JPR in the media

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News releases

Thursday 15 Jul 2010
New report on the attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel reveals deep levels of attachment to the country

Jews in Britain strongly identify with and support Israel. They are ready to see Israel swap territory for peace and to talk with Hamas if it will advance the cause of peace. At the same time, they are concerned about Israel’s security, support the separation barrier/security fence and viewed the 2008/09 operation in Gaza as “a legitimate act of self-defence.”

These are the central findings of the most definitive study ever conducted of the attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel. The study, entitled Committed, concerned and conciliatory: The attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel, is published today by the community’s leading research institute, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR).

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Friday 11 Jun 2010
DIY Judaism: A roundtable discussion on the phenomenon of independent minyanim

A JPR and JHub event, in collaboration with Wandering Jews and the Carlebach Minyan, Belsize Park with:

Jonathan Boyd, JPR
Shoshana Boyd Gelfand, Movement for Reform Judaism
Rabbi Jeremy Gordon, New London Synagogue
Samuel Klein, Minyan Lev Simchah/N3 Minyan
Gabriela Pomeroy, Carlebach Minyan, Belsize Park
Naomi Soetendorp, Wandering Jews

on Thursday 10 June 2010

The discussion that took place is currently in the process of being written up and will be available to download shortly.

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Thursday 13 May 2010
New report on synagogue membership in the UK in 2010 reveals a dynamic picture of communal change

A report published jointly for the first time by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and JPR, and co-authored by Dr David Graham, JPR’s Director of Social and Demographic Research, and Daniel Vulkan, Research and Information Officer at the Board, reveals a dynamic picture of communal change in the UK community, and charts significant changes in its religious make-up.

The report is of particular interest to community leaders and planners because it provides the only consistent indicator of patterns of Jewish affiliation and Jewish belonging over time.

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Tuesday 27 Apr 2010
Research about the community for the community: JPR launches its innovative Community Research Initiative
JPR’s longstanding commitment to providing reliable data for Jewish communal organisations is being strengthened with the launch of our new Community Research Initiative.
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Monday 22 Feb 2010
JPR launches New Conceptions of Community
During the past 15 months, JPR has been engaged in a conversation involving a small number of the most insightful practitioners and thinkers in the British Jewish community today. The participants in the conversation were drawn from as many sections of the Jewish community as possible and were chosen because of their direct involvement in creating a particularly interesting version of Jewish community, their capacity to think reflectively and their willingness to engage constructively and respectfully in dialogue with others.
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Monday 8 Feb 2010
Your people shall be my people – what is the big theory of Jewish Peoplehood?

If much of the data is to be believed, the ties that bind Jews together are becoming increasingly unraveled and frayed. Links between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, between different denominations, between the political left and right, are all breaking down. Has the powerful idea of 'one people with one heart' become consigned to the dustbin of history? Can it be rebuilt and renewed? If so, what needs to be done?

This session, which was given by Yonatan Ariel and Jonathan Boyd, JPR's Executive Director, at Limmud 2009 can be heard by clicking the link below.

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Monday 8 Feb 2010
Predictions of our demographic demise are somewhat premature: discuss
Jews in Britain are experiencing a period of unprecedented demographic change. In 2006 recorded Jewish births outnumbered deaths for the first time since records began. Whilst one part of the community is slowly contracting, another part is rapidly expanding. What are the figures? Can we expect these trends to continue, and if so for how long? And what are the implications for the future religious, social and economic makeup of the community? This session, which was given by Dr David Graham, JPR's Director of Social and Demographic Research, at the Limmud 2009 Conference at Warwick University can be heard by clicking the link below.
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Media coverage of JPR

Various (Thursday 15 Jul 2010)
New report on the attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel reveals deep levels of attachment to the country
All media coverage of the Israel Survey is available below
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The Jewish Chronicle (Thursday 17 Jun 2010)
Numbers that don't add up

by Geoffrey Alderman

The counting of Jews has never been straightforward. Orthodox Jews maintain that it is forbidden to count Jews directly. Some say that in biblical times a half-shekel was taken from every Jew, and then the coins were counted.

