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Antony Lerman returns to lead JPR in new direction

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Sunday 30 Apr 2006

JPR’s founding director, Antony Lerman, has returned to JPR as Executive Director. For the last six years he was Chief Executive of Hanadiv Charitable Foundation (HCF), a grant-making trust supporting Jewish life in Europe, which he set up for Lord Rothschild, the Foundation’s Chairman, who is also JPR’s Honorary President. Now supporting hundreds of projects in 30 countries, HCF has had a major impact in the fields of academic Jewish studies, Jewish heritage and Jewish culture.

JPR’s Chairman, Peter Levy OBE, warmly welcomed Tony’s return: “We are delighted to have someone so familiar with the state of European Jewry and with such strong contacts with academics, researchers, writers, journalists and Jewish and non-Jewish leaders across the continent. JPR can now build on the success of its first-rate social research on British Jewry and seek solutions to problems all Jewish communities in Europe face.”

Explaining why he wanted to return, Tony Lerman said: “I was delighted to learn that JPR’s Board had decided to take up the challenge of developing policy ideas to help advance the fortunes of Jewish communities across Europe . Good, visionary grant-making, the hallmark of Rothschild family philanthropy, is crucial for Europe , but so too is visionary thinking as well as innovative and practical ideas. I saw the JPR directorship as a wonderful opportunity to continue pursuing the fundamental aims of HCF by providing a leadership of ideas which address the problems and make the most of the opportunities of twenty-first century European Jewish life.”

The European challenge

Having travelled extensively throughout Europe over the last six years, Tony has seen the many varieties of Jewish life on the continent first hand. “Despite understandable public concern about antisemitism, most communities are firmly focused on creating a flourishing, vibrant and open Jewish life. But,” he warns, “this could be severely curtailed if we don’t find an answer to the question of how we are going to live together in peace and harmony in this common European space.”

“Seeking a solution to this problem is not a luxury we afford ourselves after we’ve taken care of all internal communal challenges,” believes Tony. “This is a task we need to engage in now, today, for unless we find an answer, Europe could become a fractured, divided place, plagued by xenophobia, racism, and fear of immigrants and asylum-seekers— hardly conducive circumstances for a sustainable Jewish future.”

Europe is already engaged in a policy debate about how to create the conditions in which religious, ethnic and cultural groups can maintain their distinctiveness and play a full part as citizens of their respective countries; and how to define what the core values are which will hold us all together. Tony argues that “making a Jewish contribution to this debate should be the mission of JPR, and it should be a positive and not a negative one.”

Carving out a vision for the future

“In other words we should get beyond asking what Europe can give to us for past and present pain and ask instead: ‘What can we give to Europe ?’ JPR’s mission must be about carving out a vision for the future.”

Tony Lerman’s recent experience makes him well suited to guide JPR in this direction. At the end of the 1990s he was a member of the Commission on the Future of Multiethnic Britain chaired by Lord Bhikhu Parekh. Many of the Commission’s recommendations were taken up by the government. He is a member of the Black-Jewish Forum, a Trustee of the European Jewish Publication Society and was a member of the Imperial War Museum ’s Holocaust Exhibition Advisory Committee. His most recent writing and lecturing has been on the future of Europe and Europe ’s Jews.

Asked what JPR has to do to achieve its mission, Tony Lerman said: “It has to do what it says on the can: think, analyse and develop policies. Its work cannot just be a compilation of facts, figures and opinions, but the development of original policy proposals that enlighten, challenge and catch the imagination.”