Abstract: Background Ethnic and religious minorities in the UK had a higher risk of severe illness and mortality from COVID-19 in 2020–2021, yet were less likely to receive vaccinations. Two Faith Health Networks (FHNs) were established in London in 2022–2024 as a partnership approach to mitigate health inequalities among Muslim and Jewish Londoners through a health system–community collaboration. By evaluating the FHNs, this study aimed to examine: the organisational processes required for FHNs to serve as a model of interface between health systems and minority communities; the role these networks play in addressing public health inequalities; and implications for their future development and sustainability.
Methods A qualitative evaluation of the two FHNs was conducted using semi-structured interviews (n=19) with members of the ‘London Jewish Health Partnership’ and the ‘London Muslim Health Network’. Participant clusters included public health professionals, healthcare workers, community representatives and local government workers.
Results The FHNs shared similar structures of leadership, but differed in core membership, which influenced their access to expertise and the activities developed. They were found to perform a key conduit role by integrating expertise from within the health system and faith communities to address the needs and expectations of underserved communities, with the ultimate goal of addressing health inequalities through the design of tailored campaigns and services. Emerging themes for developing an FHN model included enhancing their sustainability by determining funding allocation, strategic integration into health systems and identifying the appropriate geographical scope to sustain their impact. Further implications included recognition of intersectionality, addressing diverse needs within faith communities and trust-building approaches.
Conclusion This evaluation offers insights into developing partnership models between faith-based organisations and health sectors to foster relationships with underserved communities. These findings provide valuable considerations for teams navigating the priority of health equity and community engagement as part of our learning from the pandemic to support the development of FHNs across different faith communities, not just for vaccine uptake, but to support the broader health and well-being of communities more widely.
Abstract: Why do non-Jewish football fans chant "Yid Army" or wave "Super Jews" banners—especially in support of clubs that are not Jewish? The Making of "Jew Clubs" explores how four major European football clubs—FC Bayern Munich, FK Austria Vienna, Ajax Amsterdam, and Tottenham Hotspur—came to be seen as "Jew Clubs," even though they have never officially identified as Jewish.
In this transnational study, Pavel Brunssen traces how both Jewish and non-Jewish actors perform Jewishness, antisemitism, and philosemitism within European football cultures over the 20th and 21st centuries. Drawing on a wide array of primary sources—from fan chants and matchday rituals to media portrayals and club histories—the book reveals how football stadiums have become unexpected stages for negotiating memory, identity, and historical trauma.
Offering a new approach to Holocaust memory, sports history, and Jewish studies, The Making of "Jew Clubs" shows how football cultures reflect and reshape Europe's conflicted relationship with its Jewish past.
Abstract: For many people, the coronavirus pandemic meant an enormous and existential loss of control. At the same time, an increase in right-wing extremist attitudes like xenophobia could be observed in Germany. In this study, we hypothesize that the loss of control caused by the pandemic has contributed to the rise in xenophobic and anti-Semitic attitudes in Germany. We propose that this occurs through an attempt to restore control via elements of a revised authoritarian syndrome understood as both the classic authoritarian dynamic of aggression, submission and conventionalism on the one hand, and a general belief in conspiracy theories on the other. In a representative, probability-based study, N = 2522 participants were surveyed on locus of control, right-wing authoritarianism, conspiracy mentality, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism. It was found that right-wing authoritarianism and conspiracy mentality mediated the relationship between external locus of control and xenophobia (partial mediation) and anti-Semitism (full mediation). Surprisingly, internal control beliefs had a direct effect on right-wing authoritarianism—an effect that also leads to increased resentment. We conclude that social crises make people particularly vulnerable to regaining control via conspiracy theories and authoritarianism, which harbors dangers such as right-wing extremism as a consequence. Limitations are discussed.
Abstract: Historian Gavin Schaffer wrestles Jewish history away from the question of what others have thought about Jews, focusing instead on the experiences of Jewish people themselves.
Exploring the complexities of inclusion and exclusion, he shines a light on groups that have been marginalised within Jewish history and culture, such as queer Jews, Jews married to non-Jews, Israel-critical Jews and even Messianic Jews, while offering a fresh look at Jewish activism, Jewish religiosity and Zionism.
