitsva” or “all the Jews in the country”.

Government statistics also support this distinction. According to the Committee for Religious Affairs, Kazakhstan had seven registered Jewish religious associations and six functioning synagogues in the first quarter of 2025. This is an administrative count of religious organisations and places of worship, not the number of Jews in the country. The population census asks separately about religious affiliation. In the 2021 census, adherents of Judaism accounted for less than 0.1% of the population. These figures cannot establish the size of the entire Jewish community. Ethnicity, religious self-identification and participation in organisations describe different groups.

The earliest documented communities predate the Soviet period

Accounts of the Jewish presence in Kazakhstan sometimes begin with the Great Patriotic War or Stalin-era exile. That starting point is too late.

Museum research by Tatyana Svakhina cites documentary evidence of Jewish residents in Semipalatinsk and its surrounding district in 1825. These records and nineteenth-century evidence are discussed in the history of Jewish families in East Kazakhstan. 19 By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jewish artisans, former servicemen and settlers from the European part of the Russian Empire lived in Kazakhstan’s towns. Kazakhstan’s history portal also places the emergence of pre-revolutionary synagogues in this period, mentioning a synagogue in Semipalatinsk that existed from 1913 until the early 1930s.

This early history was considerably smaller in scale than the later Soviet migrations, but it matters for two reasons. Jewish life in Kazakhstan did not arise as a single episode of the Second World War. It was already urban and spread across several places, rather than concentrated solely in the future cities of Almaty and Astana.

The community changed profoundly in the 1930s and 1940s

The greatest transformation took place during the Soviet period.

People arrived in Kazakhstan for very different reasons. These cannot be collapsed into a single statement that “Jews were resettled here”. Soviet authorities exiled or deported some people. Others entered the system of camps and special settlements. Still others were evacuated from the European part of the USSR after Germany’s invasion. Polish Jews were among those displaced to Central Asia. Their journeys could include flight from Nazi occupation, Soviet deportation and subsequent relocation within the USSR.

Sources give markedly different estimates of the number of Jews evacuated to Kazakhstan between 1941 and 1942. Some community overviews cite more than a hundred thousand, while older reference works give much smaller figures. Recent research on the evacuation of Soviet Jews cautions that early estimates were often inflated and that accurate counts require work with archival records identifying individuals by name.

Sources disagree on the total number of evacuees. They do confirm that in the 1930s and 1940s, Kazakhstan became a place of exile, evacuation and new residence for many Jews from different parts of the USSR and Eastern Europe. These movements substantially changed the urban geography of the Jewish population.

The arrest and exile of Levi Yitzchak Schneerson

One of the best-known figures of this period was Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, chief rabbi of Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipro, and father of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the future seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Soviet authorities arrested him for his religious activities and exiled him to Kazakhstan. He lived in Chiili, now Shieli in Kyzylorda Region. He later moved to Alma-Ata, where he died in 1944. His grave is in Almaty.

Over time, the burial site became an international pilgrimage destination for followers of Chabad-Lubavitch. In 2020, Jewish organisations and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the site had been granted national heritage status in Kazakhstan. In his official address to the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in 2022, Kazakhstan’s president specifically described the mausoleum of Levi Yitzchak Schneerson in Almaty as sacred to Jews around the world.

This account should not stand for the whole history of Kazakhstan’s Jews. It explains Almaty’s particular place in Chabad memory, alongside other urban, cultural, family and institutional histories.

Jewish life changed over the Soviet period

The World Jewish Congress states that functioning synagogues existed in Alma-Ata, Chimkent, Turkestan and Kyzylorda during Soviet times. Soviet policy nevertheless severely restricted independent religious and communal activity.

Today’s organisational map cannot simply be projected back into the past. Modern community centres, charitable foundations and institutions emerged under different political conditions. A family could preserve its Jewish identity during the Soviet period without belonging to an official religious organisation. Private and public religious practice also differed.

A new institutional phase began after the dissolution of the USSR. Several parallel networks emerged, rather than one revived organisation.

Post-Soviet renewal followed several paths in the 1990s

The Association of Jewish National Organisations of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Mitsva, states that it began work in May 1992 as a voluntary association of the country’s Jewish organisations. It names the development of Jewish culture and traditions, cultural and educational activity, charity and representation of community interests among its purposes. The Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan also describes Mitsva as bringing together ethnocultural, charitable and community bodies.

The Chabad-Lubavitch religious network developed alongside it. In 1997, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency described the opening of Beis Menachem in Almaty, with a synagogue, classrooms, a library, a mikveh, community offices and a soup kitchen. This was a complex of religious, educational and social infrastructure, extending beyond a prayer hall.

Programmes of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, known as the Joint or JDC, community centres and Heseds, or social assistance services, also operated in various cities in the 1990s and 2000s. Mitsva’s directories record centres, libraries and charitable programmes far beyond Almaty and the capital.

Post-Soviet renewal took place through several organisations and networks.

Mitsva brings together cultural organisations, while Chabad connects religious communities

Mitsva developed as an umbrella association for national and cultural organisations. Its community infrastructure includes cultural programmes, clubs, libraries, community centres and social assistance.

The Chabad-Lubavitch religious network works with synagogues, rabbis, worship, religious education, holidays and other forms of Jewish religious life. In 2024, Chabad.org reported 12 emissary families and centres in Almaty, Pavlodar, Astana, Kostanay, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Karaganda and Shymkent.

Other organisations have operated at different times or continue to operate, including JDC, the Jewish Congress of Kazakhstan, Sokhnut/the Jewish Agency and local bodies. Their roles may overlap, and the status of a particular office or programme may change over time.

Religious, cultural, social and international institutions may intersect in a single city. Their activities and status relate to particular periods.

