Jews have been in Armenia since the first century B.C.

From 1840, there were two Jewish communities in the Erivan Province, mostly from Poland, and Persia. Both communities were represented by religious leaders and had their own houses of worship.

But by the 1930s, there were only a few dozen Jews left in Armenia. Most of the Jews who live in Armenia today come from different republics of the former USSR. The first settlers arrived in the mid-1930s; then, during World War II, Jews were deported to Armenia, mainly from Ukraine. A subsequent mass arrival of Jews to Armenia took place at the beginning of the 1970s, when anti-Semitism became the tacit policy of the Soviet Union.

During Perestroika, the majority of the people who came to Armeniain in the 1970s left for Israel. The next mass emigration of Jews and the Armenian members of their families was in 1992-1993, when Armenia was blockaded during the Karabakh war.

Today, there are between 800 and 900 Jews living in Armenia. They mostly reside in Yerevan and Vanadzor.