Weaving these stories together, Schaffer argues that there are good reasons to consider Jewish Britons as a unitary whole, even as debates rage about who is entitled to call themselves a Jew. Challenging the idea that British Jewish life is in terminal decline, An unorthodox history demonstrates that Jewish Britain is thriving and that Jewishness is deeply embedded in the country's history and culture.
Abstract: This chapter explains contemporary manifestations of antisemitism in Southeast European football by analysing football fan cultures of three post-Yugoslav states: Croatia, Serbia, and especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, where several antisemitic incidents have occurred during the last decade. The geographic scope is determined by the cultural proximity of these fan cultures, allowing for a comparative analysis of region’s forms of antisemitism, as well as socialist (dis-)continuities of political antisemitism. Whilst international football governing bodies and international media readily condemned the incidents in Bosnia-Herzegovina, social media discussions amongst their football fans proved to be diametrically opposed, especially in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The chapter examines the nature of anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic fan (and non-fan) practices and narratives, to extrapolate their inherent political nuances and to illustrate their transformations over the last two decades. By evaluating their significance for the wider public discourse, the chapter provides a more nuanced reflection of the issues at stake, within football and beyond.
Abstract: his chapter primarily focuses on antisemitism in French football since the turn of the new millennium, which has seen an intensification of debates about nationality, diversity, and identity in France, as well as a rise in antisemitism. France has historically had few high-profile Jewish players and lacks a major club that is seen as being ‘Jewish’. However, antisemitism has been a very real issue within professional and amateur levels of men’s football in recent decades, with abuse directed at players, team officials, and fans who are – or are perceived to be – Jewish, taking a variety of forms. The chapter examines the broader history of antisemitism in France and how this has influenced the French state’s relationship with religion today and is linked to both contemporary domestic issues and international matters, such as Israeli–Palestinian tensions. In addition, the chapter argues that French football has struggled to tackle, or sought to minimise, several forms of discrimination.
Abstract: Racism and more specifically prejudice against the Jewish community have been consistent throughout Italy’s complex socio-political history, underpinned by the Catholic Church’s marginalisation and fascist persecution of ‘Jewishness’. While Italian antisemitism is mainly ‘low intensity’, it is pervasive and enduring in the way it normalises prejudices and conspiracy theories that portray Jews as avaricious, controlling, and powerful, which prevail in contemporary political discourse. The localised nature of Italian fandom, which encourages the abuse of others based on traits deemed feminine, foreign, or weak – has historically reproduced and arguably reinforced dominant ideas on race and antisemitic prejudices that prevail in Italian society, as this chapter will explain. Despite many prominent antisemitic instances involving owners, administrators and especially fans, the Italian Football Federation has been slow to tackle the issue. Drawing upon empirical research on Italian ultras – a fan culture centred around neo-fascist and neo-Nazi symbols and ideologies – this chapter situates Jewish communities within Italy and explains the nature of antisemitism within Italian football, as well as failures to combat it and other forms of discrimination.
Abstract: Despite efforts by clubs, fans, and officials to combat discrimination and hate speech, antisemitism in German football and fan cultures still persists today. Antisemitism is expressed by supporters, players, coaches, club and league officials, security personal, and others. In most cases, no Jews need to be present to stimulate antisemitic behaviour. This chapter argues that contemporary antisemitism in and around German football is manifest in five different forms, which are explained with illustrative examples: far-right antisemitism; classical antisemitism; secondary antisemitism; antisemitism against Jewish Makkabi clubs; and antisemitic ressentiment-communication. This chapter also questions who does what against antisemitism in German football. By looking at each actor individually – football’s governing bodies; professional clubs; social pedagogical fan projects; stadium security and police; third sector organisations; and fans – it is evident that neither a common nor a long-term strategy exists, although a broad range of activities and actions take place, often initiated by, or implemented after, the pressure of fan groups.
