Abstract: This thesis looks into representations of Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish non-elite civilians in the liberal press
in Britain, namely the Guardian and the Independent newspapers. The period examined in the research
follows the al-Aqsa Intifadah (since September 2000) and the Arab-Israeli conflict during the 2000s (2000-
2010). The research findings look specifically into the coverage of the peace months of July and December
2000. The primary proposition of the thesis follows the burgeoning literature regarding the parallel,
centuries-old histories of the Arab, Jew and the Idea-of-Europe in tandem, in one breath as it may (e.g.,
Anidjar, 2003, 2007; Kalmar and Penslar, 2005; Boyarin, 2009). This theorisation finds the Arab and Jew
as two formational Others to the Idea-of-Europe, with the Jew imagined as the religious and internal enemy
to Europe and the Arab as the political and external enemy (Anidjar, 2003). This research enquires how
liberal-left forms of racialisations (not only extreme right racialisations) towards the Arab and Jew are
contingent upon these centuries-old images and imaginaires, even during moments of peacemaking (not
only times of heightened violence). The main hypothesis of the research is that in the mediated, Manichean
packaging of the Arab-Israeli conflict in both newspapers the Palestinian and Israeli-Jew are reduced to
two sediment polarized identities where no Palestinian exists outside the articulation of being oppositional
to the Israeli-Jew through difference marked by violence, and vice versa. Critical Solidarity is proposed as
a mode of Peace Journalism (e.g., Galtung, 2000; Lynch and McGoldrick, 2005; Kempf, 2007) which hopes
to address concerns at the intersection of news reporting about the conflict and race.
Abstract: The paper is devoted to the presentation of the results of a research survey, the aim of which was to find out the opinions of teachers who were professionally working at the first level of primary schools at the time of the quantitative research survey. A total of 319 primary school first cycle teacher education students, 300 females and 19 males, participated in the study at different stage I of their studies. A certain limit to the inclusion of these events in teaching at all levels of institutional education, from our point of view, is the concern of educators about the reaction of the pupils’ legal representatives. We are convinced that, with appropriately chosen methods and forms of teaching, the Shoah can be implemented in the teaching of the first level of primary schools through methods that lead to the de-abstraction of this phenomenon. In most cases in favor of integrating the Shoah phenomenon into teaching at the first level of primary schools, especially through authentic artistic creations of children.
IMPACT STATEMENT
The paper is devoted to the presentation of the results of a research investigation conducted among 319 students of teaching for the first stage of primary schools. The evaluation of the questionnaires shows that most issues are included in the eighth grade of primary school, in the subject of History, which is predestined by its content to integrate events anchored in history. The subjects of Civic Education and Czech Language and Literature also scored significantly. Positive responses were received, while Education in European and Global Contexts, Education for Democratic Citizenship and Multicultural Education were among the cross-cutting themes.
Abstract: Holocaust heritage across Europe is held to high standards of conservation, management, interpretation, and use, due to the belief that all such sites should be retained as or turned into places of memorialization as their primary function. This paper proposes that a pragmatic approach instead be taken towards Holocaust heritage in the twenty-first century and beyond. In acknowledgement that heritage practitioners today are not safeguarding this as a “found” heritage resource in 1945, but in the present day, it is argued that it is inevitable and perhaps unavoidable to make pragmatic decisions which take into account changes to such sites over the last 80 years. Site managers and other stakeholders are not in a position to make decisions based on a clean slate, devoid of post-war events and uses. Drawing on case studies from Serbia and Czechia, and adopting a three-pronged model of “heritage pragmatics,” this paper argues that our choices today should reflect and acknowledge past uses and aim towards more pragmatic solutions, letting go of idealistic aspirations more suitable for sites without a long history of reuse.
