jpr / news           Spring, 2000

JPR and the Jewish voluntary sector:
third annual report-back session

Introducing the speakers, Rosalind Preston stated: ‘We have learnt a great deal together in the past two years. The Jewish voluntary sector is a huge, complex business and JPR’s research will enable you to draw up strategic plans based on firm, hard data, not supposition’. She stressed that the research was being carried out at the request of the community and was being financed by the community. This was the first time any such research has been carried out by the Jewish voluntary sector. No similar research has ever been conducted for any other religious or ethnic group.

Professor Barry Kosmin, JPR’s newly appointed Executive Director, described the seminar as a ‘report-back session’. He said it was now time to deliver the fruits of JPR’s first endeavours. The financial resources of the Jewish community were the fuel for the whole voluntary system—but money was only a means to an end, not the whole story. What mattered was kehillah, community, and the ethos of tzedakah, charity and social justice, which are so central to Judaism.

The financial resources of the Jewish 
voluntary sector

The first research project presented and discussed at the seminar was commissioned by JPR from the Centre for Applied Social Research at the University of Manchester.

Dr. Jacqueline Goldberg and Professor Peter Halfpenny

It provides a multi-dimensional analysis of the income and expenditure of the Jewish voluntary sector from all its funding streams and compares it to similar data about the UK voluntary sector as a whole. Professor Peter Halfpenny was responsible for the research, which will be published this spring.

Here are some of its main findings:

There are an estimated 1,910 financially independent Jewish voluntary organizations, of which over half were established in the 1980s or 1990s, making it a surprisingly young sector. Less surprising is the fact that 76% of the organizations are based in London and the South East.

Income
The total income of the Jewish voluntary sector in 1997 was £503.6 million. 4% of organizations had an income of more than £1 million and contributed 70% of the total income.

Expenditure
The best estimate from this study of the total expenditure of the UK Jewish voluntary sector in 1997 was £386 million.

Comparisons with the UK voluntary sector
There are many similarities when comparing the patterns of income of the Jewish voluntary sector with the UK voluntary sector as a whole. However, the Jewish voluntary sector obtains more of its income from individuals and less from government. 

Patterns of expenditure are also similar, although staff costs take a somewhat larger proportion in the Jewish voluntary sector (probably reflecting the high proportion of labour intensive services such as welfare and education).

 The Jewish voluntary sector represents about 4% of the UK voluntary sector income, but this is about eight times what one would expect in terms of the population figures.

 Grant-making trusts and the Jewish voluntary sector
A preview of the second research project was presented by charity consultant Ernest Schlesinger and is based on a study of the 596 grant making trusts which provide at least some of their funds to Jewish causes. 

Mr Schlesinger reported that of the 239 grant-making trusts analyzed in detail, almost £70 million is given to Jewish causes. The most significant sums of money go to the strictly orthodox community and to Israel. He recommended that the Jewish voluntary sector as a whole could learn lessons from the strictly orthodox community in terms of how funds are organized and distributed.

Dr Jacqueline Goldberg, JPR Research Director, described how the next stages of JPR’s project on Long-Term Planning for British Jewry fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle:

Governance of the UK Jewish voluntary sector
This research is being undertaken by Margaret Harris, Professor of Voluntary Sector Organisation, Aston University, together with Colin Rochester, a freelance researcher as well as consultancy leader at the Roehampton Institute, University of Surrey. JPR will report back on the research on Governance at the 4th annual seminar for the Jewish voluntary sector, which will be held at the end of 2000.

Services provided by the UK Jewish voluntary sector
This is being undertaken by Dr Oliver Valins, JPR Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, who is ‘mapping’ education and welfare for the elderly.

Human Resources in the UK Jewish voluntary sector
This research will be carried out by Dr Jacqueline Goldberg.

Appeal to communal leaders
Jacqueline Goldberg appealed to all Jewish communal leaders to help JPR by responding to requests for information, and by participating in focus groups, interviews, seminars and conferences.

