Abstract: Describes and gives results of an opinion poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee, working with D3 Systems, a U.S. opinion-research organization, and the Emnid Institute, a similar organization in Germany (both West and East) in October 1990. The questionnaires included questions concerning the memory of the Holocaust, special relations between Germany and Israel, Jewish influence in the world, Zionism, and the danger of antisemitism in contemporary Germany. Results showed that disturbingly high percentages of the population exhibited negative attitudes toward Jews, Israel, and remembrance of the Holocaust. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism)
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.
Abstract: This thesis critically examines the public representation of medieval Anglo-Jewish history today through a cross-section of medieval Anglo-Jewish communities which act as case studies; Winchester, York, Norwich, Bristol, and Northampton respectively. These case studies frame the investigation of issues associated with the limited and often contested archaeological evidence relating to England’s medieval Jews, as well as the frequent tendency of contemporary public facing history to focus on the negative aspects of medieval Jewish life, notably by highlighting persecution and victimisation. It also analyses the development of the most recent public facing interpretations of medieval Anglo-Jewish history in each location, which have been deliberately chosen to provide a range of towns and cities which contain evidence of alleged medieval Jewish human remains.
The assessment of key stakeholders in the public representation of medieval Anglo-Jews was central to this study, and as such this thesis carefully considered the roles of various stakeholders in the preservation and representation of medieval Anglo-Jewish history and memory. Within this thesis, each stakeholder had a valid voice in the assessment of how the history and memory of England’s medieval Jews had been treated and represented. Decolonialist research methodologies were herein utilised in order to fully address the complexities of the various voices of stakeholders; from the perspectives of individuals, communities, and organisations, through a sensitive approach towards respectful interviewing and data collection. This thesis, therefore, provides a uniquely rounded interpretation of stakeholder involvement and investment in how medieval Anglo-Jewish communities are remembered today.
The history and memory of medieval Anglo-Jews has been subject to periods of omission and marginalisation, with the study of medieval Jewish history often hindered by a lack of sources on everyday life. This thesis contributes to the increasingly multi- and inter-disciplinary study of England’s medieval Jews through the application of Death Studies, offers new hypotheses based on traditional Jewish approaches to death ritual and burial practice, and provides fresh insights into aspects of medieval Jewish life with a focus on the dead.
Abstract: n this article, we argue that Labour’s antisemitism crisis has been misunderstood. We suggest that a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of antisemitism offers a way forward. There are three elements to this claim. First, by drawing on existing data on attitudes towards Jews, we criticise the widespread focus on individual ‘antisemites’, rather than on the broader problem of antisemitism. In turn, we conceive of antisemitism not as a virus or poison, as in so many formulations, but rather, as a reservoir of readily available images and ideas that subsist in our political culture. Second, following on from this understanding, we offer five ways forward. Finally, we set this analysis in the context of a historical parting of the ways between anti‐racism and opposition to antisemitism. An anti‐racism defined solely by conceptions of whiteness and power, we argue, has proven unable to fully acknowledge and account for anti‐Jewish racism.
Abstract: Jewish social justice education is an active and growing field of practice, encompassing a diverse range of agendas and practices: teaching Jewish texts and values around issues of refugees, human rights and environmental justice; organising members of the Jewish community to oppose the occupation of the Palestinian territories and support the Israeli Left; advancing gender equality and LGBT+ inclusion within the community through informal education and training; engaging Jewish students in volunteer service-learning projects to alleviate poverty in the developing world; building inter-faith coalitions to work on local agendas such as housing, crime and healthcare; encouraging a culture of charitable giving and volunteering among Jewish young people; and mobilising Jews in the national and international political arenas around issues such as gun violence, climate change, immigration, hate crime and antisemitism. Yet Jewish social justice education remains an under-researched and under-theorised phenomenon. This theoretical lacuna has practical implications for the thousands of educators and activists across the world who are attempting to achieve social justice ends through the medium of Jewish education but have no well thought-out rationale as to what this might mean and, consequently, cannot know if it has any chance of success. This thesis explores possible theoretical foundations for Jewish social justice education by creating a hermeneutical dialogue between Freirean critical pedagogy, Catholic models of social justice education, Jewish social justice literature and interviews with thinkers and practitioners who consider themselves to be part of the Jewish social justice education enterprise. After drawing out and analysing the philosophical, political and educational themes that emerge from this dialogue, I propose three possible directions a coherent normative theory of Jewish social justice education could take: ‘Jewish politics in a renewed public sphere’, ‘Jewish education for relational community building’ and ‘Jewish critical pedagogy for cultural emancipation’.
