jpr / news                    Winter 2002

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Jews in the London metropolis: results of the largest-ever survey of British Jews

 

The publication in December 2002 of JPR’s A Portrait of Jews in London and the South-East: A Community Study * provides an accurate and up-to-date picture of the Jewish population in the London metropolis. Prepared in conjunction with the National Centre for Social Research, the study is based on 2,965 completed questionnaires from across a broad social spectrum. It provides much previously unavailable information that can be used by planners and decision-makers in the Jewish voluntary sector to benefit the Jewish community as a whole.

 

 

For the most part, the survey portrays a relatively affluent group of people with middle-class values and lifestyles. It is also middle-aged. However, the survey reveals over and again that the Jewish population is far from uniform and has a complex social and religious fabric. Even secular Jews still observe many customs that are of a religious origin. London’s Jews have long since ceased to be just a religious group. Ethnicity overrides belief—except for the conviction that being Jewish is important.

 

Some selected findings

• London Jews are located high on the socio-economic scale. Of those respondents currently in work, two-thirds were employers in large organizations, or in managerial or professional positions, or in higher technical and supervisory jobs.

 

• The Jewish population is health-conscious. 48% of the respondents exercise regularly. Jews are much less likely to smoke or drink alcohol than the average Briton.

 

• Most people donate some money to charity, mostly in small amounts. Household income and religiosity were the main determining factors in making charitable donations. Jewish causes in the UK were accorded highest priority by 41% of the sample.

 

• There is a propensity to make a will and make bequests. 78% have made a will and 24% of these included gifts or legacies to charities.

 

• London’s Jews have the time and disposable income to participate in a variety of leisure pursuits. There are high levels of Jewish cultural consumption (see fig 1).

 

 

• Computer use and Internet access is very high, even among the retired population.

 

• No dramatic changes are foreseen in the geographic distribution of London Jews over the next decade. This has important ramifications for the planning of new facilities, or closing of existing ones, in the areas of schooling and care for older and infirm people.

 

• A majority of the sample expressed a secular rather than a religious outlook, despite the fact that traditional Jews and mainstream Orthodox synagogue members are over-represented in this sample (see fig 2).

 

 

Further detailed studies on the significance of religious outlook, on tenure and residential mobility and on care for older people are in the advanced planning stages. The data collected in this study can be analysed and the results made available to a variety of agencies and organizations to suit their specific planning and development needs.

 

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Jewish Culture Mapping Jewish culture in Europe  today:
a pilot project

 

JPR has published a report* which takes the pulse of a perceptible Jewish cultural revival in Europe and sets out to unravel its scope and substance. This project was born out of an awareness that very little had been done to document this very contemporary Jewish phenomenon. Though a ‘Jewish cultural renaissance’ in Europe had become something of a catchphrase, where were the facts and figures to support it?

 

The project was begun in 2000 on the initiative and with the generous support of Frank Green, a Patron of JPR

The report categorizes and quantifies the breadth of this phenomenon in four European countries—Poland, Sweden, Italy and Belgium. It is envisaged that this pilot study will lead to a wider investigation into contemporary Jewish culture in Europe and will function as a prototype for future research. The four countries were selected because the Jewish community in each is relatively small and Jewish cultural production is therefore reasonably easy to survey. They also cover a wide geographical range and represent a varied cross-section of European societies with contrasting Jewish histories and traditions.

There is little doubt that a Jewish cultural scene has flourished over the past decade in Europe. Klezmer music, once thought to have died out with the shtetl, has experienced a highly successful revival. Jewish cultural festivals are becoming annual fixtures in towns and cities across Europe, while new films, plays and art exhibitions on Jewish themes are also regularly showcased.

 

The Holocaust emerged as the most prominent theme in Jewish cultural productions in each of the countries, despite the time that has elapsed since the Second World War. Is the world of Jewish culture really experiencing as creative a renewal as is often claimed if so much of Jewish cultural activity is concerned with the essentially negative perceptions bound up with the Holocaust and antisemitism? The report points out that the lessons of the Holocaust are often employed creatively as a means of transmitting a positive message of tolerance to challenge oppression or racism.

 

Another clear trend was that music emerged as the most popular cultural form across all four countries. The report also highlighted the increased involvement of non-Jewish artists, performers, organizations and funders in all aspects of Jewish culture, thus allowing for the expansion of Jewish culture into the mainstream cultural sphere. It stressed that those involved in Jewish culture must look to official bodies and statutory sources, as well as to sources within the Jewish community for funding.

