Abstract: In Hungary, during the decades of the communist regime, mentioning Jewish values or wounds would not have fit into the idealistic consensus (and uniformity, even more). So, virtually 100,000 Hungarian Jews tried to hide or forget their roots.
After the regime change in 1989, the Jewish revival progressed with tremendous force. The children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, who had hardly heard anything about Judaism or even about the history of their family at home, suddenly “reinvented” Jewish life. Institutions and grassroots places with an informal, but distinctly Jewish spirit, were born. For the new generations their Jewishness became a positive, almost “sexy” distinction from anybody else.
Interestingly, literature did not take over this vibrant revival. Despite the fact that the significant part of the Hungarian writers, especially the winners of international awards, are of Jewish descent. Thus, Jews are overrepresented in Hungarian literature. Nevertheless, this is a traditional tendency in Hungary that writers don’t really like to belong to minority groups. That’s why, Jewish themes or even the topics of the Holocaust and the representation of the life of the Second Generation, hardly fit into this mainstream perception. Recently, some of the Third and the Fourth Generation - mostly lesser-known, younger writers and especially women - have already begun to investigate the repressed memory of their families.
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Jewish Community, Jewish Organisations, Strategic Planning, Policy, Demography, Haredi / Strictly Orthodox Jews, Care and Welfare, Health, Children, Youth, Poverty, Housing, Elderly Care, Age and Generational Issues
Abstract: At 28,075 Jewish people, Greater Manchester recorded the largest Jewish population in the UK
outside of London and adjacent Hertfordshire. At first sight, it appears to have grown by 12%
between 2011 and 2021, most likely driven largely by high birth-rates among the strictly Orthodox
community. Similarly, if the data eventually proves to be accurate, this constitutes a growth of 29%
over the twenty years between 2001 and 2021. Provisional estimates of the Haredi community
based on other data sources (such as Manchester Connections) suggest that the Haredi community
could be as large as 22,778 but, again, further analysis is needed before any firm conclusions can be
drawn. Whatever the final numbers, it is clear that Greater Manchester, which includes the largest
Eruv in the UK with a perimeter of more than 13 miles, covering parts of Prestwich, Crumpsall and
Higher Broughton, is an important and growing centre of Jewish life.
This report was commissioned by Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Regions
(GMJRC) to research and analyse community strengths and provide a mapping of Jewish
organisations in the Greater Manchester area. It was overseen by the GMJRC strategic group – a
group that was formed of Councils and organisations across the Jewish religious spectrum as a
response to the pandemic. It reviews services in seven themes: Children & Young People; Adult
Services; Older People; Health; Employment; Emergency Response; and Housing. As well as looking
at delivery, governance, leadership, and building assets, it also tries to understand where the gaps
and support needs are. As the demographics and relative sizes of the mainstream and strictly
Orthodox Jewish populations continue to change, this study represents an important examination
of both the challenges and opportunities of how the respective communities work together. As
these populations change across the UK, and beyond, the study will have significance to other cities
where these Jewish communities exist side by side.
The Institute of Jewish Policy Research (JPR) used a variety of data sources to identify organisations
delivering in each theme and built maps of that data which can be seen throughout this report.
Mobilise Public Ltd use several methods to gather data from these organisations in each theme.
The main approach was qualitative, using stakeholder interviews and focus group discussions with a
purposely selected sample of these organisations, and the evidence collected was supplemented
with a short survey which was issued to a larger number of organisations. The research was
coproduced with a subset of the strategic group through a series of facilitated sessions and was
designed to build a good understanding of delivery in each theme as well as an understanding of
challenges and opportunities in readiness for the strategic group to develop a more integrated
strategy for the Greater Manchester Jewish community
Abstract: Two years after the Tunisian people overthrew an entrenched dictatorship, the country seems to be definitively turning a new page in its history. Its diminutive Jewish community continues to fade away, a vestige from another time now remembered only through writing. This article analyses how four francophone Jewish writers of Tunisian origins, Catherine Dana, Colette Fellous, Corine Scemama-Ammar, and Brigitte Smadja ‘write/return’ to Tunisia in the 1990s and 2000s. Given their own interrupted experience in Tunisia, they end up remembering through and on behalf of others, including elders, grandmothers and mothers, and siblings. Along with (re)visiting the houses and graves of their elders during the last decades of Ben Ali's rule, they negotiate a role for themselves in the complex diasporic identity that emerged after Tunisian Jewry's post-independence migrations. Nevertheless, I argue that the writing of return provides no simple resolution for the rupture experienced by the last generation of Jewish women born in Tunisia before the great exile in the 1960s. Rather physical return to contemporary Tunisia and its inscription in French transforms these women into inadvertent mediators between the past and present, homeland and diaspora, oral history and writing.