Abstract: "אם הייתי שולחת את הבן שלי לבית־ספר רגיל, הוא לא היה יודע שהוא יהודי", מספרת תמר (שם בדוי), יהודייה־ישראלית שמתגוררת בלונדון. ואכן, מחקרים מראים כי נוכחותם של ילדים במשפחה של מהגרים יהודים־ישראלים מעצימה את האמביוולנטיות של ההורים לגבי חיים מחוץ לישראל, אבל מעודדת מעורבות רבה יותר עם ישראלים אחרים, במטרה להנחיל לילדים במשפחה זהות יהודית־ישראלית ולשמור על הקשר שלהם עם המדינה היהודית. מאמר זה מבוסס על 12 ראיונות שקיימה אנג'לה דייוויס עם נשים יהודיות־ישראליות, אימהות לילדים קטנים, שמתגוררות או התגוררו בבריטניה. דייוויס בחנה את האופן שבו אותן אימהות יצרו קשרים חברתיים, מילאו תפקיד של אימהות וגידלו ילדים, וכיצד הן ניסו לוודא שילדיהן ישמרו על זהות יהודית־ישראלית, גם באמצעות אימוץ של מסורות תרבותיות ודתיות בדרכים חדשות.
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: CST recorded 1,805 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2019, the highest total that CST has ever recorded in a single calendar year. This is seven per cent higher than the 1,690 antisemitic incidents reported to CST in 2018, making 2019 the fourth consecutive year in which the annual record has been broken.
This record total, following on from those registered in 2016, 2017 and 2018, perpetuates a sustained pattern of historically high antisemitic incident figures. Furthermore, CST recorded over 100 antisemitic incidents in every calendar month for the second year in a row and the second year ever. Since April 2016, more than 100
incidents have been reported in all but two months. This is unprecedented: by way of comparison, CST only recorded monthly totals exceeding 100 incidents on six occasions in the decade prior, from 2006 to 2015.
The record totals in 2019 and the preceding three years were due to consistently high monthly totals, at a time when Jews, antisemitism and the Labour Party were the repeated subjects of national controversy. Debate surrounding Brexit also made this a politically contentious time during which recorded hate crime rose more generally, affecting many communities. These relatively lengthy contexts differ from the pre-2015 antisemitic incident highs, which were largely caused by temporary ‘spikes’ and sudden ‘trigger’ events.
Abstract: Using an integrated archival and ethnographic approach, this study investigates how the growing Haredi Jewish minority and the UK government negotiate their positions in the context of healthcare services in Manchester as one of the few sites where they directly engage. Low-level uptake of certain maternal and infant health interventions has led to claims that Haredi Jews are ‘hard to reach’ or a ‘non-compliant community.’ This thesis critically engages the above outlook by exploring how responses to healthcare services should be framed.
Rather than evading the NHS altogether, as the ‘hard to reach’ label implies, Haredi Jews in Manchester selectively negotiate healthcare services in order to avoid a cosmological conflict with the halachic custodianship of Jewish bodies. Maternal and infant care is situated as a particularly sensitive area of minority-state relations in which competing constructions of bodily protection are at play. Whilst maternal and infant care has historically formed part of the state’s strategy to govern the population, it is increasingly being seized as a point of intervention by Haredi rabbis, doulas, and parents when attempting to reproduce the Haredi social body.
Following Roberto Esposito’s (2015 [2002]) theoretical elaboration of ‘immunitas’ the present work depicts the margins as giving rise to antonymic conceptions of ‘immunity’ as a means of protecting collective life. Interventions that the state regard as protecting the health of the nation can, in turn, be viewed as a threat to the life of the Jewish social body. Immunity at the margins can be characterised by an antonymic fault of both the Haredim and the state to understand each other’s expectations of health and bodily care. The margins of the state illustrate how responses to healthcare interventions can be entangled within a struggle of integration, insulation, and assimilation for minority groups in ways that are contiguous over time.
Abstract: Teacher and parent ratings of emotional and behavioural disorders were made for children aged 5-15 years in the strictly orthodox Jewish community in North London, on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997). We obtained 369 sets of teacher ratings and 226 parent ratings. Our parent ratings generally reflected less disturbance than did parent ratings in the national samples reported by Meltzer and colleagues (Meltzer, Gatward, Corbin, Goodman, & Ford, 2003; Meltzer, Gatward, Goodman, & Ford, 2000). Our teacher ratings reflected similar levels of disturbance to teacher ratings in the national sample, except that the older boys in this sample were rated as more disturbed by their teachers. Teacher ratings of disturbance were associated with perceived Special Educational Needs (SENs), and it was noted that statutory remedial help was said to be needed particularly urgently for older boys. In this community there is negligible statutory educational funding and remedial support for older boys is said to be particularly under-resourced. The strictly orthodox Jewish community is characterized by large family size and high levels of economic deprivation, and it might be expected that there would be high levels of associated emotional and behavioural disorders. The relatively low levels of behaviour disturbance found were suggested to be the result of moderating factors such as high levels of family cohesion, social support and religiosity.
