American Jewry, presidential elections and international politics

	The Seventh William Frankel JPR Lecture was delivered in October by Yoav Ben-Horin, director of the Israel and Overseas Pillar of the United Jewish Communities of North America, the central organization of the US Jewish federation system. The theme was most timely, occurring three weeks before the presidential elections. The lecture was chaired by JPR President, Lord Haskel.
	William Frankel CBE, JPR Vice President, with Lord Haskel, JPR President, and Yoav Ben-Horin

In his opening remarks, Yoav Ben-Horin observed that more Americans watch the baseball World Series than vote in the presidential elections. Nevertheless, contrary to such negative stereotypes, both Americans and American society are more complex than first meet the eye; demonstrably open and affable, Americans are typically misunderstood and often pictured in Europe as simple, unsophisticated and gullible.

To comprehend American Jews and their involvement in public life, Ben-Horin said, it is first necessary to understand Americans in general. Much of what makes American Jews unique are cultural traits shared by all Americans: self-assertion and the conviction that individuals and groups have a right to change the status quo. In fact, it is the fusion of Jewish and American characteristics that makes the American Jewish experience both noteworthy and unprecedented in Jewish history. And yet, while Ben-Horin described the American chapter in Jewish history as glorious, paradoxically, American Jews themselves have yet to figure out just how extraordinary and unique they are. Only then will they begin to fully understand their place in Jewish history.

According to Ben-Horin, the unique premise of American society today is that there is no one dominant majority culture; instead it is a culture of multiple minorities. WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are a distinct minority, as are Catholics, blacks, Latinos and Jews. The European concept of 'host culture' does not apply in the contemporary US.

Americans first, Jews second
To understand American Jews in their social, communal and political context, it is necessary to see them as Americans first, and Jews second - typically American 'only more so'. American Jews constitute less than two per cent of the national population; yet Jews constitute a remarkable ten per cent of all members of the US Senate. They tend to vote in ways that contradict political expectations, earning like the wealthiest of America's voters and voting like the most disadvantaged ones.

American Jews are known for participating actively in civic affairs, contributing heavily to political campaigns and voting in reliable numbers on election day, with as many as 80 per cent of eligible Jewish voters turning out at the polls. In a close election where both money and votes count heavily, a small number of Jews can make a very large difference.

In fact, said Ben-Horin, the disproportionate amount of political influence and involvement of American Jewry within American society all across the political spectrum is the result of their willingness to put so much of their time, energy and money into this quintessentially American activity.

Yoav predicted that, regardless of the outcome, no election result would be 'bad' for the Jews. Because American Jews are so integrated into American society, the key Jewish question come Election Day is not 'is it good for the Jews?' but rather 'is it good for the United States?' Because if it is good for the US, then American Jews and Israel will benefit.

The interface between philanthropy and policy in the United States

During Yoav Ben-Horin's stay at JPR, he addressed a seminar for professionals representing the leading Jewish charitable organizations in the UK. A former analyst with the Rand Corporation think-tank, Mr Ben-Horin drew on his experience in monitoring international trends, including global antisemitism, community building in the former Soviet Union, the strains on the social safety net in Israel and the challenge this poses to philanthropic action by diaspora Jewry.

Yoav Ben-Horin reported that, in today's philanthropic climate, an increasing trend among major donors in America is accountability: the desire to know where their money is going and how efficiently it is being spent. Philanthropists have become more assertive, demanding transparency and control. As a consequence, donations increasingly come with strings attached. This has resulted in a paradox: on the one hand, American Jewry is more organized and effective than ever in raising funds, while on the other hand it is less centralized and less given to accepting authority. This also plays itself out when it comes to choosing between giving to Jewish or to general charities. Ben-Horin explained that most American Jewish philanthropic dollars no longer go to Jewish causes, but to causes such as the San Diego Zoo, or the Museum of Modern Art. This trend is even more pronounced among the younger generation, who 'save whales, not Jews', he said.

