The Jewish community of Tajikistan is made up of Bukharan and Ashkenazi Jews. The Bukharan Jews have a long and complicated history in Central Asia, particularly in the Turkistan region. The Ashkenazim arrived in Tajikistan during World War II to escape the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe. In 1989, there were approximately twenty thousand Jews; after the civil war, all but two thousand emigrated.

The government bulldozed the last remaining synagogue in 2006 but relocated Jewish worshippers in a house in 2010 after much negotiation by Jewish groups.The government did permit the community to worship without interference.There is still a well-kept Jewish cemetery in the hills around Dushanbe, which has its own caretakers.

From 1989 through 2000, 10,800 Jews have made aliyah out of the 20,000 in the country. In 1992, a secret airlift operation brought a small number of Jews to Israel. The Jews of Tajikistan are estimated to be somewhere in the vicinity of 100-500, about half of whom live in Dushanbe. Many of these are elderly, and poverty-stricken. Others do not regularly practice, and many are either the offspring of a Jew and non-Jew or themselves married to a gentile.