Abstract: In the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks, reports of anti-Israel expressions at German universities have raised questions about the prevalence and nature of such sentiments in academic environments. Traditional survey-based research on antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment is often limited by response biases and social desirability bias. This study introduces a novel field-experimental approach to measuring anti-Israel sentiment in a real-world university setting. Using event history analysis, it examines the removal probability of stickers of the Israeli flag compared to German, US, Palestinian, and rainbow flags at a German university. Over a 24-week period, 600 stickers were placed on 50 public notice boards and were monitored for 14-day cycles. The results provide strong evidence of anti-Israel sentiment. The Israeli flag had the highest removal rate, with only 47.5% of the flags remaining at the end of the observation period—significantly lower than the survival rates of the other flags (which range from 68% to 80%). Cox regression analysis confirms that Israeli flags faced the highest removal hazard, being 3.3 to 3.7-times more likely to be removed than the rainbow flag and nearly twice as likely as the German flag. Politically motivated removals, though less frequent, disproportionately targeted Israeli flags as well. Removal rates were highest in hallways of the humanities, shared humanities/social sciences as well as in central facilities hallways. Hallways in the natural sciences, the human- and social sciences and economics had lower removal rates. Areas with higher student traffic exhibited fewer removals. Overall, the findings indicate a pronounced anti-Israel bias on campus, distinct from attitudes toward other nationalities or symbols.
Abstract: This study examines the extent of antisemitic bias in German higher education through a survey experiment conducted among students (N=1,416) at an average-sized German university in the fall of 2024/2025. Using a between-subjects design, participants were randomly assigned to evaluate English academic writing courses taught by fictitious instructors whose profiles varied by gender and ethnic/religious background—categorized as German, Israeli, and Jewish. Instructors were rated on sympathy and competence using a 7-point scale. While no significant differences emerged for competence ratings, results reveal notable bias in sympathy ratings: instructors identified as Jewish, particularly male Jewish instructors, received significantly lower ratings compared to their German counterparts. Instructors from Israel without a visible Jewish symbol were not rated significantly differently. There was also a gender bias, as female instructors with a German profile were rated less favorably than male instructors. Interestingly, the anti-Jewish bias was predominantly driven by female student raters, whereas male students primarily exhibited gender bias without significant antisemitic tendencies. These findings suggest that antisemitic motives, rather than anti-Israel sentiment, underlie the negative evaluations observed in this academic setting, and highlight the complex interplay between ethnic/religious prejudice and gender bias.
Abstract: Reports have indicated an increase in anti-Jewish hostility and antisemitic incidents following the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza. In two studies (NStudy1 = 354 and NStudy2 = 490), we experimentally investigated the impact of priming with material referring to the war in Gaza on hostility toward Jews, and on antisemitism as well as other various ethnic groups (to determine whether this exposure specifically affected attitudes toward Jews or had a broader impact on ethnic attitudes in general). We also examined the indirect relationship between political orientation and anti-Jewish hostility and antisemitism, through sociopolitical factors such as global identification, out-group identity fusion, social dominance orientation, and misanthropy. Our results showed an experimental effect of increased negative attitudes toward Jews, as well as toward Britons and Scandinavians, but did not reveal an increase in antisemitism. This effect was not replicated in Study 2, possibly due to reduced media attention. The indirect effects suggested that political orientation (left vs. right-wing) was positively associated with anti-Jewish hostility and antisemitism through social dominance orientation. In contrast, conservative political orientation was negatively associated with antisemitism through out-group identity fusion with the Palestinian people. Our findings imply two distinct political pathways to antisemitism: one linked with classical political right-wing orientation and the other to a complex identity-based conflation of attitudes toward Israel with prejudice toward the Jewish ethnic group.