Despite these developments, American Jewry has not become less generous in recent years. He described the sums raised by Jews in the United States as mind-boggling and cited the example of the quarter million Jews in the former Soviet Union who are presently maintained above the poverty line by American Jews and the $2 billion directed towards Israel each year. American Jewish charitable dollars also target an array of key domestic areas. During the 1990s, American Jewry was primarily concerned with their own high intermarriage rates and the need to support increasing numbers of elderly people. The mantra became 'continuity'- concern for the next generation and the one after. Consequently, American Jews began investing millions in Jewish day schools, community centers and caring for the elderly.

Since the start of the second Intifada, however, there has been a resurgence of concern for the state of Israel, which has the highest rate of child poverty in the western world, with 30 per cent of children living under the poverty line. Israel also has the highest income gap in the western world, together with America.

American Jewry sees itself as a partner with Israel in Zionist nation-building. While American Jews do not share in the responsibilities of citizenship, such as paying taxes or serving in the Israeli army, they continue to feel a deep commitment to its collective welfare. This is shown by their support of the Jewish Agency's work aiding aliyah and klitah (immigration and absorption into Israeli society). Because of what they have seen at home, they are particularly concerned to avoid the creation of a permanent black underclass in Israel, and so many American Jews choose to support the long-term integration of Ethiopian Jews.

Despite his upbeat assessment, Yoav Ben-Horin warned that American donors are prone to a philanthropic 'attention deficit disorder'; when they suddenly change interests and acquire new enthusiasms, this has a negative impact on charities which require consistent and stable support. On the other hand, he noted optimistically that the ever increasing numbers of young Jews now attending Jewish day schools and summer camps will eventually become generous supporters of Jewish causes in thirty years' time.

Ellis Birk

	The lay leaders and professional staff of JPR were very saddened to hear the news of the death in July of Ellis Birk, former Chairman of the Institute of Jewish Affairs (IJA), the forerunner of JPR.
	From the left: William Frankel CBE, the late Lord Goodman CH and Ellis Birk at a party to mark Ellis' retirement as Chairman of the Institute.

Born in Newcastle in 1915, the son of an immigrant from Lithuania, he studied classics and law at Jesus College, Cambridge and served as a major in the Royal Artillery during World War II, after which he was articled to the City law firm of Nicholson, Graham and Jones.

He became a very influential force in the media; he sat on the board of the Mirror newspapers, became a director of Associated Television, and served as chairman of the Jewish Chronicle. A long-term member of the Labour Party, he described himself as a 'Gaitskellite socialist' and was married to the Labour Baroness Alma Birk, who died in 1996.

He played a very prominent role in Anglo-Jewish life and was actively involved in supporting Israel. Chair of the Jewish Welfare Board in the 1980s, he was a key figure in the birth of Jewish Care, and in the creation of Sinclair House; he was also a governor of the Hebrew University and Chair of its British Friends, and member of the executive of the Council of Christians and Jews.

Ellis Birk was involved with the IJA for many years and served as Chairman of its Executive Committee. Ellis fully appreciated the importance of research and took great pride in IJA's academic publications. After his retirement, he continued to support the Institute in its new role as an international Jewish think-tank.

Jews and Jewry in contemporary Hungary

On the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary JPR published Jews and Jewry in Contemporary Hungary: results of a sociological survey*. This report, edited by Professor András Kovács of the Central European University, discusses the results of a sample survey of over 2000 Hungarian Jewry, conducted by the Institute for Minority Studies at Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest, on which JPR's Barry Kosmin acted as an adviser. It examines a wide variety of demographic, social and cultural issues, including Jewish identity and practices among the respondents, as well as their ideological, social and economic attitudes.

One of the main research goals was to understand generational changes as well as to determine the current social and economic position of Jews within Hungarian society. Other objectives included monitoring the attitudes of contemporary Hungarian Jews towards their Jewish origins, the extent to which they involve themselves in organized Jewish community life and how they view antisemitism and their relations with the non-Jewish population, as well as attitudes toward Israel and the impact of the Holocaust.

