Abstract: Ashkenazic Hebrew is a unique language variety with a centuries-long history of written use among Central and Eastern European Jews. It has distinct phonological and grammatical features attested in texts composed by Ashkenazic Jews (e.g. adherents of the Hasidic and Maskilic movements) in Europe prior to the twentieth century. While Ashkenazic Hebrew is commonly believed to have been replaced by Israeli Hebrew in the twentieth century, this traditional written variety of the language actually continues to thrive in contemporary Diaspora Haredi (strictly Orthodox) communities, chiefly the Hasidic centres of New York, London, Montreal and Antwerp. This fascinating and understudied form of Hebrew is used widely and productively in the composition of a rich variety of original documents for a Hasidic audience (about e.g. Covid transmission, United States educational stipulations, Zoom schooling, lockdown rules, etc.). In this article we demonstrate that contemporary Ashkenazic Hebrew has many shared orthographic, phonological, grammatical and lexical features with its Eastern European antecedent. These include: orthography of loanwords based on Yiddish conventions (e.g. חולי הקאראנא xóylay ha-koróna ‘those ill with coronavirus’); morphology of plural loan nouns (בקאלידזשעס be-kóleǧes‘in colleges’, הפראגראמע״ן haprográmen ‘the programmes’); retention of the definite article with inseparable prepositions (בהשכונה be-ha-šxíne‘in the neighbourhood’);
Abstract: Cette contribution tente d’approcher les sentiments nourris par le souvenir du Yiddishland à la fin du XXe siècle et au début du XXIe siècle. Elle cherche, afin d’aborder cette sphère habitée par l’ancrage familial, traversée par des antagonismes idéologiques, hantée par le souvenir de l’émigration et de l’intégration ainsi que celui de souffrances inouïes et longtemps indicibles, à suivre les représentations idéales d’un monde perdu, dans le domaine de la culture et dans celui des utopies politiques, en s’intéressant d’une part à des aspects du renouveau de l’expression culturelle yiddish en France au cours des trois dernières décennies, en particulier dans la chanson (Jacques Grober, Violette Szmajer, Batia Baum, Michèle Tauber et le groupe du Paon doré) ; d’autre part aux survivances des motifs d’utopie politique trouvant leur source dans l’épopée idéologique et historique du Yiddishland (Charles Melman, Mojsze Zalcman) ; enfin à la réappropriation de la mémoire véhiculée par le yiddish telle qu’elle peut être perçue dans les interviews réalisées par Max Kohn entre 2006 et 2016. Cette recherche, tentative d’exploration d’un cheminement affectif vers le yiddish de la part d’un enfant né à cette époque en Israël et ayant grandi en France dans une famille non yiddishophone, se limitera à certaines expressions de cette mémoire et de ces motifs d’espérance en France, sans s’interdire de les mettre en rapport avec des expressions analogues dans d’autres pays de la diaspora juive ou en Israël.
Abstract: Aujourd’hui, le djudyó (judéo-espagnol) n’est plus transmis en France. Des associations, comme Aki Estamos, offrent aux personnes qui le parlent ou le comprennent la possibilité de suivre des cours de langue. Les participants, sans être des locuteurs à part entière, ne sont pas non plus des apprenants stricto sensu, puisqu’ils possèdent des compétences linguistiques acquises dans leur enfance. Dans leur cas, la dichotomie entre acquisition et apprentissage est inopérante. Il convient d’identifier les objectifs de ces locuteurs-apprenants, qui suivent les cours sans développer de nouvelles compétences langagières. Ce sont les mots et leurs sonorités qui montent alors sur le devant de la scène, délaissant la grammaire. Le cadre des cours constitue un prétexte pour retrouver une langue et un monde disparus. M’appuyant sur l’observation participante, j’esquisserai les profils linguistiques de ces participants pour tenter d’en comprendre la démarche.
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: 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.