Flyer from the ‘Jewish traces in Oostende’ exhibition, 2000,  reproduced with the permission of the Jewish Museum of Belgium

Flyer for a production of ‘Tevjie and I’, performed in Italian, Yiddish and Russian in Palermo, Italy, 2000, reproduced with the permission of Ignazio Trapani, Idearte.

 

The report points to one conclusion: Jewish culture in Europe is alive and well—and growing—despite the relatively small size of most European Jewish communities.

 

* The report is available from JPR at £7.50 or can be accessed on the JPR website.

 

 

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Building on Faith: Faith buildings in neighbourhood renewal

 

In Spring 2002 the Church Urban Fund invited JPR to participate in a study of neighbourhood renewal in contemporary Britain, with the aim of exploring the rolefaith buildings across the traditions of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism to demonstrate their potential in community regeneration.

 

Set up in response to the need for urban regeneration in English towns and cities, the Church Urban Fund supports practical action to help the disadvantaged and marginalized. Appreciating how faith buildings can provide a focus for activity and a safe place for people to come together, the Fund commissioned Building on Faith; a film and book* have now been produced and a conference took place in September 2002 at which they were launched.

 

Buildings featured in the study include:

^• a mental health project in a church in Manchester

^• a nursery run by a black-led church in Birmingham

^• a Grade 2* listed Anglican Church opening to the community in Camden Town

^• a Hindu Temple and community centre in Preston

^• a Jewish day care scheme for the elderly in Stepney

^• a Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in West London

^• a Sikh Gurdwara in Ilford.

 

The study on the use of faith buildings by British Jews was written for JPR by Ernest Schlesinger, under the guidance of Professor Stanley Waterman. It reviews the history of buildings in which current usage has evolved in response to the changing needs and size of its client population, and is illustrated with two examples:

 

1. The Settlement and the Beaumont Centre in Stepney Green, which provides a ‘beacon of Jewish life, a lifesaver’ (in the words of a resident) in what remains a highly deprived area.

 

2. The Manchester Jewish Museum (formerly the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue) was founded in 1874. In 1984 it re-opened as a Museum, attracting 15,000 mostly non-Jewish visitors each year. Its strength is that the building itself is used to help non-Jews learn about Jewish belief and practice.

 

Building on Faith includes recommendations and guidelines for faith groups, government, regeneration agencies and other partners and funders. 

 

Across the five different faiths a remarkably similar pattern emerged of dedicated and enthusiastic people serving others with little regard to the cost to themselves. The Church Urban Fund concluded that there was much to celebrate here.

 

* Copies are available from the Church Urban Fund, 1 Millbank, London SW1P 3JZ at £10.

 

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The Jewish Day School Marketplace:
the attitudes of Jewish parents in Greater London and the South East towards formal education

 

A JPR report, to be published in January 2003*, draws upon the survey of Jews living in London and the South East and examines in-depth the attitudes and characteristics of Jewish parents who are the current and potential users of formal educational services. 

 

Taking a sample of parents, the report assesses who they are and examines how they would like to educate their children. It focuses in particular on the views of respondents with children aged 16 or under, both those who have chosen to educate at least one of their children at a Jewish day school, and those who opted for non-Jewish schools.

 

In planning new educational facilities, little thought is generally given to asking parents in a systematic way what they would like. The aim of this report is to ascertain the views of Jewish parents. The data provides a picture of the factors that determine how parents choose between different options and their views on how they would like to educate their children. Arguably for the first time, communal educational planners will now have much of the information they require to plan services that are in keeping with the needs and wants of their users, as well as to be able to attract potential new ‘clients’.

 

Some highlights of the findings

^• The option most favoured by London Jewish parents is non-Jewish independent schools.

^• Jewish day school parents are generally positive about the effects of Jewish schools on the Jewish identity of their children, although a sizeable minority accept that their children are insulated from the real world.

^• In selecting secondary education, Jewish day school parents most value school ethos, followed by the number of Jewish children in the school. General school parents consider academic standards most important, and only then school ethos.

 

 

^• Overall, half of all parents believe that a Jewish secondary school would be fine if it had a secular cultural outlook.

 

* Copies will be available from JPR at £7.50,  or can be accessed on the JPR website.