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The Jewish Chronicle (Friday 11 Jun 2010)
Chief Rabbi: 'I did my best for women'

by Simon Rocker

The Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, has defended his efforts to improve equality for women during nearly two decades in office.

His record was challenged by June Jacobs, a former president of the International Council of Jewish Women, at questions tabled following a lecture the Chief Rabbi gave to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London this week.

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JTA (Tuesday 25 May 2010)
Haredi numbers rise in Britian

Synagogue membership has stopped declining in Britain, due to a rise in the number of fervently Orthodox Jews.

Membership numbers for central Orthodox and liberal synagogues are still down from five years ago, according to a new survey by the Board of Deputies and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

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British Religion in Numbers (Monday 24 May 2010)
Synagogue membership in 2010
Membership of a synagogue has traditionally been regarded as the most widely held point of formal affiliation to and identity with the Jewish community. However, the situation has been changing fast in recent years, with membership becoming more fluid and transient. It is therefore of interest that the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and the Board of Deputies of British Jews have jointly published Synagogue Membership in the United Kingdom in 2010, by David Graham and Daniel Vulkan.
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The Jewish Chronicle (Friday 21 May 2010)
Orthodox synagogue membership stable

by Simon Rocker

The decline in synagogue membership in the UK has slowed down significantly over the past five years, according to a new survey.

The number of Jewish households which belong to a synagogue fell by just 0.3 per cent since 2005 - compared to an overall drop of 16.8 per cent over the two decades from 1990 to 2010.

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The Jewish News and totallyjewish.com (Friday 21 May 2010)
Orthodox prop up declining synagogue membership

by James Martin

The decline in synagogue membership across the UK has "flattened out over the past five years" due to a surge in "strictly Orthodox" memberships.

A joint survey, published by the institute for Jewish Policy Research and the Board of Deputies, shows that at the start of 2010 there were around 83,000 household memberships which is a decline of 600 since 2005. In 1990, nearly 110,000 households were members of synagogues.

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The Jewish Chronicle (Friday 7 May 2010)
Shock news: S&M link to Tories

The JC editor and the TV mogul are much more surprised than I am by their decision to go Conservative

By David Aaronovitch

A writer's life is a happy life, except in one circumstance. That is, as this week, when the lambent flow of phrases, sentences and paragraphs have to be created in advance of a life-changing event but will generally be consumed after it. I write before the election; you are probably reading this when the result is known.

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The Jewish Chronicle (Friday 30 Apr 2010)
Who votes for whom in the Jewish community?

By Simon Rocker

Members of central Orthodox synagogues are far more likely to vote Conservative than those in Reform synagogues, according to research on the political attitudes of British Jews collected early this year.

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The Jewish Chronicle (Friday 5 Mar 2010)
Charedim demand Hebrew, not Yiddish, census

by James Martin and Simon Rocker

Census to include questions in Yiddish for first time in 110 years — but the Orthodox argue it should be in Hebrew

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The Jewish Chronicle (Friday 5 Mar 2010)
The Choosing People

by Simon Rocker

“The traditional Jewish community, bounded by a combination of external hostility and limitations and internal comfort and familiarity, has had its walls battered, breached and broken, not so much by antisemitism but rather by the winds of sociological change. We are now free to come and go as we please.

“…In many respects, we are no longer a chosen people, compelled by God, or fate, or history to be part of the Jewish community, but rather a choosing people, deciding day-by-day, minute-by-minute whether or not we want our Jewishness to inform our lives.”

So writes Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the Insititute for Jewish Policy Reseach in the introduction to a collection of short essays on changing Jewish society and the challenges ahead. Contributors to New Conceptions of Community range from chief executive of the London School of Jewish Studies Raphael Zarum to Reform executive director Rabbi Shoshana Boyd-Gelfand to Moishe House musician Joseph Finlay. Worth a look.

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