Abstract: In this paper, I focus on online and offline practices of community-building within two specific religious communities that remain active despite mass emigration. These communities are based in Derbent, Dagestan, and Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria, with members located in Moscow and the North Caucasus. Both communities have formally accepted rabbis from Chabad-Lubavitch, who are likely to promote Chabad-Lubavitch values among community members. I investigate the strategies and methods used by Chabad emissaries in the region to facilitate the process of chabadization. In addition to outreach activities, the visual manifestations of chabadization are significant in this study, as they are presented across multiple online platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and other social forums, chats, and websites. My research combines online analysis with fieldwork conducted in Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Moscow between 2018 and 2020.
Abstract: Jüdische Flüchtlinge aus der Gemeinschaft Unabhängiger Staaten (GUS) stellen eine stetig wachsende Minorität dar, über deren pflegerische Bedürfnisse in der Fachliteratur wenig bekannt ist. Weitaus besser untersucht sind die pflegerischen Bedürfnisse von Angehörigen des jüdischen Glaubens außerhalb der GUS, insbesondere von Personen aus den USA, Israel und Kanada. Im Rahmen eines von der Robert Bosch Stiftung geförderten Pilotprojekts zu den Versorgungsbedürfnissen jüdischer Flüchtlinge aus der GUS entstand die nachstehende internationale Literaturstudie. Ziel war es, bereits vorliegende Erfahrungen mit der Zielgruppe zu erheben. Dazu wurden unter den Stichworten «Juden», «jüdisch», «Migranten», «jew», «jewish» «migrants» und «nursing» insgesamt 67 Artikel verschiedener Datenbanken analysiert. Die Literaturstudie generierte folgende international bedeutsame Themen: – die psychosoziale Situation von und daraus resultierende Versorgungsaspekte bei zwei Generationen von Holocaust-Überlebenden, ihren Kindern sowie jüdischen MigrantInnen aus der GUS – die unterschiedlichen religiösen Orientierungen, die in die groben Kategorien orthodox, konservativ und Reformjudentum unterteilt werden, von denen jede spezifische Einstellungen beinhaltet, welche die Pflege beeinflussen – pflegerisch relevante ethisch-moralische Aspekte im Judentum – Besonderheiten bei der Pflege gerontologischer PatientInnen und – soziokulturelle Aspekte palliativer Pflege. Als eines der wichtigsten Ergebnisse zeigte sich, dass jüdische Flüchtlinge aus der GUS insbesondere das Merkmal der Verfolgungserfahrung mit Holocaust-Opfern und ihren Nachkommen teilen, woraus sich spezifische Implikationen für die pflegerische Betreuung ergeben.
Abstract: The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the communist regimes in Europe represented a radical change for Judaism on the continent. The most striking change occurred, naturally, in Central and Eastern Europe, that is, in those countries that were behind the Iron Curtain, such as Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia or the German Democratic Republic. There, while the political decomposition of the Soviet bloc was gaining traction, thousands of people rediscovered their Jewish origins – forbidden, concealed, or silenced under communism, giving rise to a process of Jewish revivalism. In this context, numerous Jewish philanthropic organizations came to the region to support these developments with the mission of renewing local Jewish communities. The process involved a multitude of actors – Jewish agencies, organizations and foundations based in the United States, Europe and Israel – and entailed the mobilization of professionals, specialists and financial resources. This thesis explores the concrete dynamics of this cross-border mobilization of Jewish philanthropic bodies in favor of the Jewish communities of East Central Europe after the fall of communism in 1989. It studies in-depth the historical origins and evolution of transnational Jewish solidarity in modern times, enquires about the Jewish agencies and organizations that started to operate in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially, but not only, their sources of financing and the circulation of economic resources. Finally, it gives an account of the narrative corpus that emerged about European Jews before and during this process, identifying those actors who created and mobilized these narratives.