 

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Thoughts of a Jewish Justice on Jews who paved the way

 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

This is an abridged version of the Fifth William Frankel Lecture, which was delivered to a JPR audience in September by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States and was chaired by Lord Rothschild GBE OM.   Born in Brooklyn, New York, Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Columbia Law School in 1959. In 1972 she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Considered by some ‘the legal architect of the modern women’s movement’, she came to be seen as one of the pre-eminent players in legal reform. In 1993 she was nominated by President Clinton to serve on the Supreme Court. She became only the second female justice appointed to the Court.

The first Jewish Justice manqué

Judah P. Benjamin might have preceded Justice Brandeis by 63 years as the first Jewish member of the U.S. Supreme Court. His career path is intriguing. Born in 1811 in the Virgin Islands, Benjamin grew up in South Carolina the son of Sephardi Jews and became a celebrated lawyer in pre-Civil War New Orleans. Though his boyhood was steeped in Jewish culture, he married outside the faith and did not observe Jewish laws or holidays. Yet the world in which he lived would not allow him to escape his Jewish identity.

 

In 1853, President Fillmore nominated Benjamin to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. However, elected the preceding year as one of Louisiana’s two U.S. Senators, Benjamin declined the nomination, which suggests that the Supreme Court had not yet become the co-equal branch of the U.S. Government it is today. Benjamin was the first acknowledged Jew to hold a Senate seat; he was elected to a second six-year term in 1858. (That was the year Lionel Rothschild, first elected to Parliament in 1847, at last took his seat, despite his long refusal to swear loyalty ‘on the true faith of a Christian.’) In 1861, in the wake of Louisiana’s secession from the Union, Benjamin resigned from the Senate.

 

Benjamin is perhaps best known in the U.S. for his stirring orations in the pre-Civil War Senate on behalf of Southern interests—expressing sentiments with which we would no doubt disagree today and later for his service as Attorney General, Secretary of War, and finally Secretary of State in the Confederate cabinet. Although Benjamin achieved high office, he lived through a time of virulent antisemitism. Political enemies called him Judas Iscariot Benjamin. He was ridiculed for his Jewishness in the press, by military leaders on both sides and even by fellow Confederate politicians. 

 

After the Confederate surrender, Benjamin fled to England; en route, he narrowly survived close encounters with victorious Union troops and storms at sea. His political ventures were bracketed by two discrete but equally remarkable legal careers, the first in New Orleans, the second in Britain.

 

Having left Yale College without taking a degree, Benjamin came to New Orleans in 1832, studied hard, and was called to the bar that same year. His fame and fortune quickly grew after the publication in 1834 of a book that treated comprehensively for the first time Louisiana’s uniquely cosmopolitan and complex legal system. But his fortune plummeted with the defeat of the Confederacy. He arrived in England with little money. His Creole wife and a daughter brought up Catholic had settled in Paris. Yet he resisted business opportunities in Paris, preferring the independence of a law practice, this time as a British barrister. 

 

Benjamin opted for a second career at the bar despite being required to enrol at an Inn of Court and serve an apprenticeship, although he was doubtless relieved when Lincoln’s Inn admitted him after only six months.

 

Benjamin became a British barrister at the age of 55. Once more a newly-minted lawyer with a struggling practice, he was, however, as he wrote to a friend, ‘as much interested in my profession as when I first commenced as a boy.’ Repeating his Louisiana progress, Benjamin made his reputation in England by writing a work that came to be known as ‘Benjamin on Sales’. First published in 1868, the book was a near-instant legal classic. Its author was much praised, and Benjamin passed the remainder of his days as a top earning, highly esteemed advocate. He became a QC seven years after his admission to the Bar. His voice was heard in appeals to the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in no fewer than 136 reported cases between 1872 and 1882.

 

Benjamin’s indomitable cast of mind characterized both his courtroom advocacy and his response to fortune’s vicissitudes. He rose to the top of the legal profession twice in one lifetime, on two continents, beginning his first ascent as a raw youth and his second as a fugitive minister of a vanquished power. The Times’ obituary praised his ‘elastic resistance to evil fortune which preserved his ancestors through a succession of exiles and plunderings.’

 

Louis Brandeis: ‘the people’s attorney’

The first Jew to accept nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was Louis Brandeis, called ‘the people’s attorney’ because of his activity in the great social and economic reform movements of his day. He helped create the pro bono tradition. Spending at least half his working hours on public affairs, Brandeis reimbursed his law firm for the time he devoted to non-paying matters. He made large donations to good causes and lived frugally at home. A friend recounted that whenever he went to the Brandeis house for dinner he ate before and afterward.

