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Date: 2024
Abstract: Veganism, a philosophy and practice constituting the eschewal of all animal-derived products and forms of animal exploitation, has grown exponentially in the UK over the past decade, including among individuals of faith. This phenomenon has been increasingly studied within social science, but there is one area that is noticeably absent in existing scholarship: how religion intersects with veganism. Given the perceived centrality of animal bodies to Abrahamic religious observance, coupled with potential ethical similarities between veganism and religion as possible guiding forces in an individual’s life, this intersection is pertinent to study. I ask, how are Muslim, Jewish, and Christian vegans reshaping and redefining veganism and religiosity in late modern Great Britain? I recruited 36 UK-based vegans identifying as either Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, and conducted a multi-modal qualitative methods study in 2021, comprising interviews, diary methods, and virtual participant observation. I then thematically analysed the data, drawing on theories relating to Bourdieusian sociology, reflexive religiosity, and embodied ethics and values. This research reveals that religion and veganism are often mutually constituted, with veganism being understood by faith vegans as an ethical lifestyle that may be incorporated into their religious lifestyles. Religious ethics, values, and principles are reflexively interrogated, enabling participants to bring together faith and veganism. However, for many, religion is non-negotiable, so specific knowledge and support is sought to aid the negotiations that take place around religious practice. Through reflexive religiosity, religious practice becomes veganised, whilst veganism becomes faith based. I develop a series of concepts that help explain the characteristics of faith veganism, such as faith vegan identity, faith vegan community, faith vegan ethics, and faith vegan stewardship, as well as contribute new ways of theorising veganism: as transformative, mobile, reflexive, and more-than-political. Thus, this empirical study offers a new understanding of veganism, one that intersects with and is underpinned by religion, and which I term faith veganism.
Author(s): Spencer-Dene, Chloe
Date: 2021
Abstract: Faith schools remain a topic of debate in contemporary Britain. In 2017, faith schools accounted for 33.7% of state-funded mainstream schools. Faith schools differ from other state-funded mainstream schools in many ways. For example, they have the ability to control the content taught in their Religious Education and Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) syllabuses and have control over their admissions arrangements. This project explores the impact Jewish schools can have on one’s adult beliefs, through a small-scale study. This study analyses online questionnaire responses from 25 participants aged 19-27. All participants in this sample attended the same Jewish secondary school in London, referred to as ‘School A’. The responses show that faith schools can have a significant effect on one’s adult beliefs, due to the ways in which they teach pupils about different religions, political ideologies, and sexuality. This was found to be mainly due to the perceived exclusion of other religious beliefs and opinions. Despite this, most of the participants still felt able to express themselves and their beliefs. Moreover, this study’s participants felt that their adult beliefs were more significantly impacted by their family and community, rather than by their school. The study’s findings highlight a need to improve the inclusivity of SRE teaching in Jewish schools. This project recommends that further research is conducted on the impact of attending a Jewish secondary school on an individual’s beliefs later in life, and whether this is also representative of all UK faith schools.
Date: 2024
Abstract: This landmark study provides a detailed and updated profile of how British Jews understand and live their Jewish lives. It is based on JPR’s National Jewish Identity Survey, conducted in November-December 2022 among nearly 5,000 members of the JPR research panel. It is the largest survey of its kind and the most comprehensive study of Jewish identity to date.

The report, written by Dr David Graham and Dr Jonathan Boyd, covers a variety of key themes in contemporary Jewish life, including religious belief and affiliation, Jewish education and cultural consumption, Jewish ethnicity, Zionism and attachment to Israel, antisemitism, charitable giving and volunteering, and the relationship between community engagement and happiness.

Some of the key findings in this report:

Just 34% of British Jews believe in God ‘as described in the Bible’. However, over half of British Jewish adults belong to a synagogue and many more practice aspects of Jewish religious culture.
94% of Jews in the UK say that moral and ethical behaviour is an important part of their Jewish identities. Nearly 9 out of 10 British Jews reported making at least one charitable donation yearly.
88% of British Jews have been to Israel at least once, and 73% say that they feel very or somewhat attached to the country. However, the proportion identifying as ‘Zionists’ has fallen from 72% to 63% over the past decade.
Close to a third of all British Jewish adults personally experienced some kind of antisemitic incident in the year before the survey, a much higher number than that recorded in police or community incident counts.
Date: 2022
Abstract: The third of four mini-reports highlighting different aspects and findings from JPR’s major study ‘The Jewish identities of European Jews: what, why and how’, dives deeper into the different religious lifestyles and denominations of European Jews. Is there a single Jewish voice – or a majority Jewish voice – that represents the entire community? And if there is one – who holds it? In today’s political culture, understanding lifestyle differences within ethnic and religious groups is critical, both to understand their needs and concerns, and to address them.