Abstract: Les travaux sélectionnés pour cette thèse de sociologie (4 ouvrages et 14 articles ou chapitres de livre) explorent deux thématiques différentes : les familles homoparentales et le vécu de croyants homosexuels. En dépit de leur éloignement du modèle exclusif de la parenté, un père, une mère pas un de plus, les familles homoparentales inscrivent leurs enfants dans une chaîne de transmission parentale, tant culturelle que généalogique. De même, les croyants homosexuels adhèrent aux valeurs de leur appartenance religieuse même s'ils contestent la légitimité de l'autorité institutionnelle de l'Eglise ou des rabbins. Dans les deux cas, il y a à la fois ébranlement de la norme et adhésion à un modèle légèrement différent, plus inclusif. Les homosexuels deviennent parents en élargissant les représentations de la parenté. Les homosexuels croyants parviennent à intégrer leurs dimensions identitaires antagonistes en se tournant vers des églises ou des communautés plus accueillantes ou en réinterprétant les textes problématiques. Dans l'un et l'autre cas, ils contribuent à construire des modèles compatibles avec les formes nouvelles de la famille et de la socialité religieuse. Les travaux sélectionnés pour cette thèse montrent que la réunion de dimensions a priori inconciliables -homosexualité et famille, homosexualité et religion - conduit à des innovations sociales non seulement à l'échelle individuelle, mais aussi à l'échelle sociale. Les institutions, qu'il s'agisse du droit de la famille ou des autorités religieuses ne peuvent rester complètement imperméables aux évolutions sociologiques auxquelles les expériences individuelles les confrontent.
Abstract: Исследование посвящено роли семейной памяти и семейной трансмиссии в построении идентичности русскоязычными евреями Франции и потомками иммигрантов из России первой половины ХХ в. (второе и третье поколение). Определенную сложность в изучении русскоязычной еврейской диаспоры во Франции всегда представляла гетерогенность и дисперсность общины [Gousseff 2001, 4–16]. Во Франции, где большинство современного еврейского населения, — сефарды, выходцы из североафриканских
стран, представляется интересным более подробно узнать варианты самопрезентации постсоветских еврейских иммигрантов: как еврея, русского/украинца/«советского человека», русского/украинского еврея, или через профессию, социальный статус, а также взаимоотношения с другими евреями Франции, религиозные практики, вопросы воспитания детей, в том числе двуязычие/трехъязычие,
семейные практики, брак и т.д. Мы также обращаем внимание на то, что семейная трансмиссия играет ключевую роль в построении информантами еврейской идентичности и проводим параллель между
понятием «йихес» и социологическими терминами «габитус», «социальный капитал», «культурный капитал», «первичная социализация». Каждое интервью состоит из двух частей. Первая часть — глубинное неформализованное интервью. Целью интервью является определение спонтанных, естественных репрезентаций. Именно
Abstract: When older people move from where they live to go elsewhere, if the distances are short it is called relocation, or if the move is over state or national borders, migration. Push factors are dissatisfaction with the present residence, or incapacities; leading to short-distance moves to be near, or to cohabit with, adult children, in order to receive support. These individuals are the ‘old-old’ and ‘oldest-old’, mostly single, poorer, and less healthy. A pull factor is when people want to access a better lifestyle and an increased standard of living. These long-distance migrants tend to be ‘young-old’, healthier, financially secure, newly retired, and married. This thesis explores the migration and relocation of older Orthodox Jews from Gateshead, and studies the priorities and criteria that influence the decision-making process, as well as triggers and barriers to leaving. Being a member of this community, I conducted this research as an insider using constructivist grounded methodology. I conducted 33 in-depth interviews with older people who have migrated or not, including nine with adult children. The migrants ranged from ‘young-old’ to ‘oldest-old’, were married, generally in good health and well-rooted in their community, with extensive social and work attachments in Gateshead. This represents a unique migration in that they are not moving for care, or out of necessity or dissatisfaction, nor are they aiming to increase their standard of living, but to live near and help their children. The decision-making process is both complex and multi-layered. The older people ordered their priorities and considered how their decisions would affect them and their wider network, and taking into account all their resources, select the option that best met everyone’s needs. Decisions were influenced by interdependency with children, neighbours, friends and work colleagues. This interdependency, in which work and volunteering played significant roles, was mediated by reciprocity, the desire not to be a burden, and to remain independent and autonomous. The children facilitated anything that aided these priorities. It was also clear that the demarcation of 65 years as the beginning of an ‘old age’ marked by dependency and infirmity is both arbitrary and inaccurate. Policy makers should recognise the contributions older people can and do make to families and communities. Facilitating and supporting these contributions would improve the health and well-being of older people.