Abstract: Today, Hungary’s Jewish population, that was decimated by the Holocaust, totals about 47,200, the largest in East Central Europe. This chapter provides an historical overview of the complex political and socio-cultural conditions, key events, and regime changes since the end of the 19th century to explain the Jewish community’s experience and how antisemitism has manifested in Hungarian society and how this, in turn, is reflected in Hungary’s football culture. Antisemitism has found expression in contemporary Hungary in extreme right-wing nationalist ideology through enduring stereotypes and allegations of Jewish conspiracy, wealth, and power, epitomised by the treatment of the Hungarian-born, Jewish-American philanthropist George Soros. The chapter explains how football has been used by successive Hungarian regimes for political purposes, including by the current long-serving leader Viktor Orbán, who has dismissed accusations of antisemitism and enjoys cordial relations with Israel. It considers the pre-1945 anti-Jewish legislation of the state and Hungarian Football Federation (MLSZ), as well as the verbal and physical atrocities suffered by Jews, mostly notably MTK Budapest by rivals Ferencváros Torna Club (FTC or Fradi), because of their Jewishness. Finally, the chapter looks at attempts to challenge antisemitism in Hungarian football.
Abstract: This chapter outlines the character, causes and extent of antisemitism within English football. This has included several high-profile incidents within English men’s football involving professional players, coaches, officials, and especially supporters. The chapter begins with a short historical background to the presence of Jews and antisemitism in England before moving onto the current situation and then considering how antisemitism is manifest within English football. The chapter expounds why Tottenham historically developed a quasi-Jewish identity that serves as a catalyst for antisemitic abuse from rival supporters. In doing so, the chapter examines the different subcultural meanings and intentions behind the controversial uses of the word ‘Yid’ within the context of English football supporter culture, which has been re-appropriated by Tottenham fans. Finally, the chapter critically reviews the responses to antisemitism in English football by governing bodies within the sport, Jewish community organisations, campaign groups, the criminal justice system, and professional football clubs.
Abstract: In Germany, pro-Palestine protests in the form of camps and institute occupations have occurred and continue to take place at universities. Antisemitic incidents have been reported at many of these protests. Following the initial data collection in December 2023, this report provides a new, focused, up-to-date assessment of the opinion climate in the context of the Middle East conflict and antisemitic attitudes at German universities. Exactly one year after the first report, the results of two recent surveys by the Higher Education Research Unit (AG Hochschulforschung) are summarized here. First, based on a large online survey conducted in December 2024 with over 1,800 students, we report on these students’ assessments of the conflict and antisemitic tendencies among them. This follows
on directly from the previous study mentioned earlier (Hinz et al., 2024), enabling us to describe possible changes compared to last year. In some places, we also examine the assessments and attitudes of students compared to a sample from the general population. Second, we present the results of a simultaneous survey of university rectorates on antisemitic incidents and the universities' reactions to these incidents. At the invitation of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), a total of 94 university management teams took part in this separate online survey.
The results indicate that universities have been strongly affected by antisemitic incidents and that antisemitic resentment remains at a constant level. A high level of vigilance is still required, particularly
with regards to Israel-related antisemitism
Abstract: This groundbreaking report released by the JPR European Demography Unit finds that 630,000 ex-pat Israelis live across the world, most of whom choose English-speaking and European countries as their new home. The report notes that an estimated 325,000 children have been born to these Israelis when living abroad, bringing the total number of Israeli migrants and their children to close to a million. The report also finds that in certain destination countries, the proportion of ex-pat Israelis and their families now exceeds 20% of the national Jewish population.
Some of the key findings in this report:
About 630,000 Israelis lived outside Israel in 2021-2023. Of these, 328,000 were born in Israel, and another 302,000 were born elsewhere but acquired Israeli citizenship and lived in Israel during their lives.
Estimating the number of children born to Israelis living abroad, the report concludes there are 955,000 ‘Israel-connected’ people worldwide.
The ‘Israel-connected’ Jewish population currently constitutes 9% of the population of the Jewish Diaspora.
The largest Israel-born Jewish communities are in English-speaking countries (US, Canada, and UK) and European countries (with those in Germany and the UK making up nearly 50% of Israelis living in Europe).
Europe hosts about one-third of Israeli ex-pats but only 16% of all Jews living in the Diaspora.
Israel-born Jews make up nearly half of the Jewish population in Norway, 41% in Finland, and over 20% of the Jewish communities in Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain and Denmark.
Over the past decade, Israeli-born populations have grown significantly in the Baltic countries (up 135%), Ireland (+95%), Bulgaria (+78%), Czechia (+74%), Spain (+39%), The Netherlands (+36%), Germany (+34%) and the UK (+27%).
Israeli ex-pat communities in Europe are among the fastest growing in the world.
