Abstract: Previous research on teaching the Holocaust, notably case studies in the primary or the secondary sectors, suggests that Holocaust education can make a significant contribution to citizenship by developing pupils’ understandings of justice, tolerance, human rights issues, and the many forms of racism and discrimination. Yet, there have been no longitudinal studies into its impact on primary pupils.
This paper, reports on the first stages of ongoing longitudinal research (sponsored by the Scottish Executive Education Department), and concentrates on the relevance of Holocaust education to citizenship, by comparing the attitudes of primary 7 pupils before and after Holocaust teaching using data from questionnaires.
Results show an improvement in pupils’ values and attitudes after learning about the Holocaust in almost every category related to minority groups, ethnic or otherwise. One significant finding was a deep anti-English feeling and this in itself the need for further investigation.
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: 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: This report discusses the results of a sample survey of contemporary Hungarian Jewry conducted by the Institute for Minority Studies at Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest. The research was initiated and directed by Professor András Kovács and carried out by a research group (Róbert Angelusz, János Ladányi and Róbert Tardos). The study examined a wide variety of demographic, social and cultural issues, including Jewish identity and practices, as well as respondents’ ideological, social and economic attitudes.
Understanding generational changes in the social position of Hungarian Jews was among the survey’s main research goals, as was determining the current social and economic position of Jews within Hungarian society. Monitoring the attitudes of contemporary Hungarian Jews concerning their own Jewish origins, as well as Jews and Judaism in
general, constituted another goal.
Yet another objective was to ascertain the extent to which Hungary’s Jews involve themselves in organized Jewish community life. Finally, the survey aimed to look at how Hungarian Jewry views antisemitism and its own relations with the non-Jewish population as well as attitudes towards Israel and the impact of the Holocaust.
The results of the survey have already been published in Hungary The English version published here has been edited, mainly by adding background information to make the findings more comprehensible and relevant to a wider, non- Hungarian,readership.