Abstract: There is a rich body of research concerning Jews who lived in Germany before 1933. Publications on the Holocaust are equally numerous, a significant proportion of this output tackling historical (and contemporary) antisemitism in Germany from a non-Jewish perspective. Much less is known about the post-1945 Jewish population of the former East and West (now reunited) Germany: in terms of Jewish socio-demography, life-worlds, cultural heritage, praxes and about Jewish perspectives on antisemitism. The aim of this article is threefold. Content-wise, it sets out to summarise the existing social scientific research on the post-1945ers, and to identify gaps therein in terms of empirical research, both quantitative and qualitative. Structurally, it seeks to determine the scope and frame of research concerning the post-1945 Jewish population of Germany, demonstrating thus that the study of contemporary Jews is replete with lacunae. Practically, the article outlines the consequences of patchy knowledge, and the hampered knowledge transfer within academia and to the public – consequences which have become painfully clear in the wake of October 7, 2023.
Abstract: Veganism, a philosophy and practice constituting the eschewal of all animal-derived products and forms of animal exploitation, has grown exponentially in the UK over the past decade, including among individuals of faith. This phenomenon has been increasingly studied within social science, but there is one area that is noticeably absent in existing scholarship: how religion intersects with veganism. Given the perceived centrality of animal bodies to Abrahamic religious observance, coupled with potential ethical similarities between veganism and religion as possible guiding forces in an individual’s life, this intersection is pertinent to study. I ask, how are Muslim, Jewish, and Christian vegans reshaping and redefining veganism and religiosity in late modern Great Britain? I recruited 36 UK-based vegans identifying as either Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, and conducted a multi-modal qualitative methods study in 2021, comprising interviews, diary methods, and virtual participant observation. I then thematically analysed the data, drawing on theories relating to Bourdieusian sociology, reflexive religiosity, and embodied ethics and values. This research reveals that religion and veganism are often mutually constituted, with veganism being understood by faith vegans as an ethical lifestyle that may be incorporated into their religious lifestyles. Religious ethics, values, and principles are reflexively interrogated, enabling participants to bring together faith and veganism. However, for many, religion is non-negotiable, so specific knowledge and support is sought to aid the negotiations that take place around religious practice. Through reflexive religiosity, religious practice becomes veganised, whilst veganism becomes faith based. I develop a series of concepts that help explain the characteristics of faith veganism, such as faith vegan identity, faith vegan community, faith vegan ethics, and faith vegan stewardship, as well as contribute new ways of theorising veganism: as transformative, mobile, reflexive, and more-than-political. Thus, this empirical study offers a new understanding of veganism, one that intersects with and is underpinned by religion, and which I term faith veganism.
Author(s): Sarig, Katrina; Oxley, Samuel; Kaira, Anshwin; Sobocan, Monika; Fierheller, Caitlin T.; Sideris, Michail; Gootzen, Tamar; Ferris, Michelle; Eeles, Rosalind A.; Evans, D. Gareth; Quaife, Samantha L.; Manchanda, Ranjit
Abstract: With Poland’s political transformation after 1989, religious minorities including Jews and Muslims gained more autonomy and support from the state authorities. At the same time, the liberal democracy principles of religious equality and the state’s neutrality have still not been fully implemented. The paper focuses on this problematic situation, using the concept of politicization to portray the situation of the Jews and Muslims in contemporary Poland, and their relations with the Polish state. It presents four instances of politicization of religious minorities (specifically, Muslims and/or Jews). The research is based on public surveys, interviews with members of the Jewish and Muslim communities, legal documents, and NGO reports. According to the hypothesis of the paper, Muslims and Jews are significantly politicized in the Polish public discourse, and both communities play significant roles in shaping the political identity of the Polish polity. Their roles differ in character due to historical factors and the contemporary international context.