 

Brandeis graduated from Harvard Law School at twenty, with the highest scholastic average in its history. He was appointed to the Court by President Wilson in 1916. Brandeis, like me, was 60 years old at the time of his appointment. One of his colleagues, James Clark McReynolds, was openly antisemitic and would leave the room when Brandeis spoke in conference. No official photograph was taken of the Court in 1924 because McReynolds refused to sit next to Brandeis.

 

However, most people who encountered Brandeis were of a different view. President Roosevelt, among others, called Brandeis ‘Isaiah.’ Admirers, both Jewish and Christian, turned to the scriptures to find words adequate to describe his contributions to U.S. constitutional thought. He was an architect of the constitutional right to privacy and of the modern jurisprudence of free speech.

 

Although he did not participate in religious ceremonies, Brandeis was an ardent Zionist. He retired from the Supreme Court in 1939 at age 83. His influence continues to this day.

 

Benjamin Cardozo, a man of distinction and humility

Benjamin Cardozo was appointed to the Court in 1932, at the age of 62, and served together with Brandeis. Justice McReynolds showed his displeasure by reading a newspaper on the bench during his investiture.

 

Cardozo’s fine hand adjusted the common law to meet the needs of an evolving society. He served with unmatched distinction for eighteen years on New York State’s highest court—the last five as Chief Judge—before President Hoover named him to the U.S. Supreme Court. His lecture series were read and re-read by law students of my generation. His opinions and other writings are works of genius.

 

Cardozo’s life and work exemplified the instruction of the prophet Micah, ‘to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with thy God.’ He remained a member of New York City’s Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue all his life, but, like Brandeis, he did not participate in services. He died in 1938, after only six years on the Supreme Court. The great U.S. Judge, Learned Hand wrote of him: ‘In this America of ours where the passion for publicity is a disease... it was a rare good fortune that brought to such eminence a man so reserved, so unassuming,... so gracious to high and low, and so serene.’

 

Felix Frankfurter

Appointed in 1939 after Cardozo’s untimely death, Felix Frankfurter had been a Harvard Law School professor for 25 years, an ardent advocate of the right of labor to organize, a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and a member of a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s advisory lawyers committee. Frankfurter involved his students in his advocacy endeavors. He united law teaching with public battles for justice. That method of instruction, rare in his day, is a pattern I followed in the 1970’s.

 

As a Supreme Court Justice, Frankfurter was first to employ an African-American law clerk, William T. Coleman, Jr., in 1948, who remains one of the bright lights of the U.S. legal profession. Perhaps no Justice in the Court’s existence came to the bench better versed in the history and judgments of the Court, its problems and needs. Yet Frankfurter was not as effective a persuader of others as were Brandeis and Cardozo. In some quarters criticized for excessive judicial restraint, in others for being a better speaker than listener, Frankfurter was also the Justice who wrote: ‘Basic rights do not become petrified as of any one time... It is of the very nature of a free society to advance in its standards of what is deemed reasonable and right.’

 

Arthur Goldberg

After Frankfurter retired in 1962, Arthur Goldberg joined the Court. A Kennedy appointee, Goldberg had been counsel to labor unions when strikers were prey to the harassment of armed thugs. Goldberg was the only Jewish Justice to have experienced childhood poverty—his father, who died when he was eight, sold produce in Chicago from a wagon pulled by a blind horse. Goldberg was the sole member of his large family to continue his education beyond grade school.

 

Unlike his predecessors, Goldberg did observe religious ceremonies. At Passover Seders in his home, Goldberg would relate the story of the Israelites in Egypt to the oppressed and outcasts of the world. 

 

After three years, Goldberg left the Court, at President Johnson’s urging, to replace Adlai Stevenson as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He hoped his negotiating skills would lead to a settlement of the Vietnam War. That hope failed, and in the course of Goldberg’s time at the U.N., the distance between him and Johnson grew ever wider.

 

Some years ago, I came upon a story Justice Goldberg once told. The Justice was in Chicago visiting his mother, who had become active in several Jewish organizations. He was sleeping late one morning when the telephone rang for him. His mother answered the phone and asked, ‘Who’s this?’ The caller replied, ‘This is the President.’ Goldberg heard his mother ask, ‘Nu, President from which shul?’ It was, of course, the President of the United States.

 

Abe Fortas

Succeeding Goldberg in 1965, Abe Fortas had been a steadfast defender of those smeared by Senator Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Cold War Red Scare, and counsel to people who had nowhere else to turn. Although religious observance was not a prime part of Fortas’ family’s life, it was thanks to a scholarship established by a rabbi in Tennessee that this brilliant man was able to attend college.

