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Given Names of Czech and Moravian Jews in the Post-War Period
Author(s): Dvořáková, Žaneta
Editor(s): Чолева-Димитрова, Анна; Влахова-Ангелова, Мая; Данчева, Надежда
Date: 2021
Topics: Birth, Family and Household, Age and Generational Issues, Main Topic: Other, Post-1989, Language
Abstract: The study is based on onymic material from birthday and death notices of members of Czech Jewish communities published regularly in the bulletin Roš Chodeš (646 names), and on a sociological survey organised on-line (26 respondents). The choice of civil names for Jewish children born in the post-war period was influenced by the political and social climate in communist Czechoslovakia. Names popular with the Czech majority were preferred because Czech Jews had a tendency to hide their identity. After the revolution of 1989 and the fall of communism, the situation changed. Since then, we can see the return of traditional Hebrew names given to (not only) Jewish children. Looking for Jewish roots and interest in Judaism, brings the choice of “religious” names in adulthood that could be used only for synagogue, or publicly as second given names.
Традиция Имянаречения У Бухарских Евреев В Конце Xx - Начале Xxi В
Translated Title: The Traditions of Name-giving Among Bukhara Jews (Late 20th - Early 21st Century)
Author(s): Амосова, Светлана
Date: 2011
Topics: Age and Generational Issues, Main Topic: Other, Bukharian Jews, Birth, Circumcision / Brit Milah
Abstract: The article is devoted to traditions and practices of naming newly-born children in the communities of Bukhara Jews. Two main principles of name-giving are analyzed: in honor of a deceased relative and «according to Torah». Paper is based on interviews with several generations of Jews in Bukhara and Samarqand
Immunities at the margins: Negotiating health and bodily care among Haredi Jews in the UK
Author(s): Kasstan, Ben
Date: 2016
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Haredi / Strictly Orthodox Jews, Health, Birth, Body, Ethnography, Fertility, Interviews
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.
Making Bodies Kosher: The Politics of Reproduction among Haredi Jews in England
Author(s): Kasstan, Ben
Date: 2019
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Haredi / Strictly Orthodox Jews, Health, Birth, Body, Ethnography, Fertility, Interviews
Abstract: For Haredi Jews, reproduction is entangled with issues of health, bodily governance and identity. This is an analysis of the ways in which Haredi Jews negotiate healthcare services using theoretical perspectives in political philosophy. It is the first archival and ethnographic study of Haredi Jews in the UK and sits at the intersection of medical anthropology, social history and Jewish studies. It will allow readers to understand how reproductive care issues affect this growing minority population.
Vital statistics of the UK Jewish population: births and deaths
Author(s): Casale Mashiah, Donatella
Date: 2018
Topics: Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Demography, Birth, Death and Mourning
Abstract: This study, which forms part of JPR’s research programme for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, investigates the numbers of births and deaths that have taken place in Jewish population of the UK in recent years. Births and deaths reflect natural life events and are critical to understanding how the population is changing over time, particularly in terms of its size and structure. By monitoring the balance of births over deaths or vice versa (i.e. natural increase or decrease), it is possible to predict future trends, including the stability, growth or decline of the population.

The report, authored by JPR research Fellow, Donatella Casale Mashiah, demonstrates that the UK Jewish community has turned an important corner in recent years. Following several decades of demographic decline, during which Jewish deaths consistently exceeded Jewish births, births have exceeded deaths in every year since 2006, which implies Jewish demographic growth in the UK, all other factors being equal (e.g. migration, adhesions, renouncements).

The total number of Jewish births per annum in the UK has increased by about 25% over the past decade, peaking in 2011 at 3,869. This has more to do with birth rates in the strictly Orthodox part of the Jewish community than the remainder, although both sectors have seen an increase.

By contrast, the number of Jewish deaths per annum has been falling over time, broadly in line with national trends, due to increasing life expectancy. 2,411 Jewish death were recorded in the UK in 2016, the lowest number on record. The average between 1979 and 2016 was 3,738.

Denominationally, the majority of deaths (68%) in 2018 were ‘central Orthodox’ – i.e. funerals conducted under the auspices of the United Synagogue, the Federation of Synagogues, or independent modern Orthodox synagogues. These were followed, in turn, by Reform at 18%, Liberal at 6%, Sephardi at 4%, Strictly Orthodox at 2% and Masorti at 1%. These proportions are reflective of the relative size of each group in the Jewish population at the oldest age bands.

Beyond the overarching story of the Jewish population that these data reveal, the numbers themselves are also essential for planning purposes. They are of significant value to local authorities, politicians, community leaders, educators and charitable organisations among others, since they can be applied to assess a variety of communal needs, such as childcare facilities, school places, elderly care facilities, religious services and burial grounds.
Les Rites de naissance dans le judaïsme
Translated Title: Birth rites in Judaism
Author(s): Hidiroglou, Patricia
Date: 1997
Topics: Birth, Circumcision / Brit Milah, Anthropology, Ritual, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: Cet ouvrage souligne la variété des rites de naissance dans le judaïsme (circoncision, rachat du premier-né, mappah, bain rituel, pratiques purificatoires). Il fait apparaître la complexité et la richesse d'un rituel qui suscite différentes questions :

Pourquoi ces rites sont-ils toujours transmis alors que d'autres ont disparu ? Pourquoi semblent-ils se décliner uniquement au masculin pluriel ? Pourquoi la place du père y est-elle prépondérante ? Quelle est la parenté entre tenants du judaïsme officiel et juifs laïques qui rejettent tout sens religieux ? Quelle conscience les pratiquants d'un rite ont-ils de sa signification et de ses transformations ?