A powerful appeal was also made by JPR Chairman, Peter L Levy OBE, in his concluding remarks. He called for the community to match its resources with its needs. Voluntary organizations and grant-making trusts should endeavour to avoid duplication and to co-operate with each other.

Peter Levy recommended promoting greater awareness of Jewish communal needs and more education within the Jewish voluntary sector about the need for compliance with Charity Commissioners and Inland Revenue requirements. He also appealed for genera-tional continuity in Jewish philanthropy.

He commended the research findings as fundamental, pivotal and unique, predicting that at the end of the Long-Term Planning Project, there would be a very clear picture of the present and future needs and resources of the Jewish community.

For the full report click here

JPR pays tribute to its founding director

Antony Lerman (pictured left) left JPR last November to become Director of European Programmes for Yad Hanadiv. JPR Chairman Peter Levy said: ‘We are very sorry to lose Tony Lerman, whose contribution to JPR has been immeasurable. It is due to him that JPR is in such a strong position today. But we are delighted that he is going to Yad Hanadiv with whom we work closely and enjoy such a positive relationship’.

Tony was Director of JPR since its establishment in February 1996. Before that, from 1990, he was Director of its forerunner, the Institute of Jewish Affairs, which he joined in 1979. Building on the high academic standards which had been the Institute’s hallmark for fifty years, Tony transformed the IJA into a policy-oriented research body. His vision for the Institute went hand-in-hand with his vision for the Jewish community—both needed to adapt to the fast changing world. Up-to-date reports on issues affecting world Jewry and cutting edge research anticipating future trends became the order of the day. In the debate on the Jewish agenda in the 1990s he stressed that Jewish interests had to be seen in a global context. The logical next step, which he masterminded, was the transformation of the Institute into JPR, an independent Jewish think-tank.

He began to take a special interest in antisemitism after the collapse of communism and conceived the idea of an annual country-by- country survey which the IJA published for the first time in 1992 as the Antisemitism World Report. He was general editor of the Report, and also joint editor of the journal on racism and antisemitism, Patterns of Prejudice. He served on The Runnymede Trust’s Commission on Antisemitism in the early 1990s, and in 1998, he was appointed to the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. He is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Imperial War Museum’s permanent Holocaust exhibition.

At Tony’s farewell party, at which past and present members of staff, Board members, and colleagues from other Jewish communal organizations gathered to pay tribute to him, Tony expressed his warm appreciation of JPR’s lay leaders, its Chairman and Board, patrons and professional staff for their support and encouragement over the years and predicted that JPR had great opportunities ahead.

His successor at JPR, Professor Barry Kosmin, praised his leadership qualities, which he had developed during his years in Habonim. He said Tony epitomized that Zionist youth movement’s ethos—acharei (literally ‘after me!’ or leading from the front). With modesty, good humour and an innate talent to lead, Tony set the standard of menschlichkeit for communal organizations. His contribution will have a lasting impact on Anglo-Jewry.

The staff and Board of JPR join in sending Tony every good wish for his future career.

The professional team at JPR

Changes at the helm In November Professor Barry Kosmin was appointed Director of JPR in succession to Antony Lerman.

Barry joined JPR as Director of Research in 1996 after occupying academic and Jewish communal posts in the United States. He directed the historic US 1990 National Jewish Population Survey for the Council of Jewish Federations. At the City University of New York Graduate Center he was on the faculty of the doctoral program in Sociology and was Director of the Mandel L Berman Institute - North American Jewish Data Bank. Prior to moving to the United States he was Director of the Research Unit of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Barry Kosmin said: ‘Tony and I have the same vision of JPR’s future so the key word for this changeover is ‘continuity’. We have been working on a number of highly significant projects together, both in the UK and abroad, and I intend to ensure that they come to fruition and make the maximum impact on policy-making.’

New staff appointments
In a move that Professor Kosmin described as ‘assembling a talented new team for a new era’ JPR has apointed two directors and a research fellow to advance its programming in the months ahead.

