Abstract: В этом небольшом очерке автор говорит об основных принципах еврейской благотворительности, а также дает краткую характеристику ее основных направлений в современной России. Подчеркивается, что деятельность еврейских благотворительных организаций направлена в основном на помощь пожилым и нуждающимся людям. В то же время, как отмечает автор, люди с ограниченными возможностями здоровья, как правило, оказываются вне поля зрения таких организаций, как и государственных социальных служб. Далее Е. Э. Носенко-Штейн рассказывает о руководителе одной из таких организаций — А. Е. Кирносе и о том, как его приход туда связан с еврейской самоидентификацией. По мнению автора, такая самоидентификация — одна из существующих в современной России. Автор называет ее
носителей Хранителями, поскольку они сохраняют некоторые элементы традиционной еврейской культуры и исторической памяти. Ниже с небольшими сокращениями публикуется интервью, которое автор провела с А. Е. Кирносом в июле 2020 г.
Abstract: Since the COVID-19 pandemic first began, the JPR research team has focused its efforts on trying to understand how it is affecting Jewish life in the UK and around the world, and has generated a series of reports sharing our insights as they evolve. In this research and policy briefing, we draw together the findings from much of the work that has been done, and consider their implications for the future of Jewish communal life.
The report touches on multiple themes, including the economic needs of disadvantaged households, how best to maintain the Jewish charitable sector, the importance of supporting local synagogue communities and Jewish schools, how to address the potential harmful effects of the pandemic on the community’s informal educational infrastructure, health measures that should be considered to help protect lives, intracommunal relations, and issues around the use of technology to help support and bolster Jewish life.
In addition, it considers how the pandemic has impacted data collection work, for good and for bad, and makes important recommendations about the research that needs to be undertaken to support Jewish life going forward.
As well as making specific recommendations, the paper is designed to be a trigger for discussion among community leaders, philanthropists and members, and we welcome feedback from readers.
Abstract: As soon as the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic became evident, concern began to be expressed in the Jewish community about how its effects might damage aspects of Jewish life. Our July 2020 survey of Jews across the UK was designed to investigate some of these effects and bring some data into policy discussion about the future of the community.
Part of that discussion involves community income, and specifically whether Jews will feel able to donate to charities in the ways they have previously, or if they will continue to pay membership fees to synagogues or make voluntary contributions to cover the Jewish studies programmes, security and other supplementary activities in Jewish schools.
This paper looks at these issues first by examining respondents’ giving behaviours in 2019, and comparing them to their actual or expected behaviours during the first few months of the pandemic. It finds that, as of July 2020, its effects were found to be rather limited – while charitable giving, synagogue membership fees and voluntary contributions to schools were all expected to take a hit, a strong majority indicated no change in their giving behaviour at this time. Moreover, there are some indications that a shift has taken place in people’s tendency towards giving to Jewish charities over general ones. Whether this is part of a longer-term trend or simply a response to the pandemic is unclear.
The study then investigates those who said they were planning to make a ‘negative switch’ in their giving behaviour, to explore the extent to which that change was due to economic factors caused by the pandemic, or two alternative possibilities: their economic situation prior to it, or the strength/weakness of their Jewish identity.
It finds that changes in behaviour are heavily influenced by the economic impact of the pandemic, particularly with respect to synagogue membership fees, but that Jewish identity also plays a part, most acutely in relation to making voluntary contributions to schools.
Abstract: Dr. Zvi Feine served the Jewish communities of Romania and Poland as country director for the Joint Distribution Community during those two countries respective transitions from Communist rule. This memoir of his work under the constraints of communism, through the violent December 1989 revolution in Romania and the more peaceful transition in Poland, and in the aftermath of transition to democracy describes the challenges of effective communal service in turbulent times. The mission of the JDC was to support and partner with the Jewish communities that remained after the devastation of the Holocaust, sustaining the Jews of Eastern Europe with material and communal assistance. Dr. Feine relates poignant and harrowing memories of working under the constant surveillance of the Securitate secret service agency and dealing with the aftermath of the revolution and the resistance to change, all the while navigating a complex and delicate web of history, religious and cultural mores, personalities, ideals, and hopes. Illustrated here are numerous principles of communal work, including the importance of understanding the cultural context, resource and leadership development, and the crucial role that lay leaders can play. Communal workers in the Jewish community and beyond will benefit from Dr. Feine's accumulated wisdom over a lifetime of community service in positions all over the globe.