The research estimated that somewhere around 80-150,000 Hungarians (between 0.8 and 1.5 percent of Hungary's present-day population) are the offspring of at least one Jewish parent. It also showed that the average age of the Jews in Hungary is high in comparison with the general population. Two reasons for this are related to the Holocaust: the small size of the generation born prior to 1944 and emigration after 1945. This is coupled with the fact that, on average, Jews live longer than the general population. Due to the age composition of the Jewish population and a relatively low birth rate, which reflects the general trend in Hungary, the size of the Hungarian Jewish population is likely to continue to decline.

A century ago, more than 15 per cent of Hungary's Jewish population lived in Budapest and Jews comprised more than 20 per cent of the city's total population. Today however, because almost all of Hungary's Jewish population outside the capital were murdered, whereas most Jews in Budapest survived, 90 per cent of Hungary's Jews reside in Budapest but they now account for only about 5 per cent of its population. Relatively large numbers of Jews reside in high-status neighborhoods, reflecting the economic and social status of the group. Hungarian Jews are highly educated, with 45 per cent holding university or college degrees, much higher than the corresponding figure for the general population of Budapest. Approximately three-quarters of the Jewish population are from homogeneous families, having four Jewish grandparents. However, the picture becomes more differentiated by age: whereas 84 percent of those aged 56 or over have homogenous family backgrounds, this ratio falls to just 40 per cent amongst the under-35s. Underlying this trend is the dramatic increase in outmarriage since World War II, though the rate stabilized at approximately 50 per cent from the mid-1950s.

The survey shows a highly secularized population. Indeed, religious belief amongst the Jews is lower than among non-Jewish Hungarians. This is not new; in fact by 1910, 41 per cent of Jews belonged to non-Orthodox (Neolog) communities. This trend was reinforced by the almost complete annihilation of more observant Jews during the Holocaust and the Communist authorities' subsequent anti-religious policies. Only around 8-10 per cent of the sample are "traditionally-minded" Jews, with a quarter having some contact with Jewish religious institutions. Most Hungarian Jews do not feel that religion or Jewish culture are central to their Jewish identity; the most important element for them being historical
memory. Just 15 per cent stated that they had a strong Jewish identity, while a third described their Jewish identity as weak or almost non-existent (see top diagram).

Almost two-thirds of respondents feel that antisemitism has increased recently, and a third fear that this trend will continue, although perceived antisemitism does not mean discrimination or violence. The fear stems from the appearance of traditional and new antisemitic views in the media and public political discourse, which may now be openly expressed, due to the adoption of the right to free speech. Most Jews would like to see this situation changed.

A majority of Hungarian Jews hold western-style liberal views, believing in the capitalist market economy; they also support liberal views on social issues such as abortion and refugees. At the same time, there are also two 'conservative-minded' groups among Jews, one of them a product of the Communist regime in Hungary, which is anti-capitalist and leftist, and the furthest removed from Jewish tradition and Jewish identity. The other conservative group is religious Jews.

Passion and counter passion: a response to Mel Gibson by Christians and Jews in a time of darkness

	Rabbi Dr Albert H Friedlander OBE delivered the Morris and Manja Leigh Memorial Lecture on 21 June 2004. It was with great sadness that JPR learned of his sudden death less than three weeks later. Born in Berlin in 1927, Rabbi Friedlander fled to Cuba at the age of eleven. President of the Council of Christians and Jews, rabbi emeritus of Westminster Synagogue and Dean of Leo Baeck College, he was awarded Germany's highest honour, the Cross of Merit, and the OBE for his huge contribution to interfaith dialogue. This is an abridged version of the lecture, which was chaired by Rabbi Friedlander's friend Howard Leigh, Chairman of Westminster Synagogue and grandson of Morris Leigh.
	From the left: Howard Leigh and Rabbi Dr Albert H Friedlander OBE at the Morris and Manja Leigh Memorial Lecture in June 2004

Why can't we forget Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ? It marked a moment when religious dialogue failed and when pain overflowed in our hearts. Suddenly, we became aware of the darkness in our world. I agree with Elie Wiesel, who expressed his unease concerning the film. He did not view it as wildly antisemitic, nor did he assume that new waves of attacks against Jews would arise from its showing. However, he felt that, at a time when Christians and Jews were coming closer to one another in a new and significant way, it could help cause a breach in this dialogue and slow down the process of interfaith in our society. In a society where new uncertainties plague all adherents of religion, there is a retreat to mysticism and mystification. One hides within the dark chambers of religious faith. Cults are re-emerging. Terrorism breeds in a climate of fear and reason is pushed back to the outer limits of the world. Gibson's film celebrates pain and terror and many prefer this to calm, ethical instruction. It is much easier to be threatened by religion than to be pacified by it.