The new mini-report highlights different aspects of how European Jews express their Jewishness through their choice of denomination – or lack of – and through different Jewish rituals:

• The most numerically significant subgroup is the ‘Just Jewish’ (38%), a general category indicating no clear denominational alignment, followed by the ‘Traditional’;
• European Jewry is undergoing a process of desecularisation: Today, across Europe, the share of more religious persons (Haredi and Orthodox) among younger age groups is substantially larger than among the older;
• The most traditional communities are those in Western Europe. In these communities, about 40%-60% of adult Jews identify as Traditional, Orthodox or Haredi;
• The less traditionally observant lifestyles are in the 74%-78% range in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, and reach 90% in Hungary and Poland;
• Attending a Passover Seder and fasting on Yom Kippur are observed by most Jews, including those outside of the Haredi/Orthodox fold. Lighting candles on Friday night and keeping kosher at home are also observed by a much broader range of Jews than just those from the Haredi and Orthodox communities.
The report is based on research conducted in twelve European Union Member States in 2018, which, together, are home to about 80% of the Jewish population of Europe. The study includes the opinions and experiences of over 16,000 respondents – the largest sample of Jews ever surveyed in Europe.
Author(s): Ostrovskaya, Elena
Date: 2016
Author(s): Ostrovskaya, Elena
Date: 2016
Author(s): Tübel, Susanne
Date: 2020
Author(s): Flax, Maya
Date: 2019
Abstract: Records of antisemitic incidents in the UK have reached an all-time high in the last 3-5 years. I have used antisemitism to mean in this study: any form of hostility or prejudice towards Jews based on their identity. The main objective of this study is to explore a section of the Jewish community, which has been marginalised in research on antisemitism: The Orthodox Jewish community. Being most visible, as identifiable Jews, within the Jewish community, they are also the ones most frequently targeted. Drawing on qualitative data resulting from 28 interviews with Orthodox Jewish individuals as well as five focus groups with key stakeholder, this thesis explored the lived experienced of antisemitism within the Orthodox Jewish community. It investigated the types of antisemitic incidents, the impacts and meaning which participants attached to these incidents, the perceptions of antisemitism, the coping mechanisms which were adopted in order to respond to the climate of antisemitism and the perceptions of agencies which respond to antisemitism. The thesis generated four main findings. First, the pervasive nature of antisemitism and its prevalence within the lives of Orthodox Jews. Second, the awareness that there is a resurgence of antisemitism and that there has been a shift in its manifestation, making it more institutionalised and therefore powerful. Third, that despite the high prevalence rate of incidents among the community, most respondents chose to normalise and accept the victimisation. My thesis proposes that the reasons respondents were able to show agency and to accept the incidents is due to their strong religious identity and their close 3 community ties. Finally, this study offers recommendations to support the Orthodox Jewish community; to address in a practical way some remediable issues uncovered by this study.
Date: 2015
Abstract: À travers un retour sur nos terrains ethnologiques respectifs, nous nous proposons de comprendre comment se construisent les espaces du culte dans les rapports de genre. Ces terrains sont situés dans la périphérie parisienne, à Sarcelles, qui a connu une concentration importante de « populations juives », émigrées d’Afrique du Nord, depuis une ou deux générations; à Marseille et dans sa périphérie, première région où les « populations musulmanes » émigrées se sont installées en métropole, qui aujourd’hui sont majoritairement d’origine maghrébine et comorienne. Mais ils sont essentiellement circonscrits par des pratiques juives et musulmanes qui peuvent être multisituées et plurielles davantage que par des sites particuliers.

