[3] The Jewish community reestablished itself in the 18th century, mainly through an influx from Prussia, and came to play a principal role in the economic life of Latvia.

[7][8] In the Eastern part of Latvia, Latgale, Jews came from Ukraine, Belarus and Poland in the 17th and 18th centuries, of whom most belonged to the Polish culture of Yiddish.

During the reign of Catherine II from 1766 onwards, Jewish merchants were allowed to stay in Riga for six months, provided they lived in a particular block of the city.

[9] Essentially the nucleus of Latvian Jewry was formed by the Jews of Livonia and Courland, the two principalities on the coast of the Baltic Sea which were incorporated within the Russian Empire during the 18th century.

After the signing of the peace treaty between the Latvian Republic and the Soviet Union on August 11, 1920, repatriates began to return from Russia; these included a considerable number of Jewish refugees.

[citation needed] Between 1925 and 1935 over 6,000 Jews left Latvia (the overwhelming majority of them for the Mandatory Palestine which was soon to be declared the State of Israel), while the natural increase only partly replaced these departures.

The government had not yet consolidated itself and the country had become impoverished as a result of World War I and the struggle for independence which Latvia had conducted for several years (1918–20) against both Germany and the Soviet Union.

[citation needed] They also developed a variegated industry, and a considerable part of the import trade, such as that of petrol, coal, and textiles, was concentrated in their hands.

[citation needed] However, once the Jews had made their contribution, the authorities began to force them out of their economic positions and to deprive them of their sources of livelihood.

[citation needed] Although, in theory, there were no discriminatory laws against the Jews in democratic Latvia and they enjoyed equality of rights, in practice the economic policy of the government was intended to restrict their activities.

Jews were particularly active in the following branches of industry: timber, matches, beer, tobacco, hides, textiles, canned foods (especially fish), and flour milling.

Large numbers were ousted from their economic position and lost their livelihood as a result of government policy and most of them were thrust into small trade, peddling, and bartering in various goods at the second-hand clothes markets in the suburbs of Riga and the provincial towns.

The decline in their status was due to three principal causes: the government assumed the monopoly of the grain trade, thus removing large numbers of Jews from this branch of trade, without accepting them as salaried workers or providing them with any other kind of employment[citation needed]; the Latvian cooperatives enjoyed wide governmental support and functioned in privileged conditions in comparison to the Jewish enterprises; and Jews had difficulty in obtaining credit.

In the People's Council of Latvia which was formed during the first year of Latvian independence and existed until April 1920, there were also representatives of the national minorities, including seven Jews, among them Pauls Mincs [lv] (Paul Mintz, later chairman of the Jewish National Democratic Party), who acted as Minister of Labor (1919–21), anong other high positions, and Mordehajs Dubins (Agudas Israel).

Owing in part to the restrictions imposed on minorities including Jews, the influence of religion and Zionism increased, motivating some to immigrate to Palestine.

[13] In 1941, the Soviets arrested Nuroks, Dubins and other Jewish civic leaders, Zionists, conservatives, and right wing socialists.

Men were separated from their families and sent to labor camps at Solikamsk (in Perm), Vyatka, and Vorkuta,[13][17] while their wives and children were sent to Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, and elsewhere.

[13] It is estimated that of the 2,100,000 Jews who came under Soviet control as a result of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact dividing Eastern Europe, about 1,900,000 were deported to Siberia and central Asia.

Latvian-American Holocaust historian Andrew (Andrievs) Ezergailis argues that there was no "interregnum" period at all in most parts of Latvia, when Latvian activists could have engaged in the persecution of Jews on their own initiative.

Nevertheless, the Latvian Arajs Kommando played a leading role in the atrocities committed in the Riga Ghetto in conjunction with the Rumbula massacre on November 30, 1941.

After the war, surviving witnesses reported that Cukurs had been present during the ghetto clearance and fired into the mass of Jewish civilians.

At the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, Jews deported from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and other German-occupied countries began arriving in Latvia.

The Salaspils concentration camp, set up at the end of 1941, contained thousands of people, including many Latvian and foreign Jews.

The Kaiserwald concentration camp, established in the summer of 1943, contained the Jewish survivors from the ghettos of Riga, Daugavpils, Liepāja, and other places, as well as non-Jews.

It may be assumed that about 10,000 of them were natives, including Jewish refugees who returned to their former residences from the interior of Russia, while the remainder came from other parts of the Soviet Union.

The overwhelming majority of them lived in Riga, the capital, which became one of the leading centers of national agitation among the Jews of the Soviet Union.

This included children and grandchildren who were born in Latvia, as per Latvian law citizenship is not determined by place of birth, but by having an ancestor who is a national or citizen of the state.

In the early 2000s, after a decade of mass emigration, around 9,000 Jews remained in Latvia, mostly in Riga, where an Ohr Avner Chabad school was in operation.

In late August 2018, the "Beit Yisrael" synagogue was inaugurated in the residential area of Jūrmala at the home of businessman Emanuel Grinshpun.

After his studies and military service in the IDF in 2006, he was sent on missions to Jewish communities in the United States and Russia and has been primarily active in Latvia and Europe since 2018.