Gibson arises out of a society marked by sadism and masochism. When the Pope said of the film: That's how it was, he was not making a historical judgement (where he shows flaws. He recently found good points in the Inquisition, and thought Torquemada was a decent chap.) On The Passion he made a theological judgement about the ultimate sacrifice of God's son, a Jew who became the suffering, tortured, dying and resurrected Christ of Christianity. In our dark time after Auschwitz when all Israel was crucified, this reaches out to us. Christians and Jews share this grief and pain. Mel Gibson howls aloud in the film to express the anguish of the sacrifice of Golgotha.

Christians, and not only the fanatic right-wing of the church, have responded to the film with great fervour. There has been a re-awakening within Christianity. The fact that Gibson's profits have gone over $100 million should not prejudice us against him. It is 'the American way' and he is rooted in that culture - in some ways a primitive culture. Four years ago Newsweek found that 75 per cent of Americans believe in the devil; 48 per cent stated: I have experienced a miracle. Well, so has Gibson!

A new passion and a new fear
There is a revival of fundamentalism which cuts through all the faith communities of our time. In Judaism, the emergence of the haredim has created a new passion within our faith. It has manifested itself in a withdrawal from the general society and in concerted attacks against any liberal trends in the Jewish world. Recent attacks against Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks forced him to re-write a book in which he acknowledged the fact that revelation exists in the religions of our neighbours. He had to withdraw from that liberal stance. It is a sign of the times. In the Christian world too, there has been a withdrawal from Vatican II. In both religions there exists a new passion, and a new fear. The present world introduces itself into our inner religious life. It is the world after Auschwitz, after 9/11, after the genocides in Central Europe, Africa and the Far East. And it is fear itself which now looms over all of the religious establishments of today.

Religion is lonely today. Those churches and synagogues which are filled with worshippers generally belong to the right-wing, to passionate traditionalists. We are lonely. Desperately we try to find our way back to God. Outside the sanctuaries secularity rules; OK? And some of the establishment, finally, has found outside support from a strange source, a flying buttress, as it were, in which they can rejoice: a best-selling movie has arrived, weaving its spell over millions who bought their tickets to feed upon blood, terror and pain. Who wants to listen to a gentle melody of hope and love, to a rational discussion dealing with our failures? When the Last Trumpet is sounded, the world stands up and pays attention. But when garish colours are daubed over the sacred texts, transcendence is lost.

A living religion must concern itself with the anguish of a suffering humanity in which we can discern the suffering of God. The wounds of our age are the wounds of Christ, and how a priest can turn away from the opportunity to give comfort to the pain of Kosovo or 9/11 and instead hide inside a flawed film beggars belief.

Judaism, too, has discovered that the Suffering God, the Shechina which followed Israel into exile after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple is also the God who was hanged in Auschwitz and murdered in Serbia. The fanatic Jew who does not recognize that the Divine Image suffers with the death of every child on the streets of Gaza as well as with the destruction of an Israeli school bus in Jerusalem has turned away from God and lives with a heart of stone.

In the Middle Ages, the Passion Plays became the commentaries composed for the common man. More often than not they came to obscure the original text. It has been suggested that Gibson's film is more of a passion play than an exposition of the Gospels. The Passion Plays carried the antisemitism of their own time within themselves; and that has infected Gibson. Most observers agree that Gibson himself is not an antisemite like his father. However, the film continues the unrelenting line of anti-Judaism which began with the young Church once it found itself outside the Jewish community. The fact remains that Christianity built itself upon the Hebrew Bible which it called the Old Testament. The New Testament could not supersede it; therefore the Jews had to be removed from the Old Testament in so far as they had been deemed the inheritors, God's first love. The Church tried to disinherit the Jews.