Les sources comparées (archives sur la vie des juifs en France aux XIXe et XXe siècles, textes religieux et objets singuliers, témoignages recueillis par l'auteur), ont permis une approche originale à la croisée de l'histoire, de la sociologie et de l'anthropologie. L'auteur montre les différents degrés de lecture de ces rites et fait apparaître une logique symbolique où interviennent le sacré, la pureté et le rapport au corps.
Couples mixtes et circoncision
Translated Title: Mixed couples and circumcision
Author(s): Mathieu, Séverine
Date: 2007
Topics: Birth, Circumcision / Brit Milah, Anthropology, Ritual, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: En matière de transmission, la circoncision est la première question concrète à laquelle sont confrontés les couples mixtes juif/non juif lorsqu'ils attendent un enfant et a fortiori lorsqu'un fils naît. Elle est loin d'être anodine et fait ressurgir toutes sortes de conflits, de questionnements et de négociations. C'est à partir d'une enquête qualitative auprès de couples mixtes que cette question est abordée. Lorsqu'ils font circoncire leur fils, ces couples perpétuent un lien avec le judaïsme. Dans des discours qui mettent à l'écart certaines questions, ce geste est rationalisé, sécularisé et s'appuie sur la médecine. C'est un acte biographique, identitaire et de mémoire. Ceux qui ne font pas circoncire leur fils n'interrompent pas pour autant la chaîne de la transmission d'un judaïsme sécularisé en choisissant d'autres ressources identitaires.
Strictly Orthodox rising: What the demography of British Jews tells us about the future of the community
Author(s): Staetsky, L. Daniel; Boyd, Jonathan
Date: 2015
Topics: Haredi / Strictly Orthodox Jews, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Demography, Censuses, Birth
Abstract: An important study using UK Census data to assess how the composition of the British Jewish population is likely to change over the coming decades.

UK Census data continues to be by far and away the most comprehensive and valuable dataset that exists on the UK Jewish population as a whole. Whilst the census does not capture the entire Jewish population, census data allow us to examine the socio-demographic characteristics of the Jewish population in greater detail than any other source. In this report, we utilise these data to explore how the numerical balance between the 'mainstream' and the strictly Orthodox (haredi) Jewish population is shifting over time, and what the age profiles and total fertility rates of both groups indicate about the future.

In particular, we highlight how the haredi population is growing at an extraordinarily fast rate, due to its rare combination of high fertility and low mortality. By contrast, the non-haredi Jewish population is declining, not least due to its below replacement level fertility. We note how these measures, combined with an analysis of population momentum over time, help us to develop a probable picture of a future in which the haredi population will become an increasingly large part of the whole.

Whilst this is a demographic certainty, the report also notes that 30% of all haredi adults are aged 15-24. Proportions at this type of level in other populations worldwide have been associated by political scientists and demographers with a range of social problems, not least due to the existence of large numbers of young people who are unemployed or on low incomes. There is no suggestion here that haredi Jews are likely to succumb to the worst of these problems – on the contrary, the community has very high levels of social cohesion and a large number of mechanisms that help to counteract these – but the possibility of increased apathy, disillusionment or abandonment of a strictly Orthodox lifestyle should not be dismissed. Indeed, examined from a demographic perspective, these types of possibilities represent the clearest and most obvious risks facing the haredi community.

In presenting a probable picture of the future of the British Jewish population as a whole, the findings in this report should be utilised for the specific purposes JPR intended: to help Jewish community leaders, operating either within the haredi or the non-haredi sectors, to develop policy to respond to the various challenges that are highlighted.
Haup ab! Die Juden in der Beschneidungsdebatte
Translated Title: Get Out! The Jews in the Circumcision Debate
Author(s): Bodenheimer, Alfred
Date: 2012
Topics: Birth, Circumcision / Brit Milah, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: Das »Kölner Urteil«, das im Frühjahr 2012 die religiöse Beschneidung eines Knaben als strafbaren Akt wertete, hat in Deutschland und anderen Staaten eine hitzige Debatte zu diesem Thema ausgelöst. Für die europäische Gesellschaft steht damit auch der Friede mit ihren religiösen Minderheiten auf dem Spiel. Bodenheimer untersucht die Mechanismen und die Problematik dieser Debatte mit Blick auf das Verhältnis der deutschen Gesellschaft zu den Juden.
Jewish Space and the Beschneidungsdebatte in Germany: Multiculturalism, Ritual and Cultural Reproduction
Author(s): Oppenheim, Jay (Koby)
Date: 2014
Topics: Birth, Circumcision / Brit Milah, Anthropology, Ritual, Jewish Space, Multiculturalism, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: The concept of Jewish space, initially conceived by Diana Pinto as a unique European development, marked a critical shift in relations between Jews and non-Jews, the latter embracing a Jewish past as constitutive of their countries' own. The hoped-for European multiculturalism failed to blossom and Jewish space, in Pinto's assessment, has not born the fruit of its potential. To investigate the shortfall of Jewish space, this article examines the 2012 debate on ritual male circumcision in Germany (Beschneidungsdebatte) that drew contemporary Jewish practice into the public eye. Pinto's formulation is premised on a multicultural society that actively works to blunt intolerance, a condition whose fulfilment in contemporary Europe remains incomplete and uneven. Moreover, this attempt to extend the integration of history into memory was stymied by its lack of a living subject. While Jews constitute a long-standing minority population with a unique history in Germany, their success in establishing a shared Jewish space is tied to the broader project of tolerance and integration facing immigrant and minority groups in Western Europe.
Contemporary Trends in Family Formation among the Jews in Russia
Author(s): Tolts, Mark
Date: 2006
Topics: Demography, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Marriage, Intermarriage, Birth, Family and Household, Censuses
Abstract:

