About JPR

The challenge we face

The world is a complicated, troubled place. The end of the Cold War produced geopolitical instability. International terrorism now touches everyone’s lives. Antisemitism has intensified. Enlargement has strained the self-confidence of the European Union. And Europe as a whole is struggling to accommodate difference and achieve social cohesion based on common values. If it fails, there is a danger that the continent may become so fractured and divided, plagued by xenophobia, racism and extremism, that the opportunities for continuing to develop a flourishing and open Jewish life will be severely curtailed.

We are now faced with challenges fundamentally different from those that existed at the birth of JPR in 1996.

• How are we going to live together in peace and harmony in this common European space?
• How are we going to create the conditions in which religious, ethnic or cultural groups can maintain their distinctiveness and play a full part in European society, as citizens of their respective countries?
• What are the overarching common values which will hold us all together and ensure social cohesion?
• How should we respond to European Union policy-making that affects us as citizens and as Jews?
• What are the responsibilities that the interrelated communities of the transnational Jewish people have for each other?

Unless we tackle these key questions, all the achievements in revitalising Jewish life in Europe could come to nought.

Building on JPR's vital work on planning for the future of British Jewry, its new mission is to face this challenge by working for an inclusive Europe, where difference is cherished, common values prevail and all can flourish.

JPR's response

Fear and uncertainty in the Jewish world have made it increasingly difficult to have free and open discussion of the key questions facing us in Europe. Those who speak the loudest, hold the most extreme views and generate the most heat are often given greatest attention. This reinforces the polarization of opinion and narrows the space for analytical thinking, for fearless questioning and for making objective judgements on the basis of evidence.

JPR's aim is nothing less than to reverse that process: to expand the space in which people of differing views can seek answers to awkward questions, challenge received wisdom and generate new and even unsettling ideas. We need light to guide us through troubled times, something that an independent think tank is uniquely qualified to provide.

In fulfilling its new mission JPR starts from the premise that it should make a positive contribution to the policy debate. In other words, we should get beyond asking what Europe can give to us and ask instead ‘What can we give to Europe?’ JPR’s mission must be about carving out a vision for the future.

The problems and challenges facing Jews in Europe are remarkably similar everywhere. It is both a positive imperative that Jews work together across Europe to help each other in this project and a necessary response to the fact that, whether we like it or not, policy-making at the European level affects Jewish communities.

This is a large and urgent task; but there’s a huge prize for working to create a climate in which plural identities can flourish as an expression of society’s common agenda. And that prize is a dynamic and diverse Europe where people live together in mutually reinforcing freedom, peace and prosperity. To tackle this task, JPR is developing four new programme areas which are described in the following pages.

The birth of JPR

The remarkable resilience of Jews in Europe and the collapse of communism in 1989 created the conditions for a revival of Jewish life during the 1990s. The newly free Jews of the former communist countries, hungry to rediscover their Jewishness, began to build dynamic communities. In Western Europe there was a determination to strengthen Jewish identity through new educational initiatives.

Across the continent interest in Jewish culture, heritage and history grew. Religious life strengthened. Schools, informal education and welfare services expanded dramatically. The ‘new Europe’ welcomed Jewish aspirations for freedom, distinctiveness and the integration of the Holocaust into European history. The Jewish narrative became part of the mainstream.

The mid-1990s was a time of high optimism. Prescient thinkers, leaders and philanthropists realised that sustaining the development of Jewish life in the UK required the applied intellectual power of an independent Jewish policy think tank. The reinvigoration of the community needed underpinning with research-based, strategic policy planning. And so, in 1996, JPR was created.

A new way of working

JPR’s new programmes demand a new and more flexible way of working.

JPR has a high reputation for evidence-based policy development, published in the form of research papers. Its new programmes will require an increasing concentration on the need to achieve outcomes and to make an impact with its analyses,critiques, ideas and proposals.

JPR will draw on the intellectual talents of Jews and non- Jews across the continent to research, think, write and promote policy ideas. It will develop a network of compatible think tanks, research institutes and university departments which will collaborate on projects. And it will use a variety of research, discussion and debate formats to pursue policy issues.

Crucial to this new approach will be JPR’s new interactive website which will become a primary means of communication with subscribers, members, supporters, target audiences and the general public. One of its main features will be the opportunity to engage in online discussion of policy ideas and to contribute to JPR policy development. The results of policy research will be published online and audiences alerted by email. Improved communication will mean greater transparency about JPR’s work.

It is important that JPR’s new direction is reflected in its governance structures. New members of the Board of Directors are therefore being appointed from across Europe

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