Abstract: In this article the term 'resentment', as used by Friedrich Nietzsche and then redefined by Max Scheler, is employed to explain anti-Semitic attitudes in Poland. The resentful attitude is based on the emotion of jealousy, which leads to a desire to degrade anyone with whom comparisons are made, in order to increase feelings of self-worth. This characteristic of the term was used to description of the group's attitudes. In this article, modern anti-Semitism is portrayed as an inseparable element of a wider Catholic-nationalist ideology, which creates the image of (symbolic) Jews as morally inferior and unfairly competing with (symbolic) Poles. In research conducted between 1992 and 2012 the author finds correlations between strong nationalist feelings and attitudes of jealousy and a desire to degrade Jewish people. The image produced by the empirical data is one in which the Jews are the enemy, directed by their own national (sic!) interests, and desiring to take advantage of the Poles, who are honest and idealistic, driving by theirs declarations and values, even against their own, actual interests.The author hopes the article can be a starting point for discussing the idea of resentment as a theoretical tool in research devoted not only to anti-Semitism, but also to xenophobia and attitudes to other groups in the democracy.
Abstract: The article presents the results of surveys done on anti-Semitism in Poland in 1992, which in part were compared to results from a 1996 survey. The group, under the author's direction researched anti-Semitism in the context of Poles' attitudes towards other nations, as well as in terms of their own national identity. Two types of anti-Semitic attitudes were observed: traditional, religiously grounded anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism rooted in anti-Semitic political ideology, of the type that has developed since in the French Revolution. Traditional anti-Semitism occurs only among older people who are not well educated and live in rural areas; increased education results in the disappearance of this type of anti-Semitism. Modern anti-Semitism, on the other hand occurs among both the lowest and most highly educated groups in society. Moreover, from 1992 to 1996, the percentage of the respondents declaring anti-Semitic views increased. At the same time, however, there was also a larger increase in the number of respondents declaring anti-anti-Semitic views, which has meant that there has been a clear polarization of attitudes. Having a university education makes a person more likely to be ill-disposed toward anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, the attitude of Poles toward Jews cannot be described simply on the basis of anti-Semitic attitudes. The researchers noted that there was also an attitude of "not liking Jews", which was less engaged than the anti-Semitic views, and to a large extent a result of the content comprising Polish national identity. The model of Polishness assumes a Romantic-Messianic image of the Polish nation. According to this model, Poles see themselves as being distinguished by their noble fulfillment of obligations, even when it is to their own detriment, particularly with respect to symbolic Jews and Germans. Researchers also assumed that there was a particular kind of competition between Poles and Jews with respect to the moral superiority of their respective nations. The results from 1992 in part confirmed this hypothesis.
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: Both engaging in and researching interreligious dialogue initiatives after the 2015 Paris attacks among people who associate strongly with Jewish and Muslim communal structures provides a valuable framework for considering one of the central puzzles in the sociology of religion, namely, social transformations that apply not only to the observed but also to the observer. However, scholarship on interreligious dialogue does not have any well-established research episteme from which to proceed analytically. Academic doxa places interreligious dialogue initiatives in the realm of the “practical” and at times doctrinal, but not the rigorously analytical. These initiatives are often referred to in the English-speaking world as “interfaith,” a word which encompasses a vast array of voluntarist encounters across time and space. The underlying assumption of the academy is that researching dialogue initiatives is a form of “action-research,” a results-oriented mode of scholarship constrained by the necessity to obtain “best practice,” which is of little prestige or value to academics and intellectuals (Bielo 2018: 28). Moreover, since these initiatives have thus far often involved top-down practices, receiving their impetus from the state or dominant religious structures, they have lacked societal legitimacy and therefore have been of little interest to sociology.
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: The Hebrew term kosher means ‘fit’ or ‘proper’ and it traditionally signifies foods that conform to Jewish dietary law (kashrut). This article explores how kosher is understood, practised and contested in contemporary Denmark. In recent years, the rules regulating kosher consumption have been supplemented by elaborate rules concerning globalised mass production, which have had an impact on the way people handle questions of kashrut. During the same period, global markets for kosher have proliferated; this article explores the everyday kosher consumption among Jews in Denmark in the light of these transformations. Everyday kosher consumption among a minority group such as Jews in Denmark is not well understood, and I argue that globalised forms of regulation increasingly condition this type of consumption. Even though Denmark is a small and relatively secular country and Jews comprise only about 7,000 individuals, kosher production and regulation have national economic significance. Methodologically, I build on ethnographic data from contemporary Denmark, that is, participant observation and interviews.
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: Is research on antisemitism even necessary in countries with a relatively small Jewish population? Absolutely, as this volume shows. Compared to other countries, research on antisemitism in the Nordic countries (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) is marginalized at an institutional and staffing level, especially as far as antisemitism beyond German fascism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust is concerned. Furthermore, compared to scholarship on other prejudices and minority groups, issues concerning Jews and anti-Jewish stereotypes remain relatively underresearched in Scandinavia – even though antisemitic stereotypes have been present and flourishing in the North ever since the arrival of Christianity, and long before the arrival of the first Jewish communities.