Almaty’s Jewish life developed through several historical layers

Almaty cannot be described simply as “a city with a synagogue”.

The city holds traces of pre-revolutionary and Soviet urban life, evacuation and exile in the 1930s and 1940s. It is home to Levi Yitzchak Schneerson’s grave, the post-Soviet Chabad centre, Mitsva, the Rimon community centre, the charitable infrastructure of Hesed Polina and other organisations that existed at different times.

Municipal government registers confirm an active religious association called the Jewish Community of the City of Almaty. This legal entity represents only one of the city’s institutions. It does not encompass all of Almaty’s cultural and social organisations.

Astana’s Jewish community and the new capital

The city’s Jewish history began before the capital moved there. Archival research dates the establishment of a prayer house in Akmolinsk to 1866 and a petition to form a religious society to 1895. The Alef cultural association was founded in May 1993, when the city was not yet the capital.

The scale of urban infrastructure grew after the capital’s relocation. In 2004, the Chabad-Lubavitch Beit Rachel complex opened, bringing together prayer, teaching and community facilities. This is the complex’s opening date, not the beginning of local Jewish life. The community centre, Hesed, Alef and the registered religious organisation each have their own history.

The Office of the President of Israel reported that Isaac Herzog met rabbis and representatives of Jewish communities from Kazakhstan and Central Asia at Beit Rachel on 28 April 2026. The meeting forms part of the venue’s international contacts, but does not change the origins and functions of local organisations.

The detailed history of Akmolinsk and Astana, including differences between sources on the old cemetery and the dates of individual institutions, is discussed in the city article.

Jewish communities also exist in other Kazakhstani cities

Contemporary and recent sources confirm religious and community organisations in several regions.

In 2024, Chabad.org named centres in Pavlodar, Kostanay, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Karaganda and Shymkent, as well as Almaty and Astana. Separate regional government lists confirm registered Jewish communities in Shymkent and Pavlodar, for example. Current government registry entries aggregated in 2026 confirm religious associations in Karaganda and East Kazakhstan regions.

The historical network was wider still. Archived Mitsva directories record community or charitable programmes in Kokshetau, Semey, Taldykorgan, Taraz, Petropavlovsk, Uralsk, Aktobe and other cities.

An old directory does not establish a present-day map. If a centre existed in 2003 or 2010, that alone does not establish that it is active in 2026. Community geography comprises different historical layers. Each centre’s current status requires contemporary confirmation.

The number of synagogues cannot establish community size

The Bureau of National Statistics’ official table records 3,485 people in the ethnic category “Jews” in 2009 and 4,064 in 2021. These are figures for ethnic composition, not synagogue attendance or membership of community organisations. Religious and ethnic categories are distinct.

For the 2021 census, the Bureau of National Statistics reported that adherents of Judaism accounted for less than 0.1% of the population. Meanwhile, 11% of respondents declined to state their religious affiliation. The religious figure therefore cannot be used as an exact count of Jews in Kazakhstan.

The same applies to organisational membership. Someone may identify as Jewish without attending a synagogue or using a community centre. Another person may be a family member or take part in a cultural programme without identifying with Judaism as a religion.

Any estimate needs to specify whether its source counts ethnicity, religion, programme participation or a broader family circle.

Community life continued after emigration to Israel

From the late 1980s and after the dissolution of the USSR, a substantial share of Kazakhstan’s Jews moved to Israel and other countries. Demographic series show a sharp fall in numbers after the late Soviet period.

This history cannot be described solely as the “disappearance of the community”. New religious, cultural and social institutions also emerged within Kazakhstan in the 1990s and 2000s.

People from Kazakhstan who moved to Israel also maintained ties with their former country. Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry specifically describes Jewish people from Kazakhstan who repatriated to Israel as a “bridge of friendship” between the two states. An association of people from Kazakhstan also operates in Israel.

Migration took part of the Jewish population out of Kazakhstan, while people from the country formed a network of connections between Kazakhstan and Israel.

Jewish history in Kazakhstan extends beyond relations with Israel

Jewish communities existed in Kazakhstan before diplomatic relations with the State of Israel were established in 1992. Their history encompasses the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, repression, evacuation, local cultural life and post-Soviet renewal.

Connections with Israel include relatives, repatriation, diplomacy, education, community contacts and visits. Kazakhstan’s urban Jewish history extends beyond these connections. Much of it developed within local life.

In brief

• 1825. Museum research cites documentary evidence of Jewish residents in Semipalatinsk and its surrounding district. 19

• Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Small urban communities developed. Pre-revolutionary synagogue life is documented in Semipalatinsk, among other places.

• 1930s and 1940s. The size and geography of the Jewish population changed sharply through Soviet repression, exile, deportation and wartime evacuation. Sources disagree on the exact number of evacuees, so no single figure is presented as an established total.

• 1944. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, who had been exiled by Soviet authorities, died and was buried in Alma-Ata. His grave later became an international pilgrimage destination.

• May 1992. Mitsva began work as a voluntary association of Jewish organisations in Kazakhstan.

• 1997. JTA reported the opening of Beis Menachem in Almaty, with religious, educational and social infrastructure.

• 2004. The synagogue of the Chabad-Lubavitch Beit Rachel complex opened in Astana.

• 2025. Government statistics recorded seven Jewish religious associations and six synagogues. These are counts of organisations, not of Jews.

• Chabad network, 2024 information. Chabad.org reported centres in seven cities. The published list included Almaty, Astana, Pavlodar, Kostanay, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Karaganda and Shymkent.

• 28 April 2026. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, met leaders and members of Jewish communities from Kazakhstan and Central Asia at Beit Rachel.