Dr Jacqueline Goldberg, who has been research fellow at JPR since 1996, has been appointed Director of Research. She received her PhD in health psychology at Bristol University and has worked as part-time lecturer, and a consultant for a management consultancy. She recently participated in the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Program in Sweden.

At JPR she has co-authored three policy reports, The social attitudes of unmarried young Jews in contemporary Britain, The attachment of British Jews to Israel, and Patterns of charitable giving among British Jews. She also directed and co-authored the report released last October and published in conjunction with the University of Cape Town on the Jews of the ‘new South Africa’.

Dr Winston Pickett, who joined JPR in March as co-ordinator of the Commission on the Representation of the Interests of the British Jewish Community, has been appointed Director of External Relations. He will also oversee the JPR Israel programme.

Dr Pickett is a recent graduate of the Jerusalem Fellows, a two-year development programme for Jewish educators. He holds a PhD in Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literature fromHebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. A journalist for more than a decade, he lived in Israel for three years, where he wrote for the The Jerusalem Report and Moment magazine.

Dr Oliver Valins joined JPR last November as a research fellow for the project on Long-Term Planning for British Jewry, examining the services provided by the UK Jewish voluntary sector, particularly in the areas of education and welfare. He holds a PhD in geography from the University of Glasgow, where he wrote his thesis on contemporary ultra-orthodox communities in Britain.

The complete picture

Lena Stanley-Clamp is the Director for Public Activities and Administration. She holds a degree in history from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where she also completed her post-graduate studies in education.

She lectured in French at Maryland University’s European Division. She has been a contributor to Encylopaedia Judaica Yearbooks for many years and to Year Book International on world Jewry. She is a Council Member of the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies.

Lena’s responsibilities at JPR include the organization of international seminars and conferences, such as the conference on Jewish Culture for the 21st Century held in Paris last year, and contacts with Jewish communities abroad. Her research interests at JPR focus on the Jewish Culture programme and European Jewry.

Judith Russell joined JPR in 1995 as Development Officer and Editor of jpr/news. She previously ran the office of the Reform Foundation Trust, edited the Diary of the Sternberg Centre and helped edit the journal Manna.

A graduate in modern languages from Durham University, she has also worked for the Foreign Rights Department of Octopus Books and for Haymarket Publishing
Judith’s responsibilities at JPR include organising fundraising events and raising awareness of the Institute’s work through its newsletter.

Barbara Rosenbaum is co-editor of the quarterly journal Patterns of Prejudice, and editor of the JPR Internet publication Antisemitism and Xenophobia Today  She has previously worked as a literary scholar, journalist and editor, and one volume of her three-volume English Literary Manuscripts 1801-1900 (Mansell 1986- 1994) was awarded the British Academy’s Crawshay prize for scholarship in 1990.

Christine Arthur combines her responsibilities as JPR Membership and Subscriptions Secretary with other administrative duties. As receptionist, she is the first port of call for visitors and callers to Wimpole Street. Christine is a Fine Art graduate.

Patricia Schotten is part-time Archivist working on the Antisemitism in the World Today project. She has a degree in librarianship.

The JPR permanent staff is complemented by Research Fellows (profiles to follow in the next issue of jpr/news) and a number of volunteers. JPR wishes to thank most warmly Dr Geoffrey Asherson, Jo Behrens, Malli Katz and Herzl Marks, who give generously of their time to monitor the international press and process newspaper cuttings.

Jewish identity, Israeli identity:  
perspectives past and present

This is an abridged version of the Second Morris Leigh Memorial Lecture, which was delivered to a JPR audience in November by Professor Anita Shapira and was chaired by Lord Haskel, JPR Deputy Chairman.

When Zionism first appeared on the stage of Jewish history and set about creating adistinctive set of symbols and myths, it drew on the existing storehouse of Jewish religiosity. 

On the one hand the Zionists rebelled against Jewish tradition and all that it represented: passivity, acquiescence in fate, renunciation of independent political existence. 