 

Fortas’ tenure on the Court ended abruptly after four years because, unlike Brandeis, he was not careful about his personal monetary receipts. In 1968, President Johnson nominated Fortas as Chief Justice; however, he was obliged to resign from the Court the following year. 

 

Justice, justice shalt thou pursue….

Law as protector of the oppressed, the poor, the minority, the loner, is evident in the work of Justices Brandeis, Cardozo, Frankfurter, Goldberg and Fortas. Frankfurter, once distressed when the Court rejected his view, reminded his brethren, defensively, that he ‘belong[ed] to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history.’ I prefer Goldberg’s affirmative comment: ‘My concern for justice, for peace, for enlightenment, stems from my heritage.’ The other Jewish Justices could have reached the same judgment. 

 

Justice Breyer and I are fortunate to be linked to that heritage, but our situation is distinct from that of the five Jewish Justices of whom I have spoken. I can best explain the difference by this story: in 1948 the then Solicitor General, Philip Perlman, argued the case for the U.S. Government that racially restrictive covenants on real property were unconstitutional. The brief was written by four lawyers, all of them Jewish. All the names, save Perlman’s, were deleted from the filed brief. The decision to delete was made by the Solicitor General’s principal assistant, himself a Jew. ‘It’s bad enough,’ he said, ‘that Perlman’s name has to be there.’ It wouldn’t do, he thought, to make it so evident that the position of the United States was ‘put out by a bunch of Jews.’

 

Contrast President Clinton’s appointments in 1993 and 1994 of the 107th and 108th Justices, Justice Breyer and me. Our backgrounds were similar: we had taught law and served on federal courts of appeals for many years. And we are both Jews. However, no one regarded Ginsburg and Breyer as filling a Jewish seat. Both of us take pride in and draw strength from our heritage, but our religion was not relevant to President Clinton’s appointments.

From the left: Judice Bader Ginsburg meets JPR President, Lord Haskel, JPR Honorary President, Lord Rothschild and Cherie Booth QC at Chatham House before the Lecture.

The security I feel is shown by the command from Deuteronomy displayed in artworks in Hebrew letters in my chambers: ‘Zedek, Zedek,’ ‘Justice, Justice shalt thou pursue.’ They are ever-present reminders of what judges must do ‘that they may thrive.’ My identity is also shown by the large silver mezuzah mounted on my doorpost.

 

Jews in the U.S. are no longer reticent about letting the world know who we are. A question is indicative of large advances made. What is the difference between a New York City garment district bookkeeper and a Supreme Court Justice? One generation, as my life bears witness, the difference between opportunities open to my mother, a bookkeeper, and those open to me.

 

This spring tapes came to light recording President Nixon’s 1972 conversation with Reverend Billy Graham, spiritual counselor to several Presidents, including George W. Bush. Graham complained of what he saw as Jewish domination of the news media: ‘This stranglehold has got to be broken,’ the Reverend said, ‘or the country is going down the drain...’ Thirty years later, Graham expressed dismay that he could ever have said such things.

 

True, in recent months, antisemitism’s ugly head has been visible in our world. Even so, Jews in the U.S. seldom encounter the harsh antisemitism that surrounded Judah Benjamin, or that Brandeis experienced when the Senate voted on his confirmation.

 

I pray we may keep it that way.In that vein, may I close with words I often use when asked to say who I am:

 

I am a judge, born, raised, and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice runs through the entirety of Jewish history and Jewish tradition. I hope, in all the years I have the good fortune to serve on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and courage to remain steadfast in the service of that demand. 

 

 

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What future for the long-term care of older people?

 

A policy seminar attended by professionals involved in the long-term care of older people took place at JPR in October. It was introduced and chaired by Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Chief Executive Officer of the King’s Fund.

 

 

Dr Oliver Valins, JPR Research Fellow outlined some of the experiences of the UK Jewish voluntary sector that formed the basis of his book Facing the future: The provision of long-term care facilities for older Jewish people in the United Kingdom*. He explained that residential and nursing homes in the UK face an uncertain future; not only do they often arouse negative press, but they are also under pressure from limitations in local authority funding, as well as the effects of successive governments’ policies designed to encourage older people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible. He raised some key questions for discussion about the future of long-term care for older people:

 

Does residential care have a long-term future? Will the years ahead see care homes primarily, or even solely, delivering nursing care, or care to older people with dementia? If care homes are set to stay, how can they improve their standards of care within realistic funding constraints?

