Abstract: This book addresses the issues of memory (a more suitable word would be Marianne Hirsh’s term of postmemory) of the Holocaust among young Poles, the attitudes towards Jews and the Holocaust in the comparative context of educational developments in other countries. The term “Jews” is, as rightly noted Joanna Tokarska-Bakir (2010) a decontextualized term used here in the meaning of Antoni Sułek (2010) as a collective “symbolic” entity. The focus was on education (transmitting values), attitudinal changes and actions undertaken to preserve (or counteract) the memory of Jews and their culture in contemporary Poland. The study to which the book primarly refers was conducted in 2008 and was a second study on a national representative sample of Polish adolescents after the first one undertaken in 1998. The data may seem remote from the current political situation of stepping back from the tendency to increase education about the Holocaust which dominated after 1989 and especially between 2000 and 2005, nonetheless they present trends and outcomes of specific educational interventions which are universal and may set examples for various geopolitical contexts.
The focus of this research was not primarily on the politics of remembrance, which often takes a national approach, although state initiatives are also brought to the attention of the reader, but rather on grassroots action, often initiated by local civil society organizations (NGOs) or individual teachers and/or students. This study has attempted to discover the place that Jews have (or do not have) in the culture of memory in Poland, where there lived the largest Jewish community in pre-war Europe, more than 90% of which was murdered during the Holocaust. The challenge was to show the diversity of phenomena aimed at integrating Jewish history and culture into national culture, including areas of extracurricular education, often against mainstream educational policy, bearing in mind that the Jews currently living in Poland are also, in many cases, active partners in various public initiatives. It is rare to find in-depth empirical research investigating the ensemble of areas of memory construction and the attitudes of youth as an ensemble, including the evaluation of actions (programmes of non-governmental organisations and school projects) in the field of education, particularly with reference to the long-term effects of educational programmes. The assumption prior to this project was that the asking of questions appearing during this research would stimulate further studies.
The book is divided into three parts: Memory, Attitudes and Actions. All three parts of the book, although aimed at analysing an ongoing process of reconstructing and deconstructing memory of the Holocaust in post-2000 Poland, including the dynamics of the attitudes of Polish youth toward Jews, the Shoah and memory of the Shoah, are grounded in different theories and were inspired by various concepts. The assumption prior to the study was that this complex process of attitudinal change cannot be interpreted and explained within the framework on one single academic discipline or one theory. Education and the cultural studies definitely played a significant role in exploring initiatives undertaken to research, study and commemorate the Holocaust and the remnants of the rich Jewish culture in Poland, but the sociology, anthropology and psychology also played a part in helping to see this process from various angles.
Abstract: No published research to date has investigated the mental health experiences of Orthodox Jewish adolescents in the UK, although anecdotally, the Jewish mental health community is aware of the prevalence of mental health difficulties amongst young people. This lack of research highlights a serious gap in how to best support this population in the community and in mainstream services. As a first step into this field of study, this research explored the experiences of seven London-based Orthodox Jewish female therapists offering talking therapy to strictly Orthodox Jewish (Chareidi) female adolescents in the private sector, using semi-structured interviews. An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the interview data identified several themes: The therapists navigated personal and professional overlap when working within their own community, dealt with blurred boundaries, and managed the complexities of confidentiality within a close-knit community context. Furthermore, their therapeutic practice was culturally informed, and they applied cultural sensitivity with their clients. The therapists talked about how they helped Chareidi Gen Z on their journey to adulthood and how they experienced both feeling connected to their clients, and feeling disconnected when values were at odds with each other. The implications from this study included the need to engage Orthodox Jewish adolescents in future research so that their voices can be captured, the importance of continuing to increase culturally sensitive mental health promotion, education, and provision within the Chareidi community, and for mainstream services to facilitate access for the Chareidi community by prioritising culturally informed practices and community partnership work.
Abstract: This paper examines the geographies of how young people, aged 11–25, in the Greek, Jewish and Palestinian diasporas in the Midlands region of England articulate notions of formal and informal politics. In doing so, it connects work on diasporic politics with work on the geographies of diaspora, young people's politics, and, in particular, diasporic youth politics. The paper discusses how young people have views on politics and on being political but feel that they struggle to have their voices heard by those in positions of power. At the same time, it paints a picture of how these participants articulate such feelings of politics in complex, multi-scalar, multi-directional ways. In doing so, they are potentially creating new spaces to feel and be political. The paper therefore stresses that it is important that diasporic politics takes into account the views of young people and that assumptions should not be made as to where such politics are located.