On the other hand, all the components of Jewish nationalism were founded on the millennia-old religious myth of the Jewish people. Zionism took the ancient sacred language of Hebrew, in which the Jews had held an ongoing dialogue with God, and transformed it into a practical, secular vehicle. It took the Bible, an ancient heroic epic, and turned it into a guidebook for the Land of Israel. 

Zionism infused the religious holidays with new national, secular and rational meaning, while excising God from the picture. Religion was seen as an anachronism. The secular and the religious camps each regarded the other as a passing phenomenon, soon to be consigned to oblivion. 

There were two questions which were never seriously debated under the Yishuv: ‘Who is a Jew?’ and ‘How do you define Jewish culture?’

Who is a Jew?
This question had no real significance as long as there was no Jewish state. In an era when being a Jew was regarded as far from being a great privilege, an intuitive identification with the Jewish people and Jewish history was enough to legitimize a person as belonging. The decision to be a Jew was felt to be a subjective, individual choice, not a classification imposed from without by means of objective definitions. 

In the 1930s it was standard policy to accept as a Jew anyone who cast his lot with the Jewish people. Large numbers of refugees were welcomed to Palestine without subjecting their Jewish credentials to scrutiny. Survivors of the Shoah often had non-Jewish spouses. Both the orthodox and non-religious tried to keep the matter from coming to a head. At a time of profound existential crisis, the authorities were prepared to go easy on certain loaded issues, if only to allow life to return to normal. Problems of deserted wives, illegitimate children and mixed marriages were settled quietly, or pushed into the background. A sense of national solidarity prevailed.

How to define Jewish culture?
The concept of Jewish culture is essentially secular, since it covertly assumes the option of other cultures, and a comparison between one culture and another. It is not something handed down by divine commandment; rather it is a product of free choice and human creation. 

What then constitutes Jewish culture? Should it be moored in a set of values that are Jewish in essence, as Ahad Ha-Am, the leading Zionist culturalist, argued? Or is Jewish culture the totality of everything created by Jews? Is it in the medium of one of the Jewish cultural languages (Hebrew, in particular)? Finally, who is empowered to determine what values are Jewish? 

For more than half a century, such questions received an unofficial answer in what was termed the ‘culture of the Labour movement’. The yearning for radical reform, tikkun olam, the desire for social justice and a utopian society was held up as a specifically Jewish virtue anchored in tradition and Jewish history. The first two generations of the founders of the Labour movement in Palestine were imbued with traditional Judaism. Their parents were observant Jews and their basic schooling had been in the religious cheder. They were fired with a sense of mission and saw themselves as the legitimate successors to the chain of preceding generations, giving a contemporary expression to time-honoured Jewish values. They believed they had removed God from the picture but nevertheless succeeded in preserving Jewish ethics and a commitment to social justice.

The problem of preserving cultural continuity and psychological identification with Jewish history only arose with the emergence of the first generation of Jews raised in Palestine, for whom Jewish tradition was a closed book. They rebelled against Zionist concepts and sought a different identity. Whereas their parents had come to their nationalism and socialism from the traditional shtetl, the new generation jettisoned Jewish tradition as a yardstick for identity, and adopted a land-based ‘Canaanite’ ideology, assuming that Jews would hold sway over the entire Fertile Crescent. Yet while they emancipated themselves from the shackles of Judeo-Christian values, they failed to create an alternative ethical system.

During the first decades of the state, secular culture was clearly predominant. The Yom Kippur War was a turning point that marked a loss of self-confidence among the proponents of secular Israeli culture. It also precipitated a loss of confidence in the cultural and social spheres. At the same time, with the decline of the Soviet Union, socialism appeared increasingly irrelevant and no longer offered a blueprint for a better tomorrow. In time, an alternative appeared: the wholesale import of American consumer culture, coupled with its individualistic ideology and the pursuit of the good life. By its very nature, however, this new culture was unable to create a community of enthusiastic followers. Its repudiation of the notion that the individual was responsible for the community and its nascent narcissism contributed to the general loss of direction and overall decline in self-confidence in secular Israeli identity—all at a time when religious nationalism was enjoying renewed impetus.

