The history of the Jews in Belarus begins as early as the 8th century. Jews lived in all parts of the lands of modern Belarus. In 1897, the Jewish population of Belarus reached 910,900, or 14.2% of the total population. Following the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1920), under the terms of the Treaty of Riga, Belarus was split into Eastern Belorussia (under Soviet occupation) and Western Belorussia (under Polish occupation), and causing 350,000-450,000 of the Jews to be governed by Poland. Prior to World War II, Jews were the third largest ethnic group in Belarus and comprised more than 40% of the urban population. The population of cities such as Minsk, Pinsk, Mogilev, Babruysk, Vitebsk, and Gomel was more than 50% Jewish. In 1926 and 1939 there were between 375,000 and 407,000 Jews in Belarus (Eastern Belorussia) or 6.7-8.2% of the total population. Following the Soviet annexation of Eastern Poland in 1939, including Western Belorussia, Belarus would again have 1,175,000 Jews within its borders, including 275,000 Jews from Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere. It is estimated that up to 800,000 of 900,000 — up to 90% of the Jews of Belarus —were killed during the Holocaust. According to the 2019 Belarusian census, there were 13,705 self-identifying Jews in Belarus, of which most are of Ashkenazi origin. Harshav, Benjamin (1999). The Meaning of Yiddish. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 6. "From the fourteenth and certainly by the sixteenth century, the center of European Jewry had shifted to Poland, then ... comprising the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including today's Byelorussia), Crown Poland, Galicia, the Ukraine and stretching, at times, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from the approaches to Berlin to a short distance from Moscow." However, the Israeli embassy in Belarus claims to know about 30-50 thousand Belarusians with Jewish descent (as of 2017).Israeli Ambassador: the closure of the embassy in Minsk was refused due to special relations Alexey ALEXANDROV / 02/16/2017 / 16:24 / Politics

Early history

Throughout several centuries the lands of modern-day Belarus were a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Therefore, the history of Belarusian Jews is closely related to the history of Jews in Lithuania and historically they could be seen as a subset of Lithuanian Jews.

As early as the 8th century Jews lived in parts of the lands of modern Belarus. Beginning with that period they conducted the trade between Ruthenia, Lithuania, and the Baltic, especially with Danzig, Julin (Vineta or Wollin, in Pomerania), and other cities on the Vistula, Oder, and Elbe.

The origin of Belarusian Jews has been the subject of much speculation. It is believed that they were made up of two distinct streams of Jewish immigration. The older and significantly smaller of the two entered the territory that would later become the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the east. These early immigrants spoke Judeo-Slavic dialects which distinguished them from the later Jewish immigrants who entered the region from the Germanic lands.

While the origin of these eastern Jews is not certain, historical evidence places Jewish refugees from Babylonia, Palestine, the Byzantine Empire and other Jewish refugees and settlers in the lands between the Baltic and Black Seas that would become part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The later and much larger stream of immigration originated in the 12th century and received an impetus from the persecution of the German Jews by the Crusaders. The traditional language of the vast majority of Lithuanian Jews, Yiddish, is based largely upon the Medieval German and Hebrew spoken by the western Germanic Jewish immigrants.

The peculiar conditions that prevailed in Belarus compelled the first Jewish settlers to adopt a different mode of life from that followed by their western ethnic brethren. At that time there were no cities in the western sense of the word in Belarus, no Magdeburg Rights or close guilds at that time.

Increasing prosperity and the great charter (1320–1432)

With the campaign of Grand Duke Gediminas of Lithuania and his subjection of Kiev and Volhynia (1320–1321) the Jewish inhabitants of these territories were induced to spread throughout the northern provinces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The probable importance of the southern Jews in the development of Belarus and Lithuania is indicated by their numerical prominence in Volhynia in the 13th century. According to an annalist who describes the funeral of the grand duke Vladimir Vasilkovich in the city of Vladimir (Volhynia), "the Jews wept at his funeral as at the fall of Jerusalem, or when being led into the Babylonian captivity."Quoted in: Rosenthal, Herman (1904). "Lithuania." The Jewish Encyclopedia. Ed. Isidor Singer. New York: Funk and Wagnalls. p. 118-130; here: p. 119. This sympathy and the record thereof would seem to indicate that long before the event in question, the Jews had enjoyed considerable prosperity and influence, and this gave them a certain standing under the new régime. They took an active part in the development of the new cities under the tolerant rule of Grand Duke Gediminas.

Little is known of the fortunes of the Belarusian Jews during the troublous times that followed the death of Gediminas and the accession of his grandson, Grand Duke Vytautas the Great (1341). To the latter, the Jews owed a charter of privileges which was momentous in the subsequent history of the Jews of Belarus and Lithuania. The documents granting privileges first to the Jews of Brest (July 1, 1388) and later to those of Hrodna, Trakai (1389), Lutsk, Vladimir, and other large towns are the earliest documents to recognize the Jews of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as possessing a distinct organization.