Abstract: Currently, Jewish and Muslim communities can be found as ethno-cultural minorities both in Berlin, the capital of Germany, and in the surrounding state of Brandenburg. While they sometimes differ greatly in religious and cultural life, both communities also share similar experiences - such as the (former) existence as immigrants, the image of the “cultural other” and the confrontation with group-related misanthropy (anti-Semitism and Islamophobia). Moreover, there are Jewish-Muslim encounters, there are forms of encounter between Muslims and Jews in the region, in different milieus and intercultural and interreligious projects that appear as a kind of “experimental laboratory”. Though, what are the differences, what are the similarities between the two groups? Finally, this article also relates to how October 7th 2023, Hamas’ brutal massacres of Israeli civilians and the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip influence relationships between Muslims and Jews in Berlin and Brandenburg today.
Abstract: Drawing on ethnographic and interview-based research in six cities (Berlin and Frankfurt in Germany, London and Manchester in the UK and Paris and Strasbourg in France), this article explores intercultural, interethnic and interreligious encounter as exemplified by Jewish-Muslim interaction. We look at three sites across the cities: “staged” encounters which take place in formal interfaith and municipal settings, and “unstaged” encounters in public and commercial spaces, both often relying on the role of key “entrepreneurs of encounter”, who tend to occupy liminal or marginal spaces in relation to their ascribed identities. We show that the texture and the possibilities (and sometimes impossibility) of encounters are structured intersectionally (crucially by class and by generation), and shaped by patterns of insecurity and securitisation and by different available discursive repertoires and cognitive frames (produced at supra-national, national, local and micro-local levels – e.g. Israel/Palestine politics, laïcité or communitarianism, city narratives and neighbourhood identities respectively). Although insecurity, securitisation, policy panic and geopolitical pressures can block meaningful encounter, emerging transdiasporic cultural formations point towards some fragile resources for hope.
Abstract: Muslims across Europe have been labeled as uncivil since the migration waves of postcolonial and guestworker migrants in the mid-20th century. In this paper, I bring the Muslim experience in the German capital into conversation with Civil Sphere Theory (CST), which analyzes how senses of cultural boundedness are supported, shaped, and contested through the interrelations between the institutions of civil society and social movements aimed at expanding civic inclusion. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in a Berlin mosque, I move from Muslim associations with incivility to the actions these associations provoke in relation to the civil sphere: exploring how those deemed uncivil exert agency in response to, and also in spite of a civil/uncivil divide. Through the voices and experiences of my interlocutors, I show that Muslims are not simply a victimized out-group excluded from the German civil sphere, but are also agents of change who actively seek to gain full inclusion within it. Specifically, I trace how my German Muslim interlocutors contend with their negative social status by drawing on narratives, and enlivening connections that link them to the German Jewish experience: seeking incorporation in the civil sphere through identifications with another “Other,” and through this other, also mainstream society.
Topics: Diaspora, Ethnography, Jewish Renewal, Jewish Revival, Outreach, Baal Teshuvah, Orthodox Judaism, NGOs, Young Adults / Emerging Adulthood, Religious Observance and Practice, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: Against the gloomy forecast of “The Vanishing Diaspora”, the end of the second millennium saw the global emergence of a dazzling array of Jewish cultural initiatives, institutional modalities, and individual practices. These “Jewish Revival” and “Jewish Renewal” projects are led by Jewish NGOs and philanthropic organizations, the Orthodox Teshuva (return to the fold) movement and its well-known emissary Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism, and alternative cultural initiatives that promote what can be termed “lifestyle Judaism”. This range between institutionalized revival movements and ephemeral event-driven projects circumscribes a diverse space of creative agency. Indeed, the trope of a “Jewish Renaissance” has become both a descriptive category of an increasingly popular and scholarly discourse across the globe, and a prescriptive model for social action. This article explores the global transformations of contemporary Jewishness, which give renewed meaning to identity, tradition, and politics in our post-secular world in two different sociopolitical contexts. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, we interrogate the relations between “diaspora” and “homeland” by analyzing two case studies: the Jewish revival movement in Budapest, Hungary, and the Jewish renewal initiatives in Israel. While the first instantiates a diasporic movement anchored in a post-denominational and post-secular attempt to reclaim Jewish tradition for a new generation of Jew-llennials (Millennial Jews), the second group operates against the Orthodox hegemony of the institutional Rabbinate by revisiting religious ritual and textual study. By proposing new cultural repertoires, these movements highlight the dialectic exchange between center and periphery. The ethnography of religious revival decenters the Israeli Orthodoxy as “the homeland” and positions the diaspora at the core of a network of cultural creativity and renewal, while remaining in constant dialog with Israel and other diasporic communities.