Abstract: Religious spaces in the London borough of Barnet provide a lens through which to understand Muslim–Jewish encounters. This case study, pre-dating the 2023 escalation in the Israel–Gaza conflict, examines community relations in the context of the hegemonic discourses that play into racialisations, power dynamics and cultural connectedness through minority religious and ethnic identities in superdiverse urban centres. It focuses on a mosque’s application for planning permission in an area with a sizable Jewish population. Contestations and cooperation developed between the mosque and local Jewish communities, with some offering support while others mobilised, eventually successfully, to prevent planning permission being granted. Power differentials around race, class, religious affiliation and access to political power structures emerge in these instances, in which the impacts of racialisations, societal anxiety and communal hierarchy are sometimes overt and sometimes subtle. These complex and multifaceted events can be productively viewed through the narratives that circulate through local relations, social hierarchies, national discourses and culturally charged communal entanglements. This article draws on mixed methods of interviewing, press and social media analysis, and ethnographic observations to explore religious spaces as a lens to local encounters, in a manner that seeks to avoid direct involvement in an already complex incident.
Abstract: From an intercultural perspective, this article explores majority/minority and between minorities interactions, and revisits Allport’s contact theory, in a socially and ethnically diverse urban area hosting a large proportion of Jews and Muslims. The data comes from a telephone survey of a sample of inhabitants of the 19th arrondissement of Paris. Open and closed questions explore the symbolic social and political boundaries respondents construct between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and their patterns of sociability. Survey experiments with vignettes deal with more sensitive issues (reactions to circulating cartoons at school and police reactions to verbal assault, according to the ethnicity of the victim). The immediate social and ethnic surrounding of each respondent is reconstructed on the basis of census and ethnographic data. The results go against several common beliefs. Religion is not the only dimension of respondents’ identity; it intersects with social class, gender and generation. The relations between Jews and Muslims are not so much conflictual as ambivalent. Being minorities and feeling discriminated against as such brings them together. They both are more religious than the majority population, more traditional on sexual issues and more family-oriented, and most of them consider that Jews and Muslims have a common cultural heritage and should be united against discrimination. Nevertheless, there are friction points (Israeli-Palestinian conflict/the colonial past of France). Politically and socially Muslims are closer to the non-European immigrants, while Jews are closer to the French and the European-born ‘white’ population. Antisemitism is a clear taboo; anti-Jewish cartoons are seen as far more reprehensible than any other. But a majority of the sample, and Muslims a little more than average, see Jews as a ‘group apart’, and believe in the old stereotype about Jews having more influence, being more likely, for instance, to be helped by the police if needed.
Abstract: Commensality – eating together – is often understood by anthropologists and others as fundamental to human sociality, binding groups together and also creating bridges between groups. Consequently, sharing food or making food together has been emphasised in many policies to promote intercultural and interreligious contact. However, a more critical literature has emphasised how consuming the cultural produce of the other may also create opportunities for exploitative rather than meaningfully positive relations (at worst, in bell hooks’ evocative phrase, a way of ‘eating the other’). Eating the culture of the other has become a significant element in forms of gentrification that capitalise on exoticised difference, sometimes leading ultimately to the displacement of minoritised communities. More recently, an alternative approach to the role of food in intercultural encounters has emerged within the ‘conviviality’ and ‘super-diversity’ literatures, focusing on the convivial tools and somatic work of food entrepreneurs. This article, drawing on the author’s fieldwork in London and on fieldwork by colleagues in other European cities, builds on this literature to explore how forms of commensality, and the commercial transactions around them, play a unique role in generating Jewish-Muslim encounters in urban Europe, which are ambivalent, marked by power asymmetries, shadowed by securitisation and geopolitical conflict, but nonetheless fragile resources for hope.
Abstract: This article argues that the Parisian spheres of Middle Eastern dance and Mediterranean music shape distinct Muslim-Jewish encounters for individuals involved in these practices, fostering a coexistence among artists from Muslim and Jewish backgrounds which involves carefully navigating tensions over geopolitical issues. Three key findings emerge from this study. First, respondents of Muslim and Jewish backgrounds shared a common Maghrebi heritage that was reappropriated by engaging in the practices of Middle Eastern dance and Mediterranean music. Second, these artistic encounters were not immune to instances of stigmatization and tensions, particularly relating to geopolitical issues, which reactivated symbolic boundaries between artists of Muslim and Jewish backgrounds. Third, participants employed strategies to avoid conflict, explicitly separating art from politics, and fostered mutual respect for differing perspectives. Nevertheless, some respondents politicized Muslim-Jewish commonalities, notably by reaffirming their shared Maghrebi heritage.
