Abstract: What do Jews in the UK think about climate change, and how do their views compare with the rest of the population of the UK on this issue? What role does one’s Jewish identity play in attitudes towards climate change?
Some key findings include:
Virtually all respondents (92%) agree that the world’s climate is ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ changing, with almost seven out of 10 (69%) Jewish people saying it is definitely changing;
Almost two-thirds of Jews in the UK acknowledge humanity’s role in climate change, saying climate change is caused either ‘mainly’ (50%) or ‘entirely’ (13%) by human activity;
Two out of five (40%) respondents say they are either ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ worried about climate change, and a further 37% say they were ‘somewhat’ worried;
Based on the data available, UK Jews appear to be more climate change aware than the UK population as a whole, with 66% of Jews saying that climate change is ‘mainly’ or ‘entirely’ caused by humans, compared with 54% of the general UK population;
Nevertheless, there are significant differences in attitude within the Jewish population, influenced by people’s denomination, politics, education, religiosity, economics and demographics. Progressive Jews and those on the political left are found to be considerably more climate change conscious than Orthodox Jews and those on the political right.
The data on the attitudes of UK Jews are drawn from JPR’s UK Jewish research panel and were collected in July and August 2021. The panel is designed to explore the attitudes and experiences of Jews in the UK on a variety of issues. The sample size is 4,152 for UK residents aged 16 who self-identify as being Jewish. The data were weighted for age, sex and Jewish identity and are representative of the self-identifying Jewish population of the UK.
Abstract: Jewish social justice education is an active and growing field of practice, encompassing a diverse range of agendas and practices: teaching Jewish texts and values around issues of refugees, human rights and environmental justice; organising members of the Jewish community to oppose the occupation of the Palestinian territories and support the Israeli Left; advancing gender equality and LGBT+ inclusion within the community through informal education and training; engaging Jewish students in volunteer service-learning projects to alleviate poverty in the developing world; building inter-faith coalitions to work on local agendas such as housing, crime and healthcare; encouraging a culture of charitable giving and volunteering among Jewish young people; and mobilising Jews in the national and international political arenas around issues such as gun violence, climate change, immigration, hate crime and antisemitism. Yet Jewish social justice education remains an under-researched and under-theorised phenomenon. This theoretical lacuna has practical implications for the thousands of educators and activists across the world who are attempting to achieve social justice ends through the medium of Jewish education but have no well thought-out rationale as to what this might mean and, consequently, cannot know if it has any chance of success. This thesis explores possible theoretical foundations for Jewish social justice education by creating a hermeneutical dialogue between Freirean critical pedagogy, Catholic models of social justice education, Jewish social justice literature and interviews with thinkers and practitioners who consider themselves to be part of the Jewish social justice education enterprise. After drawing out and analysing the philosophical, political and educational themes that emerge from this dialogue, I propose three possible directions a coherent normative theory of Jewish social justice education could take: ‘Jewish politics in a renewed public sphere’, ‘Jewish education for relational community building’ and ‘Jewish critical pedagogy for cultural emancipation’.