Abstract: Syrian refugees have become a significant minority in Germany over the past decade, with approximately one million now residing in the country. Most of them plan to stay and are eager to integrate into German society. Alongside practical challenges such as uncertain legal status, securing housing, finding employment, facing racism, and learning the German language, they must also navigate an ideological environment where common views on the Middle East, Islam, Israel, Jews, and the Holocaust differ significantly from those in their home country. This necessitates a certain degree of adaptation. Based on qualitative interviews with more than 200 Arab and Kurdish Syrian refugees, we examine self-perceptions, views on developments in the Middle East, and attitudes toward Jews. Significant differences emerged between Arab and Kurdish respondents. Especially among Syrian Kurds, there’s a noticeable openness to challenge antisemitic attitudes, often motivated by a rejection of Arab nationalist ideology and anti-Zionist propaganda. Syrian Kurds often perceive Jews and Israel more favorably than Arab Syrians. Their history of discrimination and oppression in Syria contributes to their rejection of hatred of Jews and Israel.
Abstract: The report looks into what Jews in the UK think of key Israeli political leaders and the country’s future, drawing on data from the responses of over 4,500 adult British Jews, members of the JPR Research Panel, to the JPR Jewish Current Affairs Survey, held in June-July 2024. The report reveals that levels of pessimism about Israel’s current situation have increased significantly among British Jews when compared to data gathered before the October 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza.
Some of the main findings in this report:
Three-quarters (74%) of Jews in the UK describe Israel’s situation as “bad” (37%) or “very bad” (37%), increasing from 57% measured in Apr/May 2023. Overall, Jews in the UK characterise Israel’s current state more negatively than Israelis.
95% of adult British Jews have an opinion on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most widely known leader among those examined. Four in five Jews hold an unfavourable opinion of him, with 65% saying they “strongly disapprove” and 15% saying they “somewhat” disapprove of him.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (-78%), Minister of Security Itamar Ben-Gvir (-77%) and Netanyahu (-68%) are the Israeli leaders British Jews least approve of when looking at their net approval ratings. Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid (+12%) and former Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister Benny Gantz (+10%) are the only two leaders showing positive net ratings among those examined.
Lapid is the only leader examined showing an increase in net approval rate compared to data from before October 7.
Politically ‘right-leaning’ Jews were much more likely to approve of Netanyahu than those who are ‘left-leaning’.