The paradox of Israeli democracy
The Declaration of Independence proclaims Israel as both the state of the Jews and as a democracy guaranteeing equality to all its citizens. The tension between the two has bedevilled the country ever since. 

The Law of Return gave preference to any Jew born in Britain or Morocco over an Arab born in Jaffa and driven into exile as a result of the 1948 war. In appearance, Israel is a democratic state, with its citizens enjoying equal status before the law. In actual fact, however, true equality, in terms of obligations or rights, does not exist. Arab citizens do not serve in the army. Certain perks, such as financial benefits granted to army veterans, are not extended to them. At the height of the Israeli-Arab conflict, it was impossible to imagine Arabs serving in the armed forces or in sensitive positions in the security apparatus. Arab settlements have been short-changed and discriminated against for decades.

However, the very fact that such issues are now on the public agenda, points to a thaw in the question of civil status of Israel’s Arab citizenry. This is a direct result of the deepening peace process and its impact on public consciousness.

Challenge to national icons
The state of Israel was created as the state of the Jews, with unmistakable Zionist symbols as its official insignia: the blue and white flag, the Ha Tikvah anthem whose words speak solely of the Jews and their hopes, and the menorah. Such inherently Jewish national icons are right now being challenged by certain Jewish and Arab groups.

The old Ashkenazi, secular and European identity, so dominant for years, is in a state of siege. There is a kind of sectoralization afoot. Soon we will speak of a hyphenated identity, as is so common in the United States (Oriental-Israelis, Russian-Israelis, Arab-Israelis, female-Israelis). And hyphenated culture implies struggle.

The prodigious success of Israel at the end of twentieth century has now made it the preferred destination for many in the third world and Eastern Europe. Such migration poses a threat to Jewish identity and could undermine the notion of who is a Jew. As a result, urgent questions are being raised about whether the time is ripe to redefine the Israeli law of citizenship and make it more restrictive than the liberal version currently in effect.

Israeli identity is still inchoate—a dough not yet fully kneaded.

Perhaps a hundred years from now there will be a local indigenous identity in Israel, moored to a secure sense of place, its ethos an amalgam of western, Jewish (both in the religious and secular senses) and Mediterranean cultures. At present, Israeli identity remains a synthesis in dynamic disequilibrium between two conceptions of self—one attached to culture and history, and the other linked to space and place. For now, the latter identity seems to be gaining in importance and depth. The more generations of Israelis are born in Israel the greater will become the sense of self riveted to place.

Over the long term, we can only hope that Israelis will relate to their identity as something self-evident. This does not imply that it will become homogenous; rather, it will mean different things to different people. Identity does not mean uniformity. What it does presuppose is a basic trust and solidarity, as well as a shared bedrock of common culture.

Finally, it is impossible to shut our eyes to the problem created by the demise of socialism: the search for meaning. Of all the tasks facing Israeli identity, to embark on that quest is perhaps the most difficult and important of all.

Shades of grey: 
Israeli identity and Israel-Diaspora relations

Expanding on some of the themes explored in the Morris Leigh Memorial Lecture (see section above), Professor Anita Shapira addressed a policy seminar the following day which was chaired by JPR Board Member Lady Ellen Dahrendorf.

From left: Lady Dahrendorf and Professor Anita Shapira

Participants at the seminar included Jonathan Ariel, Executive Director for Education, UJIA, Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian, Professor Efraim Karsh of the Department of War Studies, Kings College, Julia Pascal, playwright and theatre director, Peter L Levy OBE, JPR Chairman, and Felix Posen, Member of JPR Council.

Professor Shapira opened her discussion with a provocative question: how can there be a coherent Israeli identity today when the country’s six million population includes one million Arabs, one million Russians and one million Haredi—three distinct groups who see themselves as Israelis in radically different ways?

Complicating this picture further, continued Professor Shapira, is a wider Jewish world that has identity issues of its own—a world where external existential threats are diminishing, along with the focus they gave to a sense of Jewish solidarity, while Israel itself was no longer a ‘maiden in distress’.