We come back to the Christian passion here: not the Passion of the Cross but of the devout, fanatical lover of Christ and God who cannot admit a previous love affair. The fanatic - and Gibson belongs to a cult of the extreme right-wing Evangelical Catholics who accept neither Vatican II nor the Pope - claim God as their possession and do not see that humanity and all of us are possessions of God. It is easy to prove that Gibson's Passion of Christ is a total distortion of the history of that time; most Catholic, Jewish and secular scholars are agreed on this. Gibson is recreating a theological drama in which the villain must be the Jew of that time, even if he does not connect him with the Jew of today. At that moment, Gibson loses the basic teaching of love within Christianity. The possessive passion of the fanatic excludes the rest of humanity from this relationship. Ultimately, Christianity is more damaged by the film than Judaism. Yet the pain inflicted upon the Jewish community is very real and the passion of the Jew and the love of a people striving to rebuild life after the Shoah must be recognized. In an uncertain world, with Jewish life endangered, one has to recognize and honour even our intemperate response and our fear.

Unabated suffering without hope
Personally, I felt that this mystery play was a naïve black and white confrontation between good and evil, Hollywood's sequel to Tolkien as The Return of the True King. It re-wrote history; the torture of Jesus is interminable, continuing to the point where it had to be clear to everyone that no one could have survived that punishment.

How could such a film convert others to Christianity?

However, I could see the power in the film and acknowledge that Gibson is clearly deeply sincere, enamoured with a vision of Christ who died for all sins. But the film never moves beyond that moment. Unabated suffering and no hope at the end. The Resurrection is the moment of a flickering eyelid. Gibson must have been afraid to have anything like a happy (Hollywood?) ending of the film. Yet the Christian faith in Jesus is built upon the whole life and the key to Christianity must be the Resurrection, not the torture andsuffering.

The Passion of the Christ can open a dialogue between the Passion and Suffering of Christianity and the Passion of Judaism. Our dialogue should not be damaged by misdirected passions. But reason must always accompany passion. Sadly, the dialogue between scholars and clergy of our traditions does not reach the mass media. Gibson's Passion of the Christ will continue to inflame the emotions of those who want some reinforcement of their sense of innocence when they see a world in flames and demand absolution from a church which has failed them in their quest. The film did not bring a flood of converts to the Church. Thousands of free tickets to non-believers proved a less than profitable investment. But films come and go. Rational discourse still endures, and even religious dialogue will be informed by it. If we meet in that area, instructed by true scholarship and by the compassion which reaches out to our neighbour, we will both be strengthened.

Filling the void: Jewish culture without the Jews

This was the title of a JPR event held at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue in October in association with the Spiro Ark and the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies. A screening of the documentary Musicians' Raft (Poland, 2002) was followed by a discussion chaired by Lena Stanley-Clamp (JPR Director of Public Activities and Director of the European Association for Jewish Culture), with Faynia Williams and Professor Jonathan Webber.

From the left: Lena Stanley-Clamp, Professor Jonathan Webber and Faynia Williams

Faynia Williams, an international theatre and opera director and BBC drama producer, wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 documentary Filling the Void. She is on the Council of the Directors' Guild and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Jonathan Webber is a social anthropologist and UNESCO Professor of Jewish and Interfaith Studies at the University of Birmingham. He has carried out extensive field research in Poland. His book Traces of Memory: the Ruins of Jewish Civilization in Polish Galicia is to be published in collaboration with the photographer Chris Schwarz.

Lena Stanley-Clamp placed the discussion in its historical context, noting that the history of Jews in Poland went back 700 years. Until 1939 there were 3.5 million Jews in Poland. Nearly 90 per cent of the Polish Jewish population was killed by the Nazis. After the war, successive emigration waves of the remnants of Polish Jewry culminated in 1968, when 20,000 Jews left the country because of Government-sponsored antisemitism. Today the Jewish population in Poland is estimated at 10,000. However, since the 80s there has been a revival of interest in Jewish culture - a veritable renaissance of Jewish culture in Poland, even if it is almost a 'Jewish culture without the Jews'.