Abstract: Enduring Jewish Communities around the World: Models of Effective Communication employs an organizational communication perspective to examine how strong internal and external communications have helped Jewish communities survive globally in unlikely locations, harsh circumstances, and periods of violent antisemitism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with religious and community leaders of nine international Jewish communities, Joshua Azriel contends that communication is a part of Judaism’s core and a powerful, informal tool that has been used over millennia by its followers to sustain their communities, culture, and religion. Scholars of communication, religion, history, and Jewish studies will find this book of particular interest.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
Chapter 2: Halifax, Canada
Chapter 3: Guatemala City, Guatemala
Chapter 4: San Jose, Costa Rica
Chapter 5: Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana
Chapter 6: Bene Israel, India
Chapter 7: Belmonte, Portugal
Chapter 8: Sofia, Bulgaria
Chapter 9: Iasi, Romania
Chapter 10: Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
Abstract: Vast research has been carried out on the way Jewish women feel about their infertility and their use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). This has been particularly researched in Israel, a distinctly pro-natalist country. Building on this scholarship, this thesis explores the infertility experiences of Orthodox Jewish Women living in London. Based on twenty-six interviews, conducted between 2017 and 2018, with Orthodox Jewish women living in North West London, this thesis presents some of the challenges these women faced when experiencing infertility, and the ways in which they found strength and support to navigate their journeys through ART. This thesis is comprised of two parts. Part I provides the background context for the thesis in three chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to Judaism and British Jewry along with the development of its denominations and the meaning behind ‘community’. Chapter 2 broadly discusses Jewish meanings attributed to fertility and infertility alongside studies on the way individuals experience infertility, reproduction and pregnancy with a particular focus on Jewish scholarship. Chapter 3 outlines the methodology used, explaining how this thesis was developed from thought into fruition. Part II of the thesis concentrates on original data, with four data chapters each concentrating on a key theme emerging from the data – My destiny (Chapter 4), My Rabbi (Chapter 5), My Relationships (Chapter 6), My Identity (Chapter 7), a discussion chapter (Chapter 8), and a final chapter for conclusions, reflections and future work (Chapter 9). The key findings of this thesis illustrate that while all women believed their infertility was God given, their acceptance of these perceived ‘tests of faith’ was not smooth. The relationships that appeared to suffer the most were those the women held with their mothers. Inversely, the relationships that flourished most, as a result of infertility, were those which the women held with their Rabbis. This research gives useful insight into an under researched population. Its findings could offer guidance to medical professionals, counsellors, policy makers, and religious leaders. Additionally, this work could be encouraging for other Orthodox Jewish women when facing infertility.
Abstract: Teaching and education mirror what societies want to preserve, initiate, and pass along. Thus, the impact of teachers and school textbooks cannot be overestimated. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, to ensure high-quality textbooks, which convey balanced views as well as intellectual and unbiased approaches to the topics. The present study by historian and Holocaust education expert Dr. Melanie Carina Schmoll, PhD, offers a fresh approach to analyzing the subjects of Jews, Judaism, current Israel and the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts in curricula and relevant textbooks. The study indicates the status of information, problematic content, or words in curricula and history textbooks used in the German province of North Rhine-Westphalia. Besides analyzing and just denouncing mistakes, the study also provides options for an exchange of difficult and/ or incorrect content in the textbooks. The study assists authors and editors to write and develop unbiased textbooks in the future.
Abstract: Hatred of Jews noticed a dramatic rise after the events of October 7, 2023. Since Holocaust education was presented for years as the answer to the hatred of Jews, the question almost automatically occurs: Has Holocaust education failed? Does it need to be revised or totally reorganized? How do things differently in the future? How can Holocaust education contribute to combating hatred of Jews? The German Holocaust education expert and historian, Dr. Melanie Carina Schmoll, PhD, provides answers to these questions. This book teaches academics and practitioners why and what to expect when teaching about the Holocaust. Content, outcome of Holocaust education, gaps in knowledge and the reasons for are examined. In comprehensible explanations, Dr. Schmoll shows the potential failures in Holocaust education and why the teaching of history still matters. Hatred of Jews-A Failure of Holocaust Education? bridges the gap between academic research and practical support for educators, teachers, and textbook publishers. A step-by-step guide helps on how to improve it in the future.
Abstract: Since the end of the USSR, post-Soviet Jewry has evolved into an ethnically and culturally diverse Russian speaking community. This process is taking place against the gradual inflation of a collective identity among Russian-speaking Jews that survived the first post-Soviet decade. The infrastructure for this new entity is provided by new local (or ethno-civic) groups of East European Ashkenazi Jewry with specific communal, subcultural, and ethno-political identities (“Ukrainian,” “Moldavian,” or “Russian” Jews, e.g.). These communities demonstrate a changing balance of identification between their countries of residence and the “transnational Russian-Jewish community”, and they absorb a significant number of persons of non-Jewish and ethnically heterogeneous origins as well.
This book discusses identity, community modes, migration dynamics, socioeconomic status, attitudes toward Israel, social and political environments, and other parameters framing these trends using the results of a comprehensive sociological study of the extended Jewish population conducted in 2019–2020 by this author in the five former-Soviet Union countries (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Kazakhstan).