Abstract: London Jewish women were sampled from “middle-” and “ultra”orthodox synagogue membership lists, and measures of well-being and distress, together with information on demographic and other factors, were obtained from 121 of them. For the whole sample, correlates of depression and well-being related to the wife-and-mother roles, and generally resembled the correlates that have been found in other groups of women, although the Jewish women with fewer dependent children were the more depressed. The two groups of women differed on a number of demographic characteristics, which might explain the slightly lower levels of distress and dissatisfaction in the ultraorthodox. For the middle-orthodox group, happiness relates to marriage, whereas for the ultraorthodox, happiness relates to integration into their community
Abstract: Existing research suggests that, in contemporary liberal democracies, complaints of racism are routinely rejected and prejudice may be both expressed and disavowed in the same breath. Surveys and historical research have established that – both in democratic states and in those of the Soviet Bloc (while it existed) – antisemitism has long been related to or expressed in the form of statements about Israel or ‘Zionist’, permitting anti-Jewish attitudes to circulate under cover of political critique. This article looks at how the findings of a survey of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli attitudes were rejected by users of three Facebook pages associated with the British Left. Through thematic discourse analysis, three recurrent repertoires are identified: firstly, what David Hirsh calls the ‘Livingstone Formulation’ (i.e. the argument that complaints of antisemitism are made in bad faith to protect Israel and/or attack the Left), secondly, accusations of flawed methodology similar to those with which UK Labour Party supporters routinely dismiss the findings of unfavourable opinion polls, and thirdly, the argument that, because certain classically antisemitic beliefs pertain to a supposed Jewish or ‘Zionist’ elite and not to Jews in general, they are not antisemitic. In one case, the latter repertoire facilitates virtually unopposed apologism for Adolf Hitler. Contextual evidence suggests that the dominance of such repertoires within one very large UK Labour Party-aligned group may be the result of action on the part of certain ‘admins’ or moderators. It is argued that awareness of the repertoires used to express and defend antisemitic attitudes should inform the design of quantitative research into the latter, and be taken account of in the formulation of policy measures aiming to restrict or counter hate speech (in social media and elsewhere).
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: This report explores the process of setting up the UK’s first
intergenerational nursery. It covers how the idea came about
in 2014, and includes a summary of the main stages the
project went through to build community support and open
its doors to its first cohort of children.
The nursery is a partnership between the Apples and Honey
Nursery group and the Jewish elderly care home charity
Nightingale Hammerson. A weekly intergenerational baby
and toddler group began at the care home Nightingale
House based in Wandsworth, London, in January 2017. The
day nursery opened within the grounds of the care home in
September 2017, where intergenerational sessions between
nursery children and care home residents take place every
single day.
This report includes extensive feedback from the first year
of the intergenerational programme, including the views of
families who attend the baby and toddler group, residents
of the care home, volunteers, physiotherapists, parents from
the new nursery, and staff from both organisations. This
case provides a lot of very useful and practical information,
including the top three intergenerational baby and toddler
activities to run, and examples of what weekly planning
within the nursery for intergenerational sessions looks like
while delivering the UK’s Early Years Foundation
Stage framework.
Abstract: The Representative Council’s demographics officer analyses data to assist various bodies to plan for the
future needs of the Jewish community in Liverpool, Wirral, Chester, and adjoining areas. These needs include
the scale of Jewish educational and social facilities for children, synagogue provision, welfare and social
provision for adults, residential care and, ultimately, burial needs. As with all Jewish demographic studies, the
question of who should be included arises. The government’s 2011 National Census used self-identification
as its definition of a member of a religion; for our purposes we ‘simply’ need to estimate the numbers of
people who might wish, now or in the future, to avail themselves of the services of the community – we might
call these ‘community affiliatable’ people, or simply ‘our community’. The work of the demographics officer
does NOT in any way seek to identify our community by name; indeed almost all data sources used exclude
any means of identifying individuals. The approach adopted merely seeks to quantify our population by
gender and age, with some analysis of the geographic spread across our community area.
The analysis falls into three elements:
An annual ‘snapshot’ of population elements - the main sources for which are data provided by the
shuls, the King David & Harold House Foundation, MJCC (on certain burials) and Greenbank Drive
Limited. My thanks to the administrators and honorary officers of those organisations for their
patience in completing the various forms.
An assessment of the current overall size and age breakdown of the community, which builds on the
‘snapshot’, and makes use of information from both the 2011 National Census, and our own local
census also undertaken in that year.
A projection of the future size and shape of the community.
Abstract: Population researchers have contributed to the debate on minority group distribution and disadvantage and social cohesion by providing objective analysis. A plethora of new distribution measurement techniques have been presented in recent years, but they have not provided sufficient explanatory power of underlying trajectories to inform ongoing political debate. Indeed, a focus on trying to summarise complex situations with readily understood measures may be misplaced. This paper takes an alternative approach and asks whether a more detailed analysis of individual and environmental characteristics is necessary if researchers are to continue to provide worthwhile input to policy development. Using England and Wales as a test bed, it looks at four small sub-populations (circa 250,000 at the turn of the century) – two based on ethnic grouping: Bangladeshi and Chinese; and two based on an under-researched area of cultural background, religion: Jews and Sikhs. Despite major differences in longevity of presence in the UK, age profile, socio-economic progress, and levels of inter-marriage, there are, at a national level, parallels in the distribution patterns and trajectories for three of the groups. However, heterogeneity between and within the groups mean that at a local level, these similarities are confounded. The paper concludes that complex interactions between natural change and migration, and between suburbanisation and a desire for group congregation, mean that explanations for the trajectory of distribution require examination of data at a detailed level, beyond the scope of index-based methods. Such analyses are necessary if researchers are to effectively contribute to future policy development.