Among young Polish Jews there has been a process of 'reverse acculturation': from assimilation and ignorance of Jewish tradition to a revival of Jewish religion, educational and cultural activities. At the same time there has been an equally remarkable resurgence of interest in Jewish culture and heritage among the non-Jewish public. Significant numbers of non-Jewish Poles feel compelled to rediscover Jewish culture.

Faynia Williams introduced the film Musicians' Raft, which depicts the work of the Borderland Foundation and Centre. It was established by Krzysztof and Malgorzata Czyzewski in 1990 in Sejny, a former shtetl where before 1939, Jews made up nearly 90 per cent of the population. It is now a town of 6,000 inhabitants in north-eastern Poland near the border with Lithuania. No Jews live in Sejny now. In one day, an entire community, culture and society were eradicated. The mission of the Borderland Foundation was to reclaim the town's Jewish heritage, to restore the Jewish buildings and cemetery and to set up a publishing house.

The Borderland Foundation painstakingly restored the old synagogue, which had been used at various times since the war as a stable, garage for fire trucks and headquarters of a fertilizer company, and the yeshiva, which had been used as a Post Office. It is now a cultural centre which runs a gallery, a klezmer band and theatre workshops. Among its educational activities are the Sejny Chronicles, which aim to interest young people in the history of their town and to encourage them to talk to their parents and grandparents. The young people of Sejny learn about who had lived there in the past, how they lived there and how they disappeared. The Foundation also invites American klezmer musicians to Sejny to teach local young musicians their art, which is the subject of the Musicians' Raft. Faynia expressed the view that the work of the Borderland Foundation was one way for Poland to come to terms with its past and to prepare for its new future within the EU.

Jonathan Webber warned against the danger of over-sentimentalizing; nor should we believe the old chestnut that Poles are endemically antisemitic. In the sixteenth century, for example, Polish Jews thrived and lived in peace with their neighbours.Moreover, 5,800 Poles are acknowledged today in Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles (out of a total of 20,205). Faynia pointed out that the Borderland Foundation is not afraid to address the painful aspects of Polish Jewish history. It was they who first published Jan Gross' book Neighbours about the Jedwabne massacre.

Jonathan warned that the history of Polish-Jewish relations is a complex one, full of pitfalls for the unwary. Many Jews feel a strong sense that in a country which witnessed the flowering of Jewish civilization over so many centuries, there is still a certain spirit of the place which continues to live on in Poland. Even the smallest shtetls once possessed a highly varied Jewish cultural life, with libraries, drama societies, sports clubs and schools, as well as being centres of hasidism and traditional Jewish learning. Little wonder, then, that some Poles today sense the void and want to reach out to that vanished past. Many schools sponsor art competitions on the theme of the Jewish past, with prize-winning submissions being displayed in national museums. Cracow hosts an annual festival of Jewish culture, organized by non-Jewish Poles, with a packed programme of concerts, lectures, walking tours, art exhibitions and seminars. Sejny is thus part of a much wider phenomenon in present-day Poland. It deserves due acknowledgement, indeed admiration, for the courage to confront a difficult history.

In her conclusion, Lena Stanley-Clamp said the Borderland team understood and put into practice the wisdom that comes from the co-existence of different cultures and beliefs. In 'filling the void', they are reclaiming their own history which had been suppressed for so long during the Communist regime.

A social and historical context for genetics in the Jewish population

The following article is taken from a lecture given by JPR's Director of Research, Professor Stanley Waterman, at the Genetic Screening Conference at Guy's Hospital, London, in June 2004.

Jews are a relatively well educated population and are more than averagely aware of issues surrounding genetic disorders that pertain to them-so much so that they are more willing than the general population to co-operate with medical researchers. Consequently, there is more genetic information on Ashkenazi Jews than on other biological populations of similar size throughout the world.

