Abstract: In the Netherlands, religions are often positioned as opposite to secular ideals of women’s freedom. While women’s emancipation supposedly grants women their autonomy, religions are suspected of reaffirming gender inequality. In this religion-versus-emancipation dilemma, questions of the body are pertinent, since traditional religions are framed as restricting and regulating women’s bodies. Questions about modesty, sexual relations, clothing and food preparations often come up in such debates. There seems to be a particular tension for women who convert to religions that are often regarded as ‘gender conservative’, and this chapter sheds light on that field of tension. This expands the field of women’s conversion – which has typically focused on Islamic women – by employing a comparative analysis of interviews and participant observation with Jewish, Christian and Muslim Dutch women converts. Joining a religion that one was not raised in is a process of ethical self-fashioning through training and disciplining of both the body and mind. Converts have to learn how to eat, how to pray, how to dress and how to have sex in such a way that it permits them to give shape to their religious subjectivity and pious desires. What I found is that performing authenticity is a central and embodied characteristic of modern-day conversion stories in the ‘age of authenticity’. This performance is often played out through the sexual and gendered body and religious subject transformations were closely related to sexual self-fashioning. In order to understand these links between conversion, sexuality and the body, I focus on experiences and ideas about virginity and marriage, menstruation and homosexuality. In this chapter, I aim to show that sexual embodiments and ethics cannot be understood as either religious or secular, but rather as a new form of religious subjectivity within Europe as a space where authenticity has become the most important mode for selfhood.
Abstract: This article presents research notes on an oral history project on the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on Jews over the age of 65 years. During the first stage of the project, we conducted nearly 80 interviews in eight cities worldwide: Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Milan, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and St. Petersburg, and in Israel. The interviews were conducted in the spring of 2020 and reflect the atmosphere and perception of interviewees at the end of the first lockdown.
Based on an analysis of the interviews, the findings are divided into three spheres: (1) the personal experience during the pandemic, including personal difficulties and the impact of the lockdown on family and social contacts; (2) Jewish communal life, manifested in changed functions and emergence of new needs, as well as religious rituals during the pandemic; and (3) perceived relations between the Jewish community and wider society, including relations with state authorities and civil society, attitudes of and towards official media, and the possible impact of COVID-19 on antisemitism. Together, these spheres shed light on how elderly Jews experience their current situation under COVID-19—as individuals and as part of a community.
COVID-19 taught interviewees to reappraise what was important to them. They felt their family relations became stronger under the pandemic, and that their Jewish community was more meaningful than they had thought. They understood that online communication will continue to be present in all three spheres, but concluded that human contact cannot be substituted by technical devices.
Abstract: This article is a discussion on my research that examines the social and musical aspects of orthodox women’s Rosh Chodesh groups. These groups, both past and present, are not a widespread phenomenon and have remained very much on the periphery of Jewish practices which, apart from communities based in Israel, already operate on the periphery of non-Jewish societies. As such, my research has required a broad, international focus. My discussion is largely based on groups in North America and Europe (specific locations examined include New York, Montreal, Amsterdam, Berlin, and London, which is also the site for fieldwork on the relatively recent phenomenon called the ‘Partnership Minyan’). I also conducted preliminary fieldwork with the much-discussed group Women of the Wall (WoW) based in Jerusalem.
Abstract: This detailed and thorough report is rapidly becoming the ‘must-read’ study on European Jews, taking the reader on an extraordinary journey through one thousand years of European Jewish history before arriving at the most comprehensive analysis of European Jewish demography today.
Written by leading Jewish demographers Professor Sergio DellaPergola and Dr Daniel Staetsky, the Chair and Director of JPR’s European Jewish Demography Unit respectively, it explores how the European Jewish population has ebbed and flowed over time. It begins as far back as the twelfth century, travelling through many years of population stability, until the tremendous growth of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, followed by the dramatic decline prompted by a combination of mass migration and the horrors of the Shoah. Extraordinarily, after all this time, the proportion of world Jewry living in Europe today is almost identical to the proportion living in Europe 900 years ago.
Using multiple definitions of Jewishness and a vast array of sources to determine the size of the contemporary population, the study proceeds to measure it in multiple ways, looking at the major blocs of the European Union and the European countries of the Former Soviet Union, as well as providing country-by-country analyses, ranging from major centres such as France, the UK, Germany and Hungary, to tiny territories such as Gibraltar, Monaco and even the Holy See.
The report also contains the most up-to-date analysis we have on the key mechanisms of demographic change in Europe, touching variously on patterns of migration in and out of Europe, fertility, intermarriage, conversion and age compositions. While the report itself is a fascinating and important read, the underlying data are essential tools for the JPR team to utilise as it supports Jewish organisations across the continent to plan for the future.
Abstract: This paper aims at providing a new systemic contribution to research about perceptions of antisemitism/Judeophobia by contemporary Jews in 12 European Union countries. The perspective – the viewpoint of the offended side – has been less prominent relatively in research literature on antisemitism. The data analysis demonstrates the potential power of Similarity Structure Analysis (SSA) as a better theoretical and empirical tool to describe and conceptualize the contents of chosen research issues. After a brief review of some methodological problems in the study of antisemitism, this paper will re-elaborate data first published in the report of the 2018 FRA study Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism – Second survey on Discrimination and Hate Crimes against Jews in the EU (FRA 2018a). Topics include the perceived importance of antisemitism as a societal issue, the contents of anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination, channels of transmission, perpetrators of offenses, regional differences within Europe, and the role of antisemitism perceptions as a component of Jewish identification. Special attention is paid to the distinction between cognitive and experiential perceptions of antisemitism, and to the typology of practical, populist, political, and narrative antisemitism.
Topics: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Muslim, Antisemitism: Far right, Anti-Zionism, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Jewish - Muslim Relations
Abstract: Antisemitism can be expressed in the form of verbal and physical attacks, threats, harassment, discrimination and unequal treatment, property damage and graffiti or other forms of speech or text, including on the internet. Antisemitic incidents and hate crime violate fundamental rights, especially the right to human dignity, the right to equality of treatment and the freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
The present report provides an overview of data on antisemitism as recorded by international organisations and by official and unofficial sources in the 28 European Union (EU) Member States, based on their own definitions and categorisations. ‘Official data’ are understood here as those collected by law enforcement agencies, other authorities that are part of criminal justice systems and relevant state ministries at the national level. ‘Unofficial data’ refers to data collected by civil society organisations.
This is the 15th edition of FRA’s report on the situation of data collection on antisemitism in the EU (including reports published by FRA’s predecessor, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia).
Abstract: In June 2015, the Anne Frank House organised an international conference in Amsterdam in order to compare the situations in four different European countries. Relevant representatives of government authorities, football associations, football clubs, anti-discrimination organisations and supporters from Engeland, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands were invited to join the event.In each of these countries, football-related antisemitism is a well-known phenomenon, yet the incidents vary with regard to background, context and scope. The primary objective of the Anne Frank House was to come to a mutual cross-fertilisation of know-how and experiences with regard to this topic.
This report is based on this two-day conference, and discusses the most significant and illuminating aspects of the expert lectures and additional seminars. The most significant and insightful results from the two-day conference in Amsterdam will form a starting point for future developments in the fight against football-related antisemitism in the aforementioned countries.
Abstract: With contributions from a dozen American and European scholars, this volume presents an overview of Jewish writing in post–World War II Europe. Striking a balance between close readings of individual texts and general surveys of larger movements and underlying themes, the essays portray Jewish authors across Europe as writers and intellectuals of multiple affiliations and hybrid identities. Aimed at a general readership and guided by the idea of constructing bridges across national cultures, this book maps for English-speaking readers the productivity and diversity of Jewish writers and writing that has marked a revitalization of Jewish culture in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, and Russia.
Introduction Thomas Nolden and Vivian Liska
1. Secret Affinities: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Austria Vivian Liska
2. Writing against Reconciliation: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Germany Stephan Braese
3. Remembering or Inventing the Past: Second-Generation Jewish Writers in the Netherlands Elrud Ibsch
4. Bonds with a Vanished Past: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Scandinavia Eva Ekselius
5. Imagined Communities: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Great Britain Bryan Cheyette
6. A la recherche du Judaïsme perdu: Contemporary Jewish Writing in France Thomas Nolden
7. Ital'Yah Letteraria: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Italy Christoph Miething
8. Writing along Borders: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Hungary Péter Varga with Thomas Nolden
9. Making Up for Lost Time: Contemporary Jewish Writing in Poland Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska
10. De-Centered Writing: Aspects of Contemporary Jewish Writing in Russia Rainer Grübel and Vladimir Novikov
Abstract: This report presents the main findings of FRA’s second survey on Jewish people’s experiences and perceptions of hate crime, discrimination and antisemitism. It analyses data from the responses of 16,395 selfidentified Jewish people (aged 16 or over) in 12 EU Member States – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These Member States are home to over 96 % of the EU’s estimated Jewish population. In addition to the 12 EU Member States mentioned above, FRA also carried out the survey in Latvia. Due to the low response level to the online dissemination campaign in Latvia, changes in recruitment methodology and data collection were applied. While the survey was able to reach more respondents in this way, the changes in the respondent recruitment and data collection methods limit the scope for comparisons between Latvia and the other survey countries.
Abstract: This book is the first comprehensive study of postwar antisemitism in the Netherlands. It focuses on the way stereotypes are passed on from one decade to the next, as reflected in public debates, the mass media, protests and commemorations, and everyday interactions. The Holocaust, Israel and 'the Jew' explores the ways in which old stories and phrases relating to 'the stereotypical Jew' are recycled and modified for new uses, linking the antisemitism of the early postwar years to its enduring manifestations in today's world.
The Dutch case is interesting because of the apparent contrast between the Netherlands' famous tradition of tolerance and the large numbers of Jews who were deported and murdered in the Second World War. The book sheds light on the dark side of this so-called 'Dutch paradox,' in manifestations of aversion and guilt after 1945. In this context, the abusive taunt 'They forgot to gas you' can be seen as the first radical expression of postwar antisemitism as well as an indication of how the Holocaust came to be turned against the Jews. The identification of 'the Jew' with the gas chamber spread from the streets to football stadiums, and from verbal abuse to pamphlet and protest. The slogan 'Hamas, Hamas all the Jews to the gas' indicates that Israel became a second marker of postwar antisemitism.
The chapters cover themes including soccer-related antisemitism, Jewish responses, philosemitism, antisemitism in Dutch-Moroccan and Dutch- Turkish communities, contentious acts of remembrance, the neo-Nazi tradition, and the legacy of Theo van Gogh. The book concludes with a lengthy epilogue on 'the Jew' in the politics of the radical right, the attacks in Paris in 2015, and the refugee crisis. The stereotype of 'the Jew' appears to be transferable to other minorities.
Contents:
Preface
1 Why Jews are more guilty than others : An introductory essay, 1945-2016
Evelien Gans
Part I Post-Liberation Antisemitism
2 ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
Evelien Gans
3 The Meek Jew – and Beyond
Evelien Gans
4 Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
Remco Ensel, Evelien Gans and Willem Wagenaar
5 Jewish Responses to Post-Liberation Antisemitism
Evelien Gans
Part II Israel and ‘the Jew’
6 Philosemitism? Ambivalences regarding Israel
Evelien Gans
7 Transnational Left-wing Protest and the ‘Powerful Zionist’
Remco Ensel
8 Israel: Source of Divergence
Evelien Gans
9 ‘The Activist Jew’ Responds to Changing Dutch Perceptions of Israel
Katie Digan
10 Turkish Anti-Zionism in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism
Annemarike Stremmelaar
Part III The Holocaust-ed Jew in Native Dutch Domains
since the 1980s
11 ‘The Jew’ in Football: To Kick Around or to Embrace
Evelien Gans
12 Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
Evelien Gans
13 Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
Remco Ensel and Evelien Gans
Part IV Generations. Migrant Identities and Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
14 ‘The Jew’ vs. ‘the Young Male Moroccan’: Stereotypical Confrontations in the City
Remco Ensel
15 Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
Remco Ensel
16 Reading Anne Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities
Annemarike Stremmelaar
17 Holocaust Commemorations in Postcolonial Dutch Society
Remco Ensel
18 Epilogue: Instrumentalising and Blaming ‘the Jew’, 2011-2016
Evelien Gans
Topics: Antisemitism, Fundraising and Philanthropy, Israel Attachment, Jewish Continuity, Religious Denominations, Security, Surveys, Jewish Leadership, Jewish Organisations, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Identity
Abstract: The Fourth Survey of European Jewish Community Leaders and Professionals, 2018 presents the results of an online survey offered in 10 languages and administered to 893 respondents in 29 countries. Conducted every three years using the same format, the survey seeks to identify trends and their evolution in time.
The survey asked Jewish lay leaders and community professionals questions regarding future community priorities, identifying the main threats to Jewish life, views on the safety and security situation in their cities, including emergency preparedness, and opinions on an array of internal community issues. Examples include conversions, membership criteria policies on intermarriage, and their vision of Europe and Israel.
The respondents were comprised of presidents and chairpersons of nationwide “umbrella organizations” or Federations; presidents and executive directors of private Jewish foundations, charities, and other privately funded initiatives; presidents and main representatives of Jewish communities that are organized at a city level; executive directors and programme coordinators, as well as current and former board members of Jewish organizations; among others.
The JDC International Centre for Community Development established the survey as a means to identify the priorities, sensibilities and concerns of Europe’s top Jewish leaders and professionals working in Jewish institutions, taking into account the changes that European Jewry has gone through since 1989, and the current political challenges and uncertainties in the continent. In a landscape with few mechanisms that can truly gauge these phenomena, the European Jewish Community Leaders Survey is an essential tool for analysis and applied research in the field of community development.
The Survey team was directed by Dr. Barry Kosmin (Trinity College), who has conducted several large national social surveys and opinion polls in Europe, Africa and the U.S., including the CJF 1990 US National Jewish Population Survey.