Abstract: This thesis, based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, examines the entanglement of kinship, religion and politics among Jews in Bratislava. It uses marriage as a lens to explore how young Jews identify with their often newlydiscovered Jewishness and secure its socio-cultural reproduction into the future. Studying the lived experience of three generations of Slovak Jews – Holocaust survivors, their children, and grandchildren – I describe the intergenerational transmission of knowledge about Jewishness and Jewish heritage, marital preferences and practices, and choices and decisions involved in the upbringing of children in the context of changing political regimes. I focus in particular on the generation of Jews who reached adulthood after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, and explore how their families’ memories and experiences of the Holocaust and Socialist persecution, as well as the current socio-political situation and rising extremism influence the ways young Jews navigate their Jewishness – both within the Jewish community, and in the unpredictable non-Jewish public sphere. To demonstrate their allegiance to this community while keeping it hidden from non-Jews, I argue, young Jews stretch and shrink the boundary between the ‘public’ and ‘private’, complicating the distinction between these categories, and allowing the emergence of new ‘publics’ and ‘privates’. The chronic uncertainty affecting Slovak Jews’ everyday lives exacerbates the fragility of trust, and underpins a constant need to negotiate their Jewishness across this elastic boundary, as well as within their intimate relations. The thesis sheds light on the role of social distinctions and processes of boundary-making and maintenance that characterise the politics of Jewishness in post-Socialist Slovakia. It shows how, for young Jews, discovering their Jewishness, demonstrating their devotion, and gaining recognition, is more a matter of becoming than of simply being Jewish
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: Förintelsen är en historisk händelse som lever vidare i samtidens medvetande i form av minnesmonument och museala minnesutställningar och processas av forskningsinstitutioner och myndigheter. Bland överlevandefamiljerna lever minnet kvar och nu har några av deras barnbarn, den Tredje generationens överlevande, tagit på sig att förvalta minnet. Samtidigt florerar antisemitismen i det svensk samhället vilket formar och påverkar den judiska gruppen och barnbarnen. Den socialantropologiska studien som har genomförts kan visa att detta påverkar deras identitet. Syftet med studien är att undersöka den tredje generationens identitetskonstruktion och hur den formas av minnet av Förintelsen, samtida antisemitism samt de judiska institutionerna. I den etnografiska undersökningen som primärt har centrerats kring intervjuer och observationer framkom att det finns en uttalad vilja att minnas Förintelsen. Vissa påpekar vikten av att minnas i ett privat sammanhang, inom familjen, medan andra tycker att de mer offentliga minnesstunderna uppfyller behovet. Samtidigt lever barnbarnen i en tid med en manifest och latent antisemitism vilket formar både deras tillvaro och självbiografi. Några av forskningsdeltagarna har blivit utsatta för regelrätta antisemitiska påhopp medan andra har strategier för att undgå att synliggöra sin judiska identitet. Identiteten formas dock inte bara av detta utan också av den judiska etniska samhörigheten, de judiska institutionerna, det judiska kalendariet och kulturella och sociala riktlinjer. I studiens slutsatser kan det konstateras att den Tredje generationen överlevandes minnesbearbetning av Förintelsen baseras i mångt och mycket på en generationella minnesöverföring som har pågått under forskningsdeltagarnas liv då de har samtalet med överlevandegenerationen. Empirin visar också att de bär på förhållningssätt och strategier kring hur de hanterar en samtida antisemitism i kombination med att de bär på de överlevandes berättelser om den tyska, extrema formen. Detta tillsammans utgör en av grunderna till identiteten. Empirin visar också att den tredje generationen väljer att leva ett judiskt liv, inom den Judiska församlingens ramar, baserat på individuella val och ställningstaganden.