Around 1650, there were about 250,000 Ashkenazi Jews in total in the world. In 1780, there were about 1.5 million Jews living in the Habsburg and Tzarist empires, rising to about 8 million a century later. By 1939, there were an estimated 15 million Ashkenazim. During these centuries in the geographical area from the Baltic States to the Ukraine, with the annual rate of population increase among the Jews at over 3 per cent, a higher rate than among the industrializing countries, there was a population explosion from a small gene pool with practically no external inputs (biological mixing with outsiders). It was a unique period and event in Jewish history, a type of rapid demographic growth matched by very few other groups; the French Canadians-who incidentally have high incidence rates of Tay-Sachs-are another, perhaps.

Historically, Jews in Western Europe were spatially confined by the ghetto, as in the Frankfurt Judengasse, leading not only to acute housing shortages but to late marriage and even to non-marriage. In contrast, in Eastern Europe-and this is the provenance of most British Jews-spatial restrictions were lacking in a rural environment over a wide geographical extent: Jews had to reside within the Pale of Settlement, yet they migrated ever eastwards into small villages (shtetls). They married young, at 17 or 18, were in generally good health, and had low infant mortality and low rates of alcoholism.

Arranged marriages among these small, relatively isolated, Jewish populations took place over long distances, historically resulting in the lowest ever rates of outmarriage. The small gene pool exploded, with bio-medical implications; Ashkenazi Jews became of intrinsic interest to biomedical science. The truth is that many Jews "bought in" to this fascination with their health and descent in the twentieth century, and were flattered by the interest that the scientific world took in them. But there were negative consequences. Many of the leaders in biomedical science were German but there were others, including many involved in intelligence studies, like Karl Pearson in Britain and Charles Spearman in America. In addition, Eugenics societies developed on both sides of the Atlantic, linking interest in Jewish demographic growth with ideas of racial hierarchies and biological inferiority, culminating in Alfred Rosenberg's Nazi racial science, where anatomical studies and theories of superior and inferior races were transformed into the notorious twin studies and medical experiments of Joseph Mengele and others in the concentration camps. This misuse of genetics on behalf of scientific racism has contributed to its being given a bad name among many Jews, though there are, obviously, many beneficial consequences.

Jews and genetics
In terms of health policy considerations, a focus on genetics poses a danger of a return to the old concept of Jews as a race, one which most Jews adamantly reject, preferring to see themselves as a people, with a variety of origins. In fact, the immigration to Israel of Jews with diverse backgrounds, national origins and skin pigmentation illustrates that Jews are not a race; Israel is on a nationalist trajectory with a political movement for intermarriage between all types of Jews. Intergroup mixing among Israeli Jews is encouraged, thus widening the gene pool. In the US, where Jews are on an open religious trajectory, the gene pool is being extended through inter-faith marriage and conversion. It is only the strictly Orthodox populations, who, through their own social and cultural mores, operate a highly endogamous marriage market, who currently have a practical interest in this topic. In contrast, the majority of British Jews are no longer inbred today and this trend is on the increase.

We must be aware from where pressure for a more extensive genetic screening is coming. In shadkhanut (matchmaking), there is a desire to minimize the risk factor; if one can minimize the probability of children born with genetically inherited disease by arranging marriages between "suitable" partners, why not? It makes good business sense and anyway, preventing such births is surely a good thing. Using a similar logic, this testing should be spread among the rest of Ashkenazi Jewry, which does not engage in arranged marriages, for other Jews, and for the rest of the world's population.

But to do this by establishing geneticdatabanks exposes the population data to potential misuse or abuse. What if insurance companies were to charge Ashkenazi Jews or Jews in general or any other group seen as a bad risk surcharges for life insurance? They might reject insurance applications on the pretext of known risks associated with the population, or worse, with certain individuals in the population on the basis of genetic screening that had been carried out-at the request of the individuals themselves.

Confidence in confidentiality?
Confidentiality is wonderful when adhered to but Jewish history and experience show that confidentiality barriers can be breached. The national Census of the Netherlands that identified Jews was completely confidential for over a century until the German invasion of 1940, when it was used to identify, deport and murder 80 per cent of Dutch Jews. We can promise privacy, but can we deliver? It is sobering to reflect that within the Jewish group most strongly advocating genetic screening, there was much internal disagreement over whether individuals should respond to the voluntary religion question on the 2001 Census on the premise that information from a government sponsored survey might fall into "the wrong hands". Not everything necessarily leads to eugenics, but it is worth keeping history at least in the back of one's mind.

