Jews of Kazakhstan

The history of the Jewish people of Kazakhstan is a long difficult history. Beginning in the 17th century the majority of the Jews of Kazakh were Russian. At that time there were probably no synagogues so most services would have taken place in private homes. These early Jews were mostly Ashkenazic.
Many Jews also arrived in Kazakhstan as exiles from the Pale of Settlement under the Communist rule of Joseph Stalin. During World War II almost 10,000 Jews fled the Holocaust and made their homes their as well.
Today, the Jews of Kazakhstan are for
the most part Russian speaking people who live a life that is very similar to the culture of their Russian neighbors. There are about 25,000 Jews in the country with the largest group, numbering about 10,000 living in the city of Almaty. The country of Kazakhstan is very large, about four times the size of the state of Texas in the United States.
There are Jewish communities spread throughout the country, including some Jews who have made their way into the country from the neighboring countries of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.