What began as a community of just five families seeking a Jewish life in Bulgaria has grown to approximately 200 families today, Maxim Delchev, executive director of the Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria, Shalom, said to JNS.
“We don’t believe our future lies in building museums and only preserving history. We want to stay in Bulgaria, stay in Europe and continue to exist,” Delchev said. “If that means having our own guards, more people volunteering to help secure the community and at the same time more people in synagogue, more people debating what it means to be Jewish, and more people discussing their grandmothers’ recipes, I’m fine with that.”
Delchev described Bulgarian society as largely tolerant, while acknowledging a 200% increase in minor antisemitic incidents in recent years.
“It’s significant,” he said, “but compared to attacks in Paris or London, here it might mean graffiti on a synagogue wall or the desecration of a Holocaust memorial.”
The community is increasingly uniting, he added, with Israelis now living in Bulgaria seeking stronger connections. Of the 250 students at the country’s only Jewish school, located in Sofia, half have at least one parent who is Israeli or Ukrainian.
“The tragedy of Oct. 7 brought hope and a sense of unity and togetherness to the community,” Delchev said, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
As a post-communist community, Jewish life in Bulgaria was nearly nonexistent 40 years ago: synagogues were largely empty, and mixed marriages stood at 90%. Today, however, the community is growing again, centred around a Jewish school that opened seven years ago and has expanded from 70 students to 250. “Next year, we will have our first graduates,” Delchev said.
“Our school places a strong emphasis on Hebrew and Jewish studies,” he explained. “Our students will take a final exam organised by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, similar to the bagrut exam taken by Israeli students their age. We are trying to create a safe haven within Bulgarian society. The national education system is not very strong, and we want to ensure that every child can excel in what they are good at.”
The school also welcomes children with special needs and disabilities. “Even if society is not always as inclusive, we are,” Delchev said.
Since October 2023, the community has placed an even greater focus on Israel. Israel has long been central to Bulgarian Jewish identity: in 1948, some 45,000 of Bulgaria’s 50,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, and many of those who remained maintain close family ties.
Before the establishment of the country’s only Jewish school, children’s exposure to Israel was largely limited to public schools that taught Hebrew as a foreign language, without connecting it to Jewish texts, tradition, or religious life.
“In the 1990s, this was the best way we had to introduce Hebrew and some level of Jewish knowledge to our children,” Delchev said. “The program began in 1993, and we only opened the Jewish school in 2019. It took nearly 30 years to develop and ensure we had the right staff in place.”
The school operates with government support, follows the Ministry of Education curriculum, receives public funding, and is audited by the ministry.
Security remains a priority for the Bulgarian Jewish community. Although only minor antisemitic incidents have occurred recently, Delchev said the community is preparing for the possibility of more serious threats.
“Our country is not fully prepared to understand antisemitism,” he said. “It is easy to dismiss these incidents as vandalism or the actions of teenagers who don’t know what they’re doing, but we are not that naive.”
Security measures have been increased, including private guards trained by the community’s chief of security and cooperation with other European Jewish communities.
“We worked on a project with 16 communities across Europe on how to build a shared system of resilience and security,” Delchev said. “We are preparing ourselves.”