Mutuality based on reciprocity
Old Israeli-diaspora prejudices are beginning to break down, she said. Most educated Israelis no longer look down on diaspora Jews as inferior. By the same token, American Jewry can no longer cast itself in the role of a rich uncle towards its ‘poorer’ relatives. In place of these stereotypes, Professor Shapira sees the beginnings of a desire on both sides to forge a new relationship built on mutuality, reciprocity, an open exchange of ideas, and an active commitment to each other.

These changes can only be brought about through education. As a first step, she advocated, the younger generations in Israel and the diaspora must get to know each other, and not speak about each other in stereotypes. Diaspora Jews should look beyond the picture of Israel as a kind of ‘history Disneyland’.

Responsibility on both sides
Israel is in the painful process of readjusting its collective memory. It is high time that its educational system and public face unpleasant facts about its history. That Israel is now prepared to revisit the past is a sign of strength and maturity. This applies especially to the time of the War of Independence, when thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee the country; text books need to be rewritten to reflect this.

If this historical re-examination is to be truthful, all aspects of the debate must be opened up. According to Professor Shapira, no-one in the Israeli government acknowledges Israeli responsibility, while the Arabs also routinely bury facts. It is important to remember that in the early stages of the 1948 war, Jews were also forced to become refugees and were driven out of areas under Arab rule and their homes were destroyed.

Many shades of grey in the secular world
Returning to the issue of Jewish and Israeli identity, Professor Shapira argued for a more inclusive approach. As the majority of Jews today are secular, Jewish secularism should be recognized as a legitimate form of Jewish identity.

Raising another difficult question, she wanted to know what distinguishes a Jew from a non-Jew today. ‘Once we would have said it was religion, or the state, or the Shoah— but what holds Jews together now?’

In the debate that followed, JPR Director Professor Barry Kosmin expressed dissatisfaction with the binary description of Arab and Jew, secular and orthodox, Israeli Jew and diaspora Jew. He said that such hard and fast distinctions were breaking down in the way that individuals actually conduct their lives. Large numbers of Israelis spend long periods in the diaspora, while many diaspora Jews spend long periods of time in Israel. Many Jews hold more than one passport. For some, the Israel/diaspora dichotomy no longer fits.

By the same token, Professor Kosmin said, true secularisation means that religious leadership no longer has authority over others, or that people have no religious practice at all. Yet recent surveys have demonstrated that 80 per cent of Jewish Israelis occupy a religious middle ground: 85 per cent participate in a Seder, while 75 per cent fast on Yom Kippur (as compared to 65 per cent in the United States). In the light of these figures, he argued, the majority of Israeli Jews can hardly be termed secular at all. There were many shades of grey between the poles defining ‘religious’ and ‘secular’.

JPR honours two valued supporters

A leading businessman and noted philanthropist, Sir Stanley Kalms, and a prominent supporter of numerous charities, Mrs Manja Leigh, have been appointed Honorary Vice-Presidents of JPR in grateful recognition of their involvement with the Institute over many years.

Sir Stanley Kalms, chairman of Dixons Group plc, has long been involved in corporate and private charitable activities, serving as governor of Dixons Bradford City Technology College, visiting professor at the University of North London Business School and director of the Centre for Policy Studies.

A trustee of the Economic Education Trust, Sir Stanley is a sponsor of the Chair in Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at London Business School and of the Centre for Applied Jewish Ethics in Business and the Professions in Jerusalem. He is co-founder and sponsor of Immanuel College, and past Chairman of the Jewish Educational Development Trust and Jews’ College.

In 1992, A Time for Change, a review of the activities of the United Synagogue, was published under Sir Stanley’s aegis. He has also written numerous articles in the media and journals on EMU and corporate governance. Sir Stanley was awarded a knighthood in 1996.

Mrs Manja Leigh Hon RCM is a Governor of Tel Aviv University. She supports the Royal College of Music in London and the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem and serves as trustee of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Mrs Leigh established the annual Morris Leigh Memorial Lecture at JPR in memory of her late husband, JPR Patron and lay leader Morris Leigh. (A report of the Second Annual Morris Leigh Memorial Lecture can be found above.)