This volume aims to help bring the study of antisemitism to the fore, from the medieval period to the present day. Contributors from all the Nordic countries describe the status of as well as the challenges and desiderata for the study of antisemitism in their respective countries.
Abstract: In recent years, Jews, Germans, and Poles have stood at three corners of a triangle, labeled, respectively, as victims, perpetrators, and bystanders by genocide researchers treating the Holocaust. The formulation advanced previous equations, where scholars could only imagine the duality of victim-perpetrator.3 Newrevelations about kinds and layers of complicity, competing claims to victim-hood, and the recognition that individuals may inhabit more than one of the categories, force us to confront the complexity of interrelations. Yet, the rise of attention to public memory in Holocaust studies suggests, rather than a permanent two-dimensional geometry, a different idiom: an active, jockeying troika of nations, yoked together by a difficult history. This new metaphor allows us to anticipate and attend to the ongoing tensions and shifts that occur among members of the team, on whom different memorial burdens may be placed. In this chapter, I address the circumstances of a major, and quite recent, transmogrification of the symbolic Jews-Germans-Poles constellation. Namely, I argue that in the framework of Jewish Holocaust tourism to Poland, Nazi Germany (i.e., the perpetrator) disappears. In its place, Poland has emerged as much more satisfying object of opprobrium, even as—and indeed, I will argue, because—Poland is also beginning to be excavated as a site of more general relevance in Jewish memory-culture.
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.
Abstract: Internal migration plays a key role in shaping the demographic characteristics of areas. In this paper, data from the 2011 England and Wales census are used to assess the geographic patterns of migration for 4 small cultural groups that each constitute about 0.5% of the population—Arabs, Chinese, Jews, and Sikhs—with a White British “benchmark” group. It examines the sensitivity of the scale of intercommunity moves to distance, having controlled for other migrant characteristics, through the development of spatial interaction models. The analysis finds that, where a choice exists, Jews are more averse to making a longer move than other small groups, all of whom favour shorter moves than the White British. The paper also investigates the influence of origin location and socioeconomic characteristics on the choice of migration destination using multinomial logistic regression. It finds that the influence of student status, age, qualifications, and home tenure vary by group though a number of patterns are shared between groups. Finally, it probes the presence in these smaller groups of patterns found historically in the wider population, such as counter‐urbanisation. Overall, this paper broadens the understanding of minority group migration patterns by examining, for the first time, Arabs (identified separately only in the 2011 census) and 2 groups based on religion (Jews and Sikhs) and by revisiting, with new questions, the White British and Chinese groups using the latest census data.
Abstract: This report, produced by Professor P. Weller and Dr. I. Foster of the University of Derby, United Kingdom, is based on two phases of research conducted in six OSCE participating States—Belgium, Germany, Greece, Moldova, Poland and the United States of America—between December 2016 and May 2018. The research took various forms, including focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, observations, as well as desk research based on published literature. A detailed bibliography of works consulted is provided in an appendix to the report. The report provides background information about the history of anti-Semitism in each of the countries studied, along with recent statistics concerning reported anti-Semitic incidents in each country. The report does not compare how significant an issue anti-Semitism is in these participating States; rather, it presents an overall pattern of evidence to identify a range of key challenges with at least some relevance for teaching about and addressing anti-Semitism in classroom contexts across the OSCE region as a whole, and thus provides the basis for recommendations that could inform the development of teacher resources to meet those challenges in any OSCE participating State, not just the ones studied for this report. The research has made clear that, while the incidence, frequency and forms of anti-Semitism may vary over time, it remains a reality in OSCE participating States. However, there is relatively little published research on anti-Semitism among young people as such, and even less that is specifically focused on teaching about anti-Semitism and/or addressing it in classroom contexts. Therefore, the primary research that informs this report makes a clear contribution to understanding anti-Semitism as it currently exists in a number of OSCE countries, albeit subject to certain limitations in terms of methodology, which are noted in the report’s appendices.
Abstract: This research study seeks to understand the current state of Holocaust education in Romanian classrooms and the variety of forces that influence its treatment. By identifying obstacles, challenges, and successes, this study provides a generative knowledge base for curriculum proposals, symposia, and other initiatives that seek to disrupt reticence on this topic. Given the wide range of possible influences on Holocaust instruction, this study employs ethnographic methods to seek out constructed meanings among students, teachers, subject matter, and numerous forces within the milieu. The findings reveal some promises for addressing this history in schools, including teacher autonomy, institutional support, and teacher trainings. Yet Romania faces a number of challenges, such as the legacy of communism, the role of Antonescu in the curriculum, few opportunities to address controversies, limited instructional time, and other institutional and community forces. Holocaust education is a relatively new phenomenon in Romania and understanding its evolution can inform other societies and cultures that are working to introduce Holocaust studies or controversial issues into their curricula. As more post-Soviet and post-communist states attempt to build pluralistic, tolerant, and open-minded societies, their treatment of historical silences and the renegotiation of their past becomes a critical feature for the development of democratic citizens.