This article examines the severe age-sex imbalance and the increasing incidence of mixed marriage on the basis of the results of the 2002 Russian census. The changing marriage pattern and fertility among the Jews are discussed as reflected in the data of this census and a special processing of the birth certificates of 2002. Contemporary trends in family formation as well as the mass emigration led to changes in the “enlarged” Jewish population, and for their assessment new estimates of its size and structure are prepared.
Britain’s Jewish Community Statistics 2010 
Author(s): Vulkan, Daniel
Date: 2012
Topics: Demography, Birth, Marriage, Denominations, Denominations: Statistics, Circumcision / Brit Milah, Statistics, Children, Death and Mourning, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract: Presents the latest data on births, marriages, religious divorces, and burials and cremations, in the UK Jewish community. The report confirms that the number of Jewish births each year now consistently exceeds the number of recorded Jewish burials and cremations, indicating that the community is experiencing a period of natural increase. It also makes clear that the growth of the strictly Orthodox community is the main factor in this growth, contributing a quarter of all Jewish marriages and at least 40% of births. 
Report of the Community Research Unit - Board of Deputies of British Jews - Britain's Jewish Community Statistics 2007 
Author(s): Vulkan, Daniel; Graham, David
Date: 2008
Topics: Demography, Birth, Marriage, Denominations, Denominations: Statistics, Circumcision / Brit Milah, Statistics, Children, Death and Mourning, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract: The following report presents data on community statistics for Britain’s Jewish
population compiled by the Community Research Unit (CRU) at the Board of
Deputies of British Jews.
These data are collected on behalf of the whole community. It is the only survey to do
this on an annual basis and therefore the data are unique in being able to show
changes over time. From the point of view of community planners, the data represent
the most up-to-date portrayal of the Jewish community in Britain.
Although they are indicative of actual demographic trends, they only represent those
Jews who have chosen, or whose families have chosen, to associate themselves with
the Jewish community through a formal Jewish act, i.e. circumcision, marriage in a
synagogue, dissolution of marriage by a Beth Din, or Jewish burial or cremation.
Consequently, Jews who have not chosen to identify in these ways do not appear in
this report.
Further, it should be recognised that these data are collected regardless of institutional
denomination. They therefore include some individuals who would not be recognised
as Jewish by all sections of the community.
Report of the Community Policy Research Group - Board of Deputies of British Jews - Britain's Jewish Community Statistics 2006 
Author(s): Vulkan, Daniel; Graham, David
Date: 2007
Topics: Demography, Birth, Marriage, Denominations, Denominations: Statistics, Circumcision / Brit Milah, Statistics, Children, Death and Mourning, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract: The following report presents data on community statistics for Britain’s Jewishpopulation compiled by the Community Policy Research Group (CPRG) at the Boardof Deputies of British Jews.These data are collected on behalf of the whole community. It is the only survey to dothis on an annual basis and therefore the data are unique in being able to showchanges over time. From the point of view of community planners the data representthe most up-to-date portrayal of the Jewish community in Britain.Although they are indicative of actual demographic trends, they only represent thoseJews who have chosen, or whose families have chosen, to associate themselves withthe Jewish community through a formal Jewish act, i.e. circumcision,1 marriage in asynagogue, dissolution of marriage by a Beth Din, Jewish burial or cremation.Consequently, Jews who have not chosen to identify in these ways do not appear inthis report.Further, it should be recognised that these data are collected regardless of institutionaldenomination. They therefore include some individuals who would not be recognisedas Jewish by all sections of the community. 
Report of the Community Policy Research Unit - Board of Deputies of British Jews - Community Statistics 2005 
Author(s): Graham, David; Vulkan, Daniel
Date: 2007
Topics: Demography, Birth, Marriage, Denominations, Denominations: Statistics, Circumcision / Brit Milah, Statistics, Children, Death and Mourning, Main Topic: Demography and Migration
Abstract: The following report presents the latest set of data on community statistics compiled