Abstract: Immersion (tevillah) in a special pool of water (mikvah) is an ancient Jewish ritual act of purification. Rumors of personal healing through mikvah immersion are often presented as Jewish folklore or urban legends. Yet, my research shows that a surprising percentage of immersing respondents –both Orthodox and non-orthodox— have experienced mikvah immersion as either spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, or physically healing. My study investigates what it means to experience mikvah as healing; and whether these experiences correlate with other attitudes and personal practices that signal patterns in how Jews think about Self, purity, wellbeing, and healing. I conducted a survey (N=283) and 34 in-depth interviews in the United States, and an additional survey (N=239) in the United Kingdom –to determine how relevant the U.S. findings could be for the aspiring mikvah organization, Wellspring UK, that plans to incorporate mikvah as a central modality of care in a center for wellbeing in London. I interpret these findings through a ritual ecological analysis –integrating embodiment, ritual studies, history, and religious studies— that centers participants’ sensory-emotional descriptions of their immersion as centering and affirming, in the midst of personal suffering. I then seek to understand how immersers interpret these sensory experiences by framing their mikvah stories in the historical context of new conceptual constructs about body, self, wellbeing, healing, and purity that emerged from multiple Jewish engagements with the American Great Awakening (1960-1990). That sensory experiences of centering and affirmation are identified as healing reflects a holistic self-concept, observed among the majority of participants –immersers and non-immersers alike. Specifically, the contemporary Jewish self is a holistic body-self, integrating physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological, and relational aspects. Such holism means that upset in one aspect of the self produces difficulties in one or more of the other aspects. Thus, maintaining one’s sense of wellbeing requires continual balancing and rebalancing, a self-making project that dovetails with respondents’ high value for an emergent ideal of spiritual purity, defined as the alignment of one’s inner values with one’s outer speech and actions. Together, wellbeing and spiritual purity constitute an ideal state of radical shalom, as experienced during healing mikvah immersions.
Abstract: “More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews”, said A’had Ha’am, encapsulating the significance of the day of rest to many Jews everywhere over the centuries. While its origins are biblical, and the requirement to observe it appears in the Ten Commandments, in contemporary times, Shabbat is observed in many ways by different types of Jews.
This factsheet uses data from JPR’s recent study of Jewish identity in the UK today to explore the social and religious significance of Shabbat to British Jews and how it manifests in their behaviour. The study is based on the responses of nearly 5,000 British Jews, members of the JPR Research Panel, to its UK National Jewish Identity Survey, held in November – December 2022
Some of the key findings in this factsheet:
Just over one in three Jews (34%) say Shabbat is ‘very important’ to their Jewish identity, a substantially lower proportion than those who say the same about ‘remembering the holocaust’ (71%), ‘strong moral and ethical behaviour’ (69%) or ‘feeling part of the Jewish People’ (65%).
While 88% of Orthodox Jews say Shabbat is ‘very important’ to their Jewish identity, this is only the case for 36% of Traditional Jews and just 28% of Reform/Progressive Jews.
About six in ten (61%) British Jews attend Friday night meals most weeks, while 58% regularly make time for family and friends, and 50% take a break from work on Shabbat.
80% of British Jews light candles on Friday night at least occasionally, and about the same proportion report buying Challah (plaited bread) at least occasionally. Observance of Shabbat peaks between the ages 40-49.
27% of respondents attend synagogue most Shabbats or more often. 23% abstain from driving during Shabbat, and 20% say they do not switch on electric lights on Shabbat.
Abstract: This article focuses on a multireligious building project named House of One in contemporary Berlin. Initiated in 2012 by a Protestant community at the center of Berlin, House of One consists of a synagogue, a church, a mosque, and a communal room. My central suggestion is that House of One is invested in a pluralist re-branding of (liberal) Protestantism, a rebranding that underlies the post-unification emergence of a new national German imaginary: out of “soil” marked as historically Christian spreads an “Abrahamic” future that transcends its particularity via its assumed ability to incorporate Islam and Judaism. Liberal, Christian-secularized norms and affects are thus being rearticulated in a language of religious pluralism, so that a normative, Christian-secularized category of religion can be extended to Christianity’s “monotheistic brothers.” Elaborations of this building project’s intended purpose, I argue, are thus animated by a broader question about the appropriate relation between religion and the state, and conjointly, between the self and culture at a moment in time in which hitherto normative, Christian-secularized assumptions concerning this relation are challenged. As such, the discursive representation that sustains the yet-to-be-built House of One is conducive to the making of a new national imaginary: it is driven both by the desire to renounce past evil through a recognition and inclusion of alterity into the body politic, as much as by the simultaneous de-politization and scrutinization of such alterity.