Abstract: This special issue, based around the European Encounters project research carried out before October 2023, explores ambivalence and boundary work in Jewish and Muslim encounters across urban European contexts. Drawing on case studies in Frankfurt, London and Paris, it examines intercultural negotiations and identity constructions among minoritised groups. Contributors analyse diverse sites of encounter, from musical collaborations to more formal interfaith initiatives and everyday commercial spaces. Across these settings, the articles highlight complex layers of commonality and difference shaping boundary dynamics between Muslims and Jews. Analytically, this issue deploys central cultural studies concepts like symbolic boundaries, conviviality and superdiversity to elucidate lived realities. Empirically, grounded examination of understudied intercultural encounters advances cultural studies scholarship. The juxtaposition of the cities enables a relational understanding of how national repertoires of discourse shape boundary negotiations differently across contexts. Furthermore, analysis complicates assumptions of conflict, foregrounding marginalised perspectives on identity and power. Key findings demonstrate the ambivalence underpinning most Muslim-Jewish interactions. Structural inequalities, avoidance and indifference more frequently characterise encounters than outright hostility. Yet significations of difference still dominate, as groups navigate uneasy proximities. This special issue challenges essentialist portrayals of immutable intergroup divisions. Its nuanced analysis underscores the need to understand quotidian encounters relationally, as a multi-level interdependency, grounded in their socio-historical contexts across and within groups. This yields multifaceted insights into minority experiences of othering and belonging in Europe’s superdiverse cities.
Abstract: Introduction: Amid escalating global antisemitism, particularly following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, this study addresses critical gaps in understanding the psychosocial impact of antisemitism on Jewish communities worldwide.
Methods: Focusing on the Jewish community in Germany, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of 420 Jewish individuals (mean age = 40.71 years, SD = 15.90; 57% female). Participants completed measures assessing four distinct forms of perceived and experienced antisemitism: everyday discrimination, microaggressions (subtle antisemitism and collective experiences such as encountering antisemitic comments on social media), vigilance against antisemitism, and perceived prevalence of antisemitism. Psychosocial outcomes—including depression, anxiety, subjective well-being, and social participation—were also measured. Data were analyzed using correlation analyses and multiple linear regressions, and Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) identified distinct groups based on shared perceptions and experiences of antisemitism and levels of Jewish identification.
Results: Results indicate that experiences of antisemitism, particularly everyday discriminatory acts, were significantly associated with poorer mental health outcomes and reduced social participation. The LPA revealed three distinct groups, with the high-identity, high-antisemitism group (53% of the sample) reporting significantly higher anxiety levels than those with average identification and more rare experience with antisemitism.
Discussion: These findings underscore the pervasive nature of antisemitism and its detrimental effects on the well-being of Jewish individuals. The study highlights the need for targeted interventions to promote resilience within Jewish communities and calls for broader societal efforts to combat antisemitism.
Abstract: In this article, I focus on Antwerp’s Hasidic male immigrants, who must not only apprentice themselves to a new language (Flemish) and career, but also accustom themselves to an unfamiliar country and governmental bureaucracy. They must learn the local habits and social mores of Antwerp’s Hasidic community. Moreover, they must contend with the afterlife of a classed association – wherein Jewish male workers actively tethered their classed identities and subjectivities to the diamond and to its status as a “luxury” commodity. In the wake of the diamond industry’s decline for the vast majority of Antwerp’s Jewish male workforce, I attend to this space of displacement, in which the diamond industry continues to exert itself, despite its diminished capacity, over these men. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted between 2015-2019 in Antwerp, in cooperation with a Hasidic non-profit focused on the economic revitalization of Antwerp’s Hasidic male workforce, I examine the intersection between class, masculinity, and piety, through an initiative within Antwerp to recreate a new Hasidic man and worker-citizen. In this space of reinvention, Hasidic men must contend with the spectral presence of the diamond industry and its association with Jews, as they seek integration into the local Flemish labor force and legitimacy in the eyes of Antwerp’s Hasidic community.