Nous souhaitons entrer dans les rapports de genre autrement qu’à partir des rapports constitués, ceux qui attribuent, en particulier dans l’univers religieux, des places différentes aux hommes et aux femmes contribuant à construire des positions et des identifications sexuées, conscientes ou non. Nous interrogeons donc les positions affichées, montrant la dynamique des relations, des jeux, des non-dits, prenant en compte les interactions entre les deux positions sexuées. De même, tenant compte de la façon dont les sujets construisent l’espace du culte, nos contributions respectives portent sur une ethnologie du quotidien, privilégiant l’étude des interstices et des entre-deux établissant ainsi une comparaison entre nos deux terrains par l’analyse d’axes transversaux.
Nous entendons « espace du culte » au sens d’un espace, qui sans être nécessairement construit à cet effet, est cependant institué et clairement défini spatialement et temporellement. Nous ne restreignons pas l’espace du culte à celui de la synagogue ou de la mosquée, d’une part parce que les édifices officiels sont trop étroits pour contenir la masse des fidèles qui investissent d’autres lieux ; d’autre part, parce que dans le judaïsme, comme en islam, les femmes ne sont pas obligées de fréquenter les lieux de culte au même titre que les hommes. Nous analysons donc plusieurs types d’espace – intermédiaire, interstitiel, privé mais sacralisé par des rituels – ainsi que les modalités de leur investissement. Ceux qui sont officiellement dédiés au culte doivent leur caractère religieux à la pratique collective permettant au groupe de faire communauté le temps d’un office. Mais ces lieux sont investis aussi par des relations sociales profanes et marqués par une alternance de temps religieux et de temps ordinaires. La multifonctionnalité des espaces du culte induit des spatialités mobiles liées aux diverses temporalités. Les temporalités, dans les espaces du culte, alternent temps ordinaires et temps religieux. Il arrive que des interactions sociales liées aux temps ordinaires interviennent dans les temps religieux et inversement. Les temporalités ne sont donc pas fixes mais aussi fluctuantes que les espaces sont poreux.

Au delà des règles dogmatiques légiférant l’accès des observantes juives ou musulmanes aux espaces du culte et qui contribuent à assigner un statut différencié aux femmes, nous verrons que la position et les identifications sexuées se construisent aussi dans l’interaction à l’autre.

Dans cette contribution, nous n’avons pas cherché à neutraliser le genre des chercheures pas plus que celui des sujets. Les situations vécues ont des effets sur l’ethnologue qui l’amènent à négocier et reconstruire constamment sa posture. Elles sont décrites ici comme des situations interstitielles, « d’entre-deux » ; comme des révélateurs de la construction sociale des genres, d’enjeux de statuts et de pouvoir qui nous informent sur le contexte « minoritaire » de l’islam et du judaïsme dans la société laïque française.
Date: 2015
Date: 2003
Abstract: Background: Jewish culturally supported beliefs may discourage drinking and drunkenness as ways of socialising and coping with stress. Thus Jewish men under stress may be relatively more likely to become depressed, and less likely to use and abuse alcohol. This study is the first qualitative comparison of Jews and Protestants, men and women. It examines whether alcohol-related beliefs are consistent with the alcohol-depression hypothesis, i.e. that positive beliefs about alcohol use and effects are associated with high alcohol use and low depression.

Material and discussion: A thematic (interpretive phenomenological) analysis on open-ended question responses, from 70 Jews and 91 Protestants, and on semi-structured interviews with five Jews and four Protestants, identified three salient themes: the importance of retaining self-control; the pleasures of losing inhibitions; and the relations of alcohol-related behaviour to identity. Compared to Protestants, Jews described alcohol-related behaviour as threatening to self-control, loss of inhibition as unenjoyable and dangerous and distinguished between the kinds of drinking behaviours appropriate for Jews and others. Sub-themes for Protestant men were denial that drinking threatens self-control, and appropriateness of going to the pub.

Conclusions: The themes identified are not measurable using published research instruments. Alcohol-related behaviour may be a feature of Jewish identity. The beliefs identified are consistent with the alcohol-depression hypothesis.
Date: 2003
Date: 2000
Date: 2001
Date: 2015
Abstract: После крушения государственного социализма в Украине начинают происходить драматические трансформации религиозного ландшафта. В данной статье анализируется влияние религиозного возрождения на еврейское население Одессы. Рассматриваются различные стратегии поворота к вере, мотивация новообращенных, их попытки вжиться в иудаизм, те обсуждения традиции, в которые они в ходе этих процессов вовлекаются, а также влияние новой религиозности на внутри- и межсемейные взаимоотношения. Утверждается, что по большей части новособлюдающие иудеи восприняли иудаизм как новый способ быть евреем, а не как возвращение к своим семейным традициям. В целом она характеризует постсоветскую религиозность в Одессе как формирование режима «религиозной приверженности» в смысле особого состояния ума и пространства для выстраивания духовной жизни. Эта «религиозная приверженность» приводит к новым или несколько иным направлениям иудейской идентичности, уже не связанным с «полнотой» соблюдения набора правил. «Религиозная приверженность» может включать в себя полную, частичную, кратковременную или долговременную практику иудаизма, приобщение к нему в дополнение или в замещение прежних убеждений.
Author(s): Müller, Christine
Date: 2007