Abstract: Que font les petits-enfants de l’histoire et des valeurs de leurs grands-parents quand ceux-ci ont connu l’immigration et traversé des épreuves majeures ? Comment tracent-ils leur propre chemin entre la fidélité au passé de leur famille, les tâches du présent, la préoccupation de transmettre à leurs enfants leurs références identitaires ? Comment se passent d’une génération à l’autre les traumatismes et les valeurs ? Quel regard les descendants des immigrés portent-ils sur leur histoire familiale ? Comment assument-ils la difficile responsabilité d’en témoigner ? Comment construisent-ils leur identité et leur place dans la société ? Les auteurs présentent et analysent vingt-cinq entretiens qu'ils ont menés avec des petits-enfants de Juifs venus de Pologne, qui ont connu l'exil, la difficile intégration en France, la guerre et la Shoah, les bouleversements historiques du XXe siècle. Deux entretiens réalisés en Pologne les complètent. A travers des récits de vie intense, les auteurs proposent une réflexion originale sur ces questions dont l'actualité récente en Europe a montré l'importance des enjeux individuels, sociaux, politiques. Ils éclairent aussi des aspects méconnus du judaïsme. A une époque où les migrations tendent à devenir un phénomène généralisé, où les guerres et les génocides se multiplient, les auteurs souhaitent contribuer à une réflexion sur le devenir des immigrés et de ceux qui ont été confrontés à un traumatisme historique majeur, et sur l'aide qu'ils pourraient recevoir.
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: Problems of religious and ethnic identity are especially pertinent for people of Jewish heritage in post-Soviet states. Radical changes of the 20th century made the society more secular, put distinctions between definitions of being “Jew” and “Judaist”; the number of mixed marriages grew, and the young generations now learn traditions not from parents but from public lectures in Jewish communities. In this paper we have tried to find out what has brought young people to the Jewish community of Smolensk, why they choose to remain there, and whether they consider themselves Jewish. We have been especially interested in understanding how much does religious identity influence the choice of ethnic identity, and vice versa.
The research is based on 8 in-depth interviews collected during Sefer Center’s trip to Smolensk Oblast in 2016. The interviewees were selected according to the following criteria: regular visits to the synagogue (twice a month or more) and age between 14 and 35.
The working hypothesis is that the number, the frame of mind, and the identity of the young people who visit the synagogue are influenced by the following factors: 1) ethnic and religious identity of the family members and close people of the respondents and their disposition towards various confessions and ethnicities; 2) the rabbi’s policy in ethnic issues and traditions, how loyal he is to rule bending and now active he is in attracting the youth to the synagogue; 3) the environment: the influence of historically significant places of Smolensk Oblast and memories of remarkable historical events that occurred on its territory.
After analyzing the data we have drawn the following conclusions. The main reason for the interviewees to choose the Jewish identity is the prevailing of such identity in their parents. For those whose parents are both Jewish this argument is sufficient. If only parent is Jewish, a young person starts seeking for additional arguments to “allow” himself/herself be Jewish. Such reasons may be their sympathy towards Judaism and/or Jewish customs and the feeling of one’s “distinction”. Sometimes for the final integration into the Jewish environment the interviewees conduct Giyur or circumcision, the latter being not only for religious reasons. If the young people don’t feel such sympathies or don’t perform the special rituals for integration, they leave the community because they don’t feel enough “Jewishness” to remain there. The forming of one or another religious identity depends mostly on which identity is considered the right one in the family. Also, in contrast to ethnic identity, religious identity changes more often and is dependent on the person’s environment and period of time.
Thus, the working hypothesis has been confirmed in a number of points. 1) The forming of identities is indeed influenced by the identities of parents and social circles of the interviewees and the rabbi’s policy towards the youth and other members of the community. 2) It is also influenced to a lesser extent by which religious and ethnic identity is prevalent and considered normal in a particular region. Historical events and places have basically no influence on the identity formation.