Abstract: From Introduction:
As the world marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the J7 – Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism is releasing its first J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism. This report offers a comprehensive and sobering overview of the current state of antisemitism across seven countries with the largest Jewish communities outside Israel: Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The J7 Task Force was established in July 2023 to foster cooperation among these communities in response to growing concern about the resurgence of antisemitism worldwide. This crisis has only intensified following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which was followed by a marked rise in antisemitic incidents across the world, including in the J7 countries. In the months following the attack, reports of antisemitic activity increased by hundreds, and in some cases, thousands, of percentage points, compared to the same period the previous year, with incidents targeting Jewish schools, synagogues, businesses, and individuals.3 The data presented here is troubling. Across all seven countries, there has been a clear rise in antisemitic incidents, particularly violent ones. From 2021 to 2023, antisemitic incidents increased by 11 percent in Australia, 23 percent in Argentina, 72 percent in Germany, 90 percent in the United Kingdom, 83 percent in Canada, 185 percent in France, and 227 percent in the United States. In two of the four J7 countries that published incident numbers for 2024, namely Australia and the United States, the number of antisemitic incidents continued to rise, showing the lasting impact of the tsunami of antisemitism unleashed by Oct. 7.
Abstract: This paper presents two digital public history resources—online maps—that are concerned with the everyday lives and reminiscences of Jewish people in two cities in the United Kingdom: London and Manchester. Using techniques derived from Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and the spatial humanities more broadly, these resources take the form of interactive maps which compile recordings of oral history interviews with background research, documentary photographs, and historical maps. Drawing on the work of Raphael Samuel and Pierre Nora, and the insights derived from space syntax urban research and what we have termed ‘memory mapping,’ we discuss the tensions between memory, which in Nora’s sense refers to the past as it is recalled informally and colloquially, and history, the academic study of the past. Digital mapping technologies, we argue, shape new opportunities for exploring the relationship between these two modes of historical thinking. Through a consideration of specific examples taken from the two maps, we discuss how bringing these materials into dialogue with cartographic maps opens new avenues for spatially and historically situated research into memory.
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: In all, 90% of Polish Jews, more than 3 million people, were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and 90% of the survivors left Poland. The survivors and their heirs, most of them not currently living in Poland, saw their land confiscated by the Nazis, nationalized by the communists and reprivatized and sold to others. Poland is the only country in the EU not to have a comprehensive restitution law. The issue of land restitution is still present in current debate in Poland, as part of a broader discussion over the Second World War, communism, privatization and corruption. While Poland blocked all restitution claims in 2021, Jewish communities as well as other governments called Poland to adopt a comprehensive restitution law for everyone. Now, 30 years after the fall of communism, what justifies such claims? This paper argues that forward-looking collective responsibility is the most helpful concept to understand the Jewish restitution problem in Poland today, and claims that any future settlement of this issue should be based on it. By applying this concept, as developed by Iris Marion Young, to the Polish restitution case, we look into the past – not to look for people to blame, but to look for social connections that have implications for the present. This way, we can remember the past, learn from it and heal relationships between people without being slaves to it.
Abstract: This paper uses archival and ethnological research to analyze the fates of former synagogues during two totalitarian regimes in present-day Slovakia. The processes described here were catalyzed by the Holocaust. Between 1938 and 1945, over 100,000 Jews from Slovakia were murdered. Out of the 228 Jewish religious communities (JRCs) active before the war, only 79 were reconstituted after liberation. Most were later disbanded because of aliyah to Palestine/Israel. Their abandoned synagogues passed into the administration of the newly founded Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities (CUJRC). During the Communist era (1948-1989), the majority of these synagogues were sold because the CUJRC did not have sufficient resources for their maintenance.
The second section of this paper discusses synagogues in different parts of Slovakia to show how representatives of the CUJRC tried to ensure the temples’ new owners did not violate their religious dignity. Purchase and sale agreements generally prohibited using the synagogues for entertainment purposes, instead preferring their conversion into warehouses, silos, workshops, etc. Although, as soon as the 1940s, part of the community requested that the synagogues be used as cultural centers, this did not happen on a large scale until after the revolution of 1989. A synagogue is not defined by its four walls but rather by the activities that take place inside it. The repurposed buildings are frequently located in regions with no active Jewish organizations. They are mere relics of the past and, bar a few exceptions, do not contribute to the renewal of traditional Jewish life. Believers nevertheless tend to have a negative view of the events that are held in the former synagogues, with some going as far as to consider them disrespectful. Even many secular Jews feel that the former synagogues do not fulfil their original purpose and have definitively transformed into non-synagogues.
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.