Abstract: Jewish charities are a subgroup of about two thousand, five hundred organizations, accounting for 1.5% of the total number of main charities in England and Wales. The increasing total income of general charities has prompted considerable debate about the perceived concentration of income and the perceived dominance of bigger charities over smaller ones. Meanwhile, the implications of competition for charitable behavior have remained underappreciated. Building on these assumptions and aiming to test how far the results of research carried out in the charitable sector in general apply to the Jewish charitable sector in particular, the research investigates the trends in concentration of income of a sample of 1301 Jewish charities operating between 1995 and 2015, using common measures of concentration to describe the competitiveness of the Jewish charitable sector in England and Wales. The findings suggest that the sector, in line with the wider UK charitable sector, experienced high levels of growth in terms of both aggregate total income and the number of charities operating, along with decreasing levels of income concentration. These findings allow one to hypothesize that, other things being constant, the increasing numbers of entrant charities may well have increased the size distribution of charities providing the same products or services, therefore exacerbating the competition for charitable funding in the Jewish charitable sector. This, in turn, on the one hand is likely to have exacerbated the competition for donations especially among charities pursuing similar causes, reducing the total amount of charitable money devoted to particular causes. On the other hand, the increasing numbers of charities providing the same products or services and the resultant increasing competition for funding may have impacted on the costs and efforts Jewish charities were able to divert to fundraising at the expense of resources that could be devoted, instead, to service provision.
Abstract: This study is based on data from JPR's National Jewish Community Survey, investigates some of the key factors influencing Jewish charitable giving, and identifies some of the key challenges for the sector going forward.
Charitable giving among Britain's Jews: Looking to the future, written by JPR researchers, Dr. David Graham and Dr. Jonathan Boyd, begins by noting just how charitable Jews are: 93% of Jews make at least one charitable donation per annum, a considerably higher proportion than that found in wider society.
The report explores some of the reasons why this might be the case, and specifically what factors influence giving among Jews. In particular, it investigates the extent to which age, religiosity, level of communal engagement, wealth and degree of generosity play a part in giving outcomes.
It goes on to look at all of these factors in the wider context of some of the trends going on in the British Jewish population – secularisation, on the one hand, and the growth of the strictly Orthodox sector of the other – and focuses on the important role the babyboomer generation will play in the long-term future of the British Jewish charitable sector.
Abstract: The financial resources of the UK Jewish voluntary sector is the first publication to report the findings of JPR's research programme, Long-term Planning for British Jewry.
Building on the Jewish Community Information database of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, JPR compiled a comprehensive database of organizations across the community to act as the foundation for all the organizational aspects of the Long-term Planning project. It emerged that the UK Jewish voluntary sector comprises just under 2,000 financially independent organizations. In order for the community to maintain this number of organizations, the income of the Jewish voluntary sector from all its funding streams has to be substantial. These financial resources, however, have never been systematically addressed.
JPR commissioned an international expert in the voluntary sector, Professor Peter Halfpenny, Director of the Centre for Applied Social Research at the University of Manchester, to carry out this complex accountancy project. Its objectives were to provide a multi-dimensional analysis of the income and expenditure of the Jewish voluntary sector from all its funding streams and to make comparisons with similar data about the UK voluntary sector as a whole.
This report establishes the parameters of the financial resources currently available within the Jewish voluntary sector. It demonstrates that the sector has a significant and complex economy. Moreover, British Jews invest proportionately more in these voluntary organizations than does the UK population as a whole.