 

According to Dr Valins, some of the problems in the homes that he had researched were less to do with money and more to do with structural inadequacies. Indeed, the over-riding criticism that came from interviews with residents, their families, front-line and management staff was that care services were not individually tailored. He stressed that he was not suggesting that staff did not care about residents, but rather that the systems were typically provided on a model of ‘top-down’ service provision that was often unresponsive to individual needs.

 

In the ensuing discussion, Dr Sarah Harper, Director of the Oxford Institute of Ageing, called for more support for individuals and their families to help them with transitions into care. Naina Patel OBE, Director of Policy Research Institute on Ageing and Ethnicity (PRIAE), praised JPR’s research in this field and regretted that no such study had been carried out into black and Asian groups. 

 

Julia Neuberger said that the way in which death and dying were dealt with in homes was a major issue. Leon Smith, Executive Director of Nightingale House, called for ‘resident-centred care’, not ‘custodial care’, with a greater emphasis on quality of life and stimulation. He also warned that homes would have to adjust to an evolving client group who were more frail and dependent than their predecessors. Rosalind Preston OBE, Chair of Nightingale House and JPR Board Member, pointed out that clients expected higher quality provision nowadays.

 

Janice Robinson of the King’s Fund thought it would be worthwhile to research the preferences of younger people. She wondered whether young Jews would be interested to go into Jewish care homes in their old age. Julia Neuberger thought the crucial issue was whether Jewish homes would be prepared to take in non-Jewish partners, in the light of rising intermarriage rates.

 

Keith Sumner of the Centre for Policy on Ageing regretted the ambivalence in government circles towards residential care and the accompanying lack of vision.

 

Many concerns were raised concerning staff recruitment: care staff are increasingly recruited from ethnic minorities or from abroad, with different cultural backgrounds to the residents; moreover, all agreed that it was very difficult to move up the career ladder, and that caring for older people was seen as a low status job.

 

Professor Barry Kosmin described the demographic reality facing the older people of the future—with most people having smaller families, and fewer siblings than in the past, the external perception of wonderful Jewish families who care for their parents and of a close-knit community life was unrealistic.

 

Julia Neuberger concluded that this debate was not only relevant across the Jewish community, but also for other minority groups for whom the experience of the Jewish community could serve as a model. 

 

*published in July 2002 and available from JPR at £10.

 

 

 ‘The New Antisemitism’

 

Within the last year there have been numerous claims in the media that there is a resurgence of antisemitism across Europe. Some commentators suggest that there is even a ‘new antisemitism’. However, there has been little in-depth analysis of whether contemporary manifestations of antisemitism are more intense or serious than earlier incarnations. The experience of antisemitism across Europe is also conflated by many commentators into one phenomenon. This masks the considerable diversity in experience between countries. There is also little specific focus on the state of contemporary antisemitism in Britain. Continental Europe has attracted far greater attention.

 

To provide an informed analysis that focuses on Britain, JPR has invited a number of leading Jewish intellectuals, writers, academics and other experts to offer perspectives on whether there is a ‘new antisemitism’ and the nature of the beast. Their contributions are being published online at: www.axt.org.uk (click on The New Antisemitism).

 

To date, contributors include Howard Jacobson, Edward Kessler, Antony Lerman, Peter Pulzer, Jonathan Sacks, Kate Taylor, Michael Whine and Robert Wistrich.

 

The online publication presents up-to-date analyses, which are readily accessible for scholars, journalists and students. It also includes a mechanism for feedback for readers via an online response form.

 

For contributors it offers rapid dissemination of their analyses, which is essential in an evolving climate of antisemitism. It also allows authors to modify their contributions in light of changing events and in response to other contributions.

 

The essays will also be published in Spring 2003 as a book entitled The New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia in 21st Century Britain,

 

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JPR appoints a Fellow in European Jewish Demography

 

David Graham has been appointed to a one-year Fellowship in European Jewish Demography at JPR. This new post represents a continuation of the work begun at the seminar held at JPR in April 2001 on European Jewish Demography, which was organized jointly by JPR and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Fellowship is partly funded by the American Joint Distribution Committee.   David Graham has a degree in Geography from LSE and an MSc in Social Research and Statistical Methods from City University. He has written reports for the Jewish community on synagogue membership, migration and religious outlook.

David’s first task is to put together a comprehensive database of current knowledge on the main European Jewish communities documenting births, deaths,marriages and affiliations. This is in preparation for a potential major initiative to study Jewish demograpy and identity across the continent. 

 

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