The gathering together of the scattered Jewish settlers in sufficient numbers and with enough power to form such an organization and to obtain privileges from their Lithuanian rulers implies the lapse of considerable time. The Jews who dwelt in smaller towns and villages were not in need of such privileges at this time, and the mode of life, as Abraham Harkavy suggests, "the comparative poverty, and the ignorance of Jewish learning among the Lithuanian Jews retarded their intercommunal organization." But powerful forces hastened this organization toward the close of the 14th century. The chief of these was probably the cooperation of the Jews of Poland with their brethren in the GDL. After the death of Casimir III (1370), the condition of the Polish Jews changed for the worse. The influence of the Roman Catholic clergy at the Polish court grew; Louis of Anjou was indifferent to the welfare of his subjects, and his eagerness to convert the Jews to Christianity, together with the increased Jewish immigration from Germany, caused the Polish Jews to become apprehensive for their future.

Jagiellon rule In 1569, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were united. It was generally a time of prosperity and relative safety for the Jews of both countries (with the exception of the Chmielnicki Uprising in the 17th century). However, a few events, such as the expulsion of the Jews from Lithuania between 1495 and 1503 occurred just within the Grand Duchy.

Jewish culture in Belarus Items from the Responsa The responsa sheds an interesting light also on the life of the Lithuanian Jews and on their relations to their Christian neighbors. states in his Mas'at Binyamin (end of sixteenth and beginning of 17th century) that "the Christians borrow clothes and jewelry from the Jews when they go to church." Joel Sirkis (l.c. § 79) relates that a Christian woman came to the rabbi and expressed her regret at having been unable to save the Jew Shlioma from drowning. A number of Christians had looked on indifferently while the drowning Jew was struggling in the water. They were upbraided and beaten severely by the priest, who appeared a few minutes later, for having failed to rescue the Jew."Lithuania", The Jewish Encyclopedia

Solomon Luria gives an account (Responsa, § 20) of a quarrel that occurred in a Lithuanian community concerning a cantor whom some of the members wished to dismiss. The synagogue was closed in order to prevent him from exercising his functions, and religious services were thus discontinued for several days. The matter was thereupon carried to the local lord, who ordered the reopening of the building, saying that the house of God might not be closed, and that the cantor's claims should be decided by the learned rabbis of Lithuania. Joseph Katz mentions (She'erit Yosef, § 70) a Jewish community which was forbidden by the local authorities to kill cattle and to sell meat—an occupation which provided a livelihood for a large portion of the Lithuanian Jews. For the period of a year following this prohibition the Jewish community was on several occasions assessed at the rate of three gulden per head of cattle in order to furnish funds with which to induce the officials to grant a hearing of the case. The Jews finally reached an agreement with the town magistrates under which they were to pay forty gulden annually for the right to slaughter cattle. According to Hillel ben Naphtali Herz (Bet Hillel, Yoreh De'ah, § 157), Naphtali says the Jews of Vilna had been compelled to uncover when taking an oath in court, but later purchased from the tribunal the privilege to swear with covered head, a practise subsequently made unnecessary by a decision of one of their rabbis to the effect that an oath might be taken with uncovered head.

The responsa of Meir Lublin show (§ 40) that the Lithuanian communities frequently aided the German and the Austrian Jews. On the expulsion of the Jews from Silesia, when the Jewish inhabitants of Silz had the privilege of remaining on condition that they would pay the sum of 2,000 gulden, the Lithuanian communities contributed one-fifth of the amount.

Belarusian Jews under the Russian Empire

The Russian empire began to rule over the modern day territory of Belarus following the 1st Partition of Poland in 1772, with their rule gradually expanding over all of Belarus during the 2nd and 3rd Partitions of Poland. This annexation, as well as Belarusians' incorporation into the Pale of Settlement, brought a relegation of Belarusian Jews as second-class citizens. Though despite this Belarusian Jewish Shtetls were mostly autonomous and the Jews of Belarus were mostly spared from the many pogroms which befell the Jews of the Russian Empire.

The Belarusian Jews were at this point, and still are a primarily urban demographic within Belarus.

Belarus was a relatively unimportant and uninfluential area of the jewish world during this era; while it was renowned for its yeshivot in Minsk, Mir, and Volozhin it was overshadowed by Vilnius the so called "Jerusalem of Lithuania". Similarly, while the urban centers of Belarus were early centers of the Haskalah they were overshadowed by other cities like Lviv, St. Petersburg, Vilnius, and Odessa. Belarus was unique though as an early hotspot of Hasidic Judaism.

By the end of the 19th century, many Belarusian Jews were part of the general flight of Jews from Eastern Europe to the New World due to conflicts and pogroms engulfing the Russian Empire and the anti-Semitism of the Russian czars. Millions of Jews, including tens of thousands of Jews from Belarus, emigrated to the United States of America and South Africa. A small number also emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine.