Abstract: Little is known about the gendered dimension of anti-Semitism. Emerging from a literature review on social identity theory, anti-Semitism, sexism, and Jewish feminism, I demonstrate the urgency of examining the link between gender and experiences of anti-Semitism, using the FRA’s 2018 dataset “Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism: Second Survey on Discrimination and Hate Crime against Jews in the EU,” a large-scale survey of Jews in thirteen countries across Europe. The independent variable is gender identity. Five dependent variables relate to experiences of sex/gender discrimination, physical attacks, offensive/threatening comments, offensive gestures/staring, and online harassment. Using five control variables—being identifiable as a Jew in public, country, Jewish identity, education level, and Jewish population in one’s neighborhood—I engage with descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis to analyze my variables. The findings show that while women are more likely to experience gender discrimination, men are significantly more likely to experience anti-Semitism.
Abstract: This dissertation investigates the postwar development of the Hollandsche Schouwburg, an in situ Shoah memorial museum in Amsterdam, within the fields of memory, heritage and museum studies. During World War II, over forty-six thousand Jews were imprisoned in this former theater before being deported to the transit camps. In 1962, it became the first national Shoah memorial of the Netherlands and in 1993, a small exhibition was added. In the spring of 2016, the National Holocaust Museum opened, which consists of the Hollandsche Schouwburg and a new satellite space across the street.
This dissertation deals with the question how this site of painful heritage became an important memorial museum dedicated to the memory of the persecution of the Dutch Jews. I argue that this former theater was not a site of oblivion before 1962 but rather a material reminder of the persecution of the Jews which at that time was not an articulated part of the hegemonic memory discourse of the war in the Netherlands. The memorial was gradually appropriated by important Jewish institutions through the installment of Yom HaShoah, an educational exhibition and a wall of names. These are analyzed not by focusing on material authenticity, but instead a case is made for latent indexicality: visitors actively produce narratives by searching for traces of the past. This entails an ongoing creative process of meaning-making that allows sites of memory to expand and proliferate beyond their borders. An important question therefore is how the Hollandsche Schouwburg affects its direct surroundings.
Abstract: Throughout 2021, JPR researchers Professor Sergio DellaPergola and Dr Daniel Staetsky analysed the responses of over 16,000 European Jews in 12 European countries who participated in the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights survey conducted by JPR and Ipsos in 2018. The result of their hard work and innovative approach is ‘The Jewish identities of European Jews’, a study into the what, why and how of Jewish identity.
The report finds some extraordinary differences and similarities between Jews across Europe, including:
European Jews are much more likely to see themselves as a religious minority than an ethnic one, yet fewer than half of all Jewish adults across Europe light candles most Friday nights;
Jewish identity is strongest in Belgium, the UK, France, Austria, Spain and Italy, and weakest in Hungary and Poland;
The memory of the Holocaust and combating antisemitism played a more important part in people’s Jewish identity than support for Israel, belief in God or charitable giving. Rising perceptions of antisemitism may have stimulated a stronger bond with Jewish peoplehood;
Only about half of all Jews in Europe identify with a particular denomination, although there are significant differences at the national level;
Higher proportions of younger Jews are religiously observant than older Jews;
Belgium has the largest proportion of Jews identifying as Orthodox in its Jewish population, followed by the UK, Italy, France and Austria;
Spain has the largest proportion of Jews identifying as Reform/Progressive, followed by Germany and the Netherlands;
Levels of attachment to the European Union among European Jews are higher than, or very similar to, levels of attachment among their fellow citizens in the countries in which they live
Abstract: There is a rich body of literature examining the contribution of Holocaust museums to the Holocaust memorial culture by focusing on their educative, awareness-raising, and memorializing functions. In this context, ample attention has been devoted to these museums’ exhibitions, educatory activities, reenactment practices, digital strategies, as well as their historical and architectural narratives. This article brings a novel perspective to the literature by giving an account of how Holocaust museums act as a medium through which individuals contribute to the Holocaust memorial culture from a Constructivist perspective. It argues that Holocaust museums do not treat individuals as passive recipients of the Holocaust memorial culture, but actors who could exercise agential capacities in relation to the Holocaust memorial culture. This argument is illustrated by case studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the Berlin Jewish Museum, and the Anne Frank House. It is shown that these museums offer platforms through which individuals actively contribute to the Holocaust memorial culture by encouraging them to conduct and share their Holocaust-related research, donating Holocaust-related objects, and engaging in social activities to diffuse related norms and messages.
Abstract: The Fifth Survey of European Jewish Community Leaders and Professionals, 2021 presents the results of an online survey offered in 10 languages and administered to 1054 respondents in 31 countries. Conducted every three years using the same format, the survey seeks to identify trends and their evolution in time.
Even if European Jewish leaders and community professionals rank antisemitism and combatting it among their first concerns and priorities, they are similarly committed to expanding Jewish communities and fostering future sustainability by engaging more young people and unaffiliated Jews.
The survey covers a wide variety of topics including the toll of COVID-19 on European Jewish communities and a widening generational gap around pivotal issues. Conducted every three years since 2008, the study is part of JDC’s wider work in Europe, which includes its partnerships with local Jewish communities and programs aiding needy Jews, fostering Jewish life and leaders, resilience training.
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.
Abstract: Many in Europe today are concerned about the rise in violence against Jews, which clearly raises fears in Jewish communities on the Continent. Neither Jewish communities nor individual Jews can be protected unless there is data on antisemitic incidents and scientifically thorough situation analysis. We need to know and analyze the current social attitudes related to antisemitism, to the coexistence with Jews, mutually held prejudices, related taboos in a representative sample of the European countries’ population.
This is the reason why we have launched the largest European antisemitism survey. The research, initiated by the Action and Protection League and carried out by the polling companies Ipsos and Inspira, aims to provide a comprehensive picture of antisemitic prejudice in 16 countries in the European Union.
Data were collected between December 2019 and January 2020 in 16 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. 1000 people were surveyed in each country.
We used a total of 24 questions to measure antisemitism. We measured the cognitive and conative dimensions of prejudice with 10 questions, and three additional questions for the affective dimension of antisemitism, that is, to measure the emotional charge of antisemitic prejudice. We mapped secondary antisemitism relativizing the Holocaust with seven questions and antisemitic hostility against Israel with four questions. We used two and three questions, respectively, to measure sympathy for Jews and for Israel.
With the exception of questions about affective antisemitism, all questions were asked in the same form: Respondents were asked to indicate on a five-point scale how much they agreed with the statements in the question (strongly agree; tend to agree; neither agree nor disagree; tend to disagree; strongly disagree).
Abstract: Many in Europe today are concerned about the rise in violence against Jews, which clearly raises fears in Jewish communities on the Continent. Neither Jewish communities nor individual Jews can be protected unless there is data on antisemitic incidents and scientifically thorough situation analysis. We need to know and analyze the current social attitudes related to antisemitism, to the coexistence with Jews, mutually held prejudices, related taboos in a representative sample of the European countries’ population.
This is the reason why we have launched the largest European antisemitism survey. The research, initiated by the Action and Protection League and carried out by the polling companies Ipsos and Inspira, aims to provide a comprehensive picture of antisemitic prejudice in 16 countries in the European Union.
Data were collected between December 2019 and January 2020 in 16 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. 1000 people were surveyed in each country.
We used a total of 24 questions to measure antisemitism. We measured the cognitive and conative dimensions of prejudice with 10 questions, and three additional questions for the affective dimension of antisemitism, that is, to measure the emotional charge of antisemitic prejudice. We mapped secondary antisemitism relativizing the Holocaust with seven questions and antisemitic hostility against Israel with four questions. We used two and three questions, respectively, to measure sympathy for Jews and for Israel.
With the exception of questions about affective antisemitism, all questions were asked in the same form: Respondents were asked to indicate on a five-point scale how much they agreed with the statements in the question (strongly agree; tend to agree; neither agree nor disagree; tend to disagree; strongly disagree).
Abstract: Antisemitism is a problem that is prevalent throughout the world. Violence and riots have frequently occurred for many years in football games in many countries, committed by fans of a club or by hooligans. Antisemitism has also become common at games, with football clubs using antisemitic language and symbols against their rivals. Sometimes, antisemitism is used by far-right political organizations at football stadiums for propaganda purposes and as a device to incite violence. It is interesting, and puzzling, that some fans of two teams, Spurs in London, and Ajax in Amsterdam, have declared themselves “Jewish,” and adopted and displayed Jewish symbols, as a response to antisemitic attacks on their club. While it is difficult to eradicate manifestations of antisemitism, it is encouraging that various private organizations, football clubs, and local and national governmental bodies have begun to formulate rules to punish those responsible for antisemitic language and actions.
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.
