List of Jewish heads of state and government

This is a list of heads of state and government who are Jewish or have a largely Jewish heritage.

Heads of state and government
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Heads of state and government with minor Jewish heritage
Some former head of states and government have smaller amounts of Jewish heritage. Boris Johnson, a former prime Minister of the United Kingdom whose maternal great-grandfather, Elias Avery Lowe, was a Moscow-born Jew born to a textile merchant, said in a 2007 interview for the Jewish Chronicle, “I feel Jewish when I feel the Jewish people are threatened or under attack, that’s when it sort of comes out”. David Cameron, another former prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has referenced the German Jewish ancestry of one of his great-grandfathers, Arthur Levita, a descendant of the Yiddish author Elia Levita.

Another recent head of state of Jewish heritage is Nicolas Sarkozy, a former president of France. Sarkozy has a Greek Jewish grandfather who converted to Catholicism to marry his French Catholic maternal grandmother. He referred publicly to his Jewish grandfather. Jorge Sampaio is a former president of Portugal whose maternal grandmother was a Sephardi Jew from Morocco. Sampaio said that he is proud of his Jewish ancestry. Xavier Bettel who has served as the prime minister of Luxembourg since 2013 said he has a Polish Jewish grandfather.

Helmut Schmidt, a former chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982 also has Jewish ancestry. His father was born to a German Jewish banker, Ludwig Gumpel, and a Christian waitress, Friederike Wenzel, and then covertly adopted, although this was kept a family secret for many years. Schmidt served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht, while managing to hide his Jewish roots from the Nazi regime.

Although most head of states with Jewish ancestry come from Europe and Latin America, some are from other regions of the World. Laisenia Qarase, a former prime minister of Fiji, has Jewish ancestry. Qarase's mother is the daughter of John Herman Ma’afu Bowman, who had Jewish parents, Alexander Bowman and Sara Annette. Another example is Carlos Veiga, a former prime minister of Cape Verde. He said in a 2018 interview: “my grandfather on my mother’s side was Jewish, who came to Cape Verde from Gibraltar in the mid-1840s. He died before I was born and his grave was lost”.

Some head of states claims to have Jewish ancestry, although not confirmed. Mexican President Francisco I. Madero's family was widely thought to have been of Portuguese-Jewish heritage. Nicolás Maduro who has served as the president of Venezuela since 2013 said that his "grandparents were Jewish, from a [Sephardic] Moorish background, and converted to Catholicism in Venezuela". Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa who has served as the president of Portugal since 2016 claimed that his mother had Jewish ancestry.