Genetic screening is inexorably linked to genetic research and like all research, one cannot always tell where it might lead. Recent genetic research on Jews has thrown up some fascinating questions relating to Jewish history-suggesting a practice of Jewish men arriving in new places and marrying local women. Despite the fact that Jewish communities have little in common on the maternal line down which Judaism is traditionally inherited, it is the male side that shows common ancestry between different Jewish communities. Not exactly a traditional take on Jewish history.

Finally, there is the simple issue of economics: at the group level, is this type of health investment the best thing? Should the state pay for genetic screening for a small population whose own cultural practice of acute endogamy puts itself at risk? After all, there are less than 3,000 Jewish births a year in the UK and probably no more than 800 within the Haredi (strictly Orthodox) community. With a disease incidence of 1:3000 for Tay-Sachs and lower for other diseases, is this an efficient use of resources? Perhaps the money might be better spent investing in the physical and mental health of the same group and even persuading them to consider the benefits of widening their gene pool?

JPR initiates internship programme

	During the summer JPR initiated a new student intern programme. This enabled four university undergraduates to acquire a hands-on familiarity with JPR. The programme was designed both to reach out to a younger constituency and to provide JPR with the opportunity to carry out some much needed research.
	From the left: Alex Patnick, Daniel Herbert, Rebecca Graham and Aviva Ellis

The programme, which was conducted between June and August, was advertised in advance through the Union of Jewish Students' electronic newsletter. Applicants were interviewed at JPR and the four successful interns were selected on the basis of their academic interests, analytical and writing abilities, as well as their IT and interpersonal skills. Each intern received a stipend of £1,000, including travel expenses. The costs of the intern programme were generously underwritten by a JPR donor.During the summer JPR staff conducted weekly luncheon seminars to introduce the interns to the range of JPR activities and research projects. Among the subjects covered were Jewish identity in the UK and Europe, Jewish culture in Europe, challenges in fundraising and philanthropy, and the work and philosophy of a Jewish think-tank.

Student intern profiles

Alex Patnick, 20, is reading history at Manchester Metropolitan University where he was recently elected as anti-racism officer of the Student Union. Alex was supervised by JPR Civil Society Fellow Dr Paul Iganski, and carried out work on the JPR website www.axt.org.uk (about antisemitism and xenophobia today) and in particular on the page about 'Music, Hate and Crime'. He also examined homophobic elements in the European-Jamaican reggae scene.

Aviva Ellis, 20, is a politics student at the University of Birmingham. During her internship Aviva compiled a list of groups and organizations carrying out pro-Israel advocacy in the UK. When completed, the list will contain a brief description of the kind of activities these groups undertake-from informal, grass-roots letter-writing campaigns to the work carried out by official UK Jewish institutions-together with contact details and website links (where available). She was supervised by Dr Winston Pickett, who directs JPR's Israel programme. In the coming months JPR will assemble this information-together with a review of useful internet sites from the US, Israel and Europe-into an 'Israel advocacy handbook' which could be used by individuals and groups seeking to become more involved in the field.

Daniel Herbert, 22, is studying European Social and Political Studies at University College, London. He carried out research for the 'New European Extremism' project under the guidance of Dr Paul Iganski and JPR director Professor Barry Kosmin. He was able to make use of his proficiency in French to assess the historical origins of and connections between antisemitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism as they manifest themselves in contemporary French media, politics and public opinion.

Rebecca Graham, 21, is a geography student at the University of Leeds and a former education officer at the Leeds Jewish Society. Under the supervision of JPR director of research Professor Stanley Waterman and demographer David Graham, she carried out research into the UK 2001 Census comparing the populations of Jews and Sikhs in London. She examined specific wards in which Jews, Hindus and Sikhs make up a large and significant proportion of the total UK population. She also sought to determine if the data allowed for a comparison of lifestyles, family structures and socio-economic status between the population groups.

The summer internship programme was considered to be a great success by all concerned and it is hoped that new sponsors will come forward so that it can be repeated in future years.