Gibraltar's Jewish community is roughly 40 per cent larger than the figure almost every travel page about it repeats. The number you will read is 750, or 763, or "about 2 per cent". The [2022 census](https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/uploads/statistics/2025/Census/Census%20of%20Gibraltar%202022%20-%20Report.pdf) counted 1,070 Jewish residents out of a population of 37,936. That is 2.8 per cent, and it makes Gibraltar's Jewish community, per head, one of the densest in western Europe. That matters to a traveller for a practical reason. Community size determines whether four synagogues can all hold a minyan, whether a kosher kitchen can survive commercially in a town of 37,936, and whether anyone is around to answer the phone in August. A community of 1,070 clears those bars. A community of 750 would be closer to the edge. Here is the rest of what we could verify, and the parts we could not. The census religion table is broken down by age group and sex, and the totals line reads: Roman Catholic 24,098, Church of England 2,541, other Christian 1,503, Muslim 1,909, Jewish 1,070, Hindu 693, no religion 5,343, other or not stated 779. Those eight figures sum exactly to 37,936. The full report and the earlier ones are on the [government's census page](https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/statistics/census/census-reports). The Jewish figure splits 527 men and 543 women. That near even split matters more than it looks: a community skewed towards one sex is usually a community of workers passing through, and this one is not. It is families. All four congregations are Orthodox and all four are still in use. The addresses are the point: they sit inside the old town grid, within a few minutes of one another, which is the single fact that makes an observant visit to Gibraltar straightforward. |Synagogue|Address|Founded|Known as| |Sha'ar Hashamayim|47 to 49 Engineer Lane|1724|The Great Synagogue| |Ets Hayim|91 Irish Town|1789|The Little Synagogue| |Nefusot Yehuda|65 Line Wall Road|circa 1800|The Flemish Synagogue| |Abudarham|119 Parliament Lane|1820|The Abudarham| Addresses and founding dates are from the [list of Gibraltar synagogues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_synagogues_in_Gibraltar). Sha'ar Hashamayim marked its 300th anniversary in 2024, and the [Gibraltar Chronicle reported the interfaith visits](https://www.chronicle.gi/shaar-hashamayim-synagogue-welcomes-interfaith-visitors-during-300th-anniversary-celebrations/) that went with it. The Chronicle's account has the founding detail most summaries leave out: it opened in 1724 as a wooden cabin, put up by Rabbi Isaac Nieto on waste ground, and it was the first synagogue built on the Iberian Peninsula since the expulsions of 1492 from Spain and 1497 from Portugal. Engineer Lane to Line Wall Road is a walk of a couple of minutes. Irish Town runs parallel to Main Street. Parliament Lane is off Main Street too. You can stand outside one and be at any of the other three inside five minutes, which is not true of any other territory we know of with four working synagogues. One practical note rather than a comfortable one. After the attack outside a Manchester synagogue on 2 October 2025, [the Royal Gibraltar Police tightened security at Jewish sites here](https://www.chronicle.gi/rgp-steps-up-security-at-synagogues-after-horrific-terror-attack-in-manchester/). Expect a presence at the door and carry identification. Gibraltar sits at 5 degrees 21 minutes west, which is further west than London. It keeps Central European Time, the same as Spain, an hour ahead of the United Kingdom. So the clock runs roughly an hour and twenty minutes ahead of local solar time in winter and two hours and twenty minutes ahead in summer. The effect on Shabbat is large. Sunset in Gibraltar falls at about 21:41 in late June and about 18:09 in late December, a swing of three and a half hours. On a Friday in high summer, candle lighting is well after nine in the evening and Shabbat does not end until somewhere between about 22:20 and 22:55 on Saturday night, depending on which custom you keep. In late December the whole of Shabbat is over between about 18:50 and 19:20 on the Saturday evening. |Time of year|Approximate sunset|What it means for a Friday| |Late June|21:41|Late dinner, very short Friday afternoon of daylight left after it| |Late September|20:16|Comfortable, the easiest time of year to visit| |Late October, after the clocks change|18:29|Early start, full evening afterwards| |Late December|18:09|Shabbat ends between about 18:50 and 19:20 on Saturday| Those sunset times are our own calculation for Gibraltar's coordinates, cross checked against published tables, and they are sunset rather than candle lighting. Local custom on how many minutes before sunset to light is a question for the community, not for us. Gibraltar has its own kashrut authority. [Gibraltar Kosher](https://www.kosher.gi/about/) gives its head office as 91 Irish Town, the address the Little Synagogue also carries, and certifi