Combating Holocaust denial through the law

Holocaust denial remains a matter of serious concern and debate in Britain following the opening of the libel action brought by David Irving against the American academic Professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. In January the Home Office Minister Mike O’Brien told Members of Parliament that the UK government had no immediate plans to intro-duce new legislation on Holocaust denial.

The JPR Law Panel, which was set up to consider how Holocaust denial might be combated by legal means, has now completed its deliberations and its report will be published later this spring. The Law Panel’s Chairman, Dr Anthony Julius, and JPR Director Professor Barry Kosmin are planning to present the Report to the Home Office. Details of its recommendations will

feature in the next issue of  jpr/news.

Commission on Representation nears completion

The Commission on the Representation of the Interests of the British Jewish Community, which was established by JPR, has recently been completing its consultation with the Jewish organizations that carry out representation, as well as with those organizations to whom representation is made.

The Commission was set up to examine how the interests of the British Jewish community are represented—on various levels within the community, among Jewish communities elsewhere and in the wider society—and to make recommendations as to how the representation of those interests can best be organized for the future. The Commission has gained unprecedented entry into virtually every sector of the community. During this consultative process, it has evaluated the profound cultural, political and structural changes taking place on the social, religious, political and constitutional level—and how those changes impact on current representational arrangements.

With the inquiry phase successfully completed, the Commission is presently drafting its report, which it will present to the JPR Board in March, prior to its formal launch. Commission members hope that the dissemination of the report will spark debate and full consideration in the Jewish community and beyond.

The Complexities of Antisemitism and Racism

This issue includes three papers that may appear to have little in common. Cas Mudde provides a broad overview of extreme-right parties in Eastern Europe, Florence Haegel looks at the expression of xenophobia on a Paris housing estate and Lena Berggren presents a case-study of a significant Swedish antisemite. In fact there is a common thread to the papers: they all high-light the complexities of antisemitism and racism and the need to study it in context.

It is this need that is the raison d’être of JPR’s web-site Antisemitism and Xenophobia Today, a continually updated on-line information source about antisemitism and racism worldwide, which provides country by country reports of incidents in their fullest possible context.

Patterns of Prejudice is devoted to the study of national and international conditions, causes and manifestations of racial, religious and ethnic discrimination and prejudice, with particular reference to discrimination and prejudice against Jews. A journal of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, it is produced in association with the Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library and the Parkes Library of the University of Southampton.

Information about subscriptions can be obtained from Sage Publications Ltd, 6 Bonhill Street, London EC2A 4PU, Tel. No. 0171-374 0645. The journal is also available on-line to subscribers.

Click here for The Antisemitism and Xenophobia Today web-site.

Visitors to Wimpole Street

Ira Stoll, Managing Editor of the New York Jewish weekly newspaper Forward, came to London to interview Professor Barry Kosmin. Barry headed the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey in the United States which showed a 52% interfaith marriage rate. Barry expressed concern during the interview that a move may be under way to slant the 2000 Population Survey in order to show that efforts to reinforce Jewish identity in America were succeeding. Barry was described by Forward as ‘one of the deans of the field of Jewish demography’ and his comments are likely to heighten the scrutiny under which the leaders of the 2000 Survey are operating.

 Dr Jerry Hochbaum of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, New York, met JPR staff to discuss possible collaboration on future projects.

Jean-Jacques Wahl and Danièle Neumann of the Alliance Israélite Universelle returned to JPR to discuss common projects in the field of Jewish culture.

Varda Shiffer, Director of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership in Jerusalem, met with the Long-Term Planning team to hear about JPR’s proposed research on the provision and uptake of formal education in the UK Jewish community. Jewish Care Chief Executive Designate

Jeremy Oppenheim, accompanied by senior lay leaders and members of his professional management team sought the views of JPR’s Long-Term Planning team regarding Jewish Care’s future plans for expansion of its services and facilities.