The history of the Jews in Afghanistan goes back at least 2,500 years. Ancient Iranian tradition suggests that Jews settled in Balkh, a Zoroastrian and Buddhist stronghold at the time. The Kingdom of Judah collapsed in 587 BCE leading to this migration.
History
thumb|Mashiach Gul and Daniel Gul, president of the Afghan Jewish community. (Jerusalem in 1917).
Antiquity and medieval era
Existing records of a Jewish presence in Afghanistan date back to the 7th century CE, In the 18th century, Jews who had served in the army of Nader Shah settled in Kabul as his treasury guards.
Modern era
Soviet refugee crisis
At the outset of the 20th century, there were about 40,000 Afghan Jews. Following the Kazakh famine of 1930–1933, a significant number of Bukharan Jews crossed the border into the Kingdom of Afghanistan as part of the wider famine-related refugee crisis; leaders of the communities petitioned Jewish communities in Europe and the United States for support. In total, some 60,000 refugees had fled from the Soviet Union and reached Afghanistan. In 1932, Mohammed Nadir Shah signed a border treaty with the Soviets in order to prevent asylum seekers from crossing into Afghanistan from Soviet Central Asia.
From September 1933, many of these ex-Soviet Jewish refugees in northern Afghanistan were forcibly relocated to major cities such as Kabul and Herat, but continued to live in under restrictions on work and trade.
In 1935, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that "ghetto rules" had been imposed on Afghan Jews, requiring them to wear particular clothes, requiring Jewish women to stay outside markets, requiring all Jews to live within certain distances from mosques and banning Jews from riding horses. In 1935, a delegate to the World Zionist Congress claimed that an estimated 40,000 Bukharan Jews had been killed or starved to death. The Nazis regarded most of the Afghans as Aryans. In 1938, it was reported that Jews were allowed to work only as shoe-polishers.
Attempted migrations to India
Some Afghan Jews attempted to emigrate to British India, but when they arrived on the border, the colonial authorities categorised them according to their passports; those with Soviet passports were accused of having "Bolshevist ties" and denied entry. Many Afghan Jews were deported back to Soviet-controlled territories under the guise of allegedly violating the "behavioural conduct" codes of British India, although historians have made note of the fact that the colonial government's fear that the emigrants would spread socialist ideas among the Indian public and offer encouragement to the independence movement played a much larger part in its decision to deport them. By 1969, approximately 300 Jews remained in Afghanistan, but most of them left Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979, leaving only 10 Jews in Afghanistan in 1996, most of whom lived in Kabul. Currently, more than 10,000 Jews of Afghan descent live in Israel. Over 200 Afghan Jewish families live in New York. He cared for the only synagogue in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. He was still trying to recover the confiscated Torah. Simintov, who does not speak Hebrew, claimed that the man who stole the Torah is now in US custody in Guantanamo Bay. Simintov has a wife and two daughters, all of whom emigrated to Israel in 1998, and he said he was considering joining them. However, when he was asked if he would go to Israel during an interview, Simintov retorted, "Go to Israel? What business do I have there? Why should I leave?" Throughout August 2021, Simintov remained in Kabul, despite having had a chance to escape.
After receiving death threats from the Taliban and the ISIS-KP, Simantov emigrated to a presently undisclosed country before the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah on 6 September 2021. He brought 30 other refugees with him, including 28 women and children.
Two months later, it turned out that a previously unrevealed distant cousin of Simintov, Tova Moradi, had fled Afghanistan sometime in October, making her the last Jew known to be in Afghanistan for the intervening month. Contrary to official reports which stated that "no Jewish" person was living in the country, it is believed that Moradi was the last Jew who lived in Afghanistan.
Due to decades of warfare, antisemitism, and extreme religious persecution, there are officially no Jews remaining in Afghanistan today.
Remaining synagogues and sites
The Kabul synagogue that Zablon Simintov was a caretaker of until his last day in Afghanistan is located in District 4 of Kabul, in "kuche-ye Gol Forushiha" (, The Florists' Alleyway). Simintov's neighbors promised him that they would maintain the synagogue of Kabul in his absence. It is a disused synagogue, which still has most of its original characteristics. This synagogue is composed of 3 floors, a main congregation room, several side rooms and corridors, as well as 7 domes of different sizes. The Yu Aw synagogue underwent renovation in recent years and it was also added to Herat's list of protected cultural sites.