Abstract: Multiple identities are becoming an increasingly important issue in a globalized world. This study examines the interference of Jewish identity with other collective identities, national and transnational, as well as the influence of religion and values on Jewish and other collective identities in Jewish late adolescents in Belgium. We compared data with those of a previous study on native Belgians and Muslim immigrants (Saroglou & Galand, 2004) and found similarities between Jews and the other two groups in the hierarchies of collective identities and values; however, Jews differed in their weak European identity and the considerable importance to them of autonomy and self-enhancement values (power and achievement). Jewish cultural identity was unrelated to other collective identities, but a shift from a Jewish identity to a new, Belgian identity or to a broad, transnational identity (or both) was occasionally related to low levels of attachment to religion, tradition, power, security, and hedonism and to high levels of universalism, autonomy, and conformity.
Topics: Educational Tours, Israel Tours, Main Topic: Education, Jewish Education, Jewish Identity, Israel Attachment, Israel Education, Israel Experience, Teenagers, Youth, Interviews
Abstract: Growing up Jewish in Poland presents the findings of a study about the developmental trajectories of 17 children and adolescents from 14 families living in Poland who attended the Lauder-JDC International Jewish Youth Camp Szarvas (Hungary) for the first time at the time of the study (2015-2018). Resorting to a longitudinal analysis, the present study aims to examine what happens, over a period of three years, to a group of Jewish boys and girls that have experienced a Jewish summer camp for the first time in summer 2015. The study focused on the role that the summer camp itself plays in shaping a proactive Jewish life but also analyzed more globally other aspects that influence Jewish participation. What are the main factors that affect Jewish participation both on the kid’s and on the parents’ perspective? What are the possible “Jewish” trajectories of 13-to-16-year-old teenagers in Central Eastern Europe? Do they keep connected with Jewish life? If yes, how? What’s their scale of values? What are their priorities, their hopes, and their perceived future as they make their way from teenagehood to young adults?
The main methodological feature of this study lies in it being a qualitative, longitudinal, observational cohort study. In contrast to most studies that explore development retrospectively, this study involved interviewing first-time Szarvas campers and their families over a longer period, with up to three consecutive interviews per family over a period of three years. To our knowledge, this research experience is unique in Jewish Europe.
Abstract: This dissertation is an exploration of the ways in which Jewish youth movements create, recreate and re-envision wider Jewish communal norms relating to authenticity, or what it means to be a `real' or `legitimate' Jew. The culmination of thirteen months participant observation fieldwork within one Jewish youth movement, as well as interviews with other youth movement leaders and archival research of one prominent British Jewish newspaper, I argue that the modem Orthodox Jewish Establishment in the United Kingdom has a strong grip on the concept of authenticity. The stakes for maintaining control over the boundary between the authentic and the inauthentic are high, as British Jewry is shrinking rapidly and education has been identified as the primary means by which to secure communal continuity. Consequently, Jewish formal education often supports particular (Orthodox) interpretations of Jewish authenticity, specifically in relation to communal pluralism, appropriate gender identifications and relationships with Zionism. However, these Orthodox expectations of authenticity are often incompatible with how many young British Jews today lead their lives. Youth movements are key sites in which the battle for continuity is being waged; British Jewish youth movements aim to create informal education agendas that inspire young people to create lifelong affiliations with Judaism. I contend that informal education has the necessary flexibility to disrupt (and thus redefine) the boundaries of Jewish authenticity. Specifically, the very pillars of Orthodox authenticity (pluralism, gender and Zionism) are beginning to be (re)- constructed in new and innovative ways by some movements. It is in this space, created through the negotiation of a movement's ethos and its simultaneous obligation to, or disregard for, communal (Orthodox) expectations, that the validation of `alternative' performances of Judaism is possible. In turn, such validation helps to associate authenticity with a fluid and context- dependent belief system that is more likely to secure communal continuity than the exclusive Orthodox system currently so predominant.
Abstract: Between September 2000 and August 2001, more than 600,000 babies were born in the UK. Of those, around 2,800 were born within the Jewish community. These babies – our millennium cohort – have grown up in complex, exciting and
challenging times. We are interested in the changing Jewish lives of the children born in that cohort.
We are following students, and their parents, who chose one of seven Jewish secondary schools for their children. We are following the children who entered Year 7 in September 2011. As we are collecting data every two years, the third and most recent phase of data analysis has just been completed, whilst the students are in Year 11. We are comparing this group to families who chose to send their child to non-Jewish schools.
This is a unique opportunity to conduct an in-depth and sustained exploration of the changing lives of young people and their
families.
In 2016, we received completed surveys from 799 students (almost 80% of the total);
278 from parents with students at Jewish schools and a further 57 from families with
children at non-Jewish schools. In addition we interviewed 110 families.
This publication focuses on what we have been learning with regard to our students’ developing identities. To what extent do they identify as Jews? As British citizens? We wanted to find out the extent to which these elements play a role in our students’ lives, and in what ways school plays a role in that development.
