A Portrait of Jews in London and the South-East: a community study:
1/ Background

Long-term Planning for British Jewry

A Portrait of Jews in London and the South-east: A Community Study is the largest and most important piece of research within JPR's Long-term Planning for British Jewry programme (LTP). LTP is a five-year project chronicling the current state of the Jewish voluntary sector in the United Kingdom, so that strategic planning decisions can be guided by accurate information that reflects the real world. The community survey aims to provide decision-makers with a sound and up-to-date picture of the Jewish public, the sector's client base.

The objectives of LTP are to identify and build on the community's distinctive strengths, to help the Jewish voluntary sector develop a shared vision and sense of its own identity, and to develop a strong and cohesive sector as a prerequisite for planning for the future. The project addresses financial inputs, service delivery systems in education and welfare for older people, associational activities and the governance of Jewish voluntary agencies.

It was stimulated by the results of a seminar held in 1997, at which representatives of leading agencies from the Jewish community considered a paper by Professor Margaret Harris on the future of the Jewish voluntary sector.¹ In that paper, Harris deemed the Jewish voluntary sector to include the following:

· social welfare agencies that provide care services;

· membership associations and clubs;

· self-help and mutual-aid groups;

· synagogues and confederations of synagogues;

· fundraising charities;

· grant-making trusts;

· educational institutions including schools and museums;

· housing associations;

· pressure groups or advocacy groups;

· ad hoc consultative or event-organizing groups;

· umbrella, intermediary and representative bodies.

The separate projects that comprise LTP can be thought of as constituting pieces of a multifaceted jigsaw puzzle that, when assembled, will form a clear picture of British Jewry's communal organizations and services. Its ultimate goal, and the final piece of LTP, will be a strategic planning document whose preparation at the conclusion of the whole research programme will make it possible for the community to develop an agreed agenda for implementation in the areas of planning, policies and priorities in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

The LTP publications prior to this have considered a variety of topics that directly affect the well-being of the community and its members. The first, by Peter Halfpenny and Margaret Reid, dealt with the parameters of the financial resources currently available within the Jewish voluntary sector. It drew on a database compiled by JPR containing information from the Board of Deputies' Jewish Community Information Database, the Charity Commission's lists of organizations with an interest in 'Jewish affairs' and various directories of social services. It contained details of 2,231 financially independent organizations (over 3,700 if subsidiaries are included), which together comprise the Jewish voluntary sector. Halfpenny and Reid explored the distribution of the total income of the sector over a variety of dimensions in order to find out where it is generated and for what kinds of organizations. It concluded that the sector has a significant and complex economy, estimating the income of the UK Jewish voluntary sector in 1997 from all sources at just over £500 million, with the bulk of the total income heavily concentrated in a few large organizations: the top 4 per cent of organizations generated 70 per cent of the total income. Moreover, British Jews invest proportionately more in such voluntary organizations than does the UK population as a whole.²

The second piece of research was Ernest Schlesinger's study of grant-making trusts (GMTs) in the Jewish sector, those bodies that provide funds for charities and individuals to carry out specific projects that fall within the parameters of their particular concerns.³ Initial analysis of the JPR database of organizations revealed that 27 per cent were GMTS.⁴The study analysed grants made by 239 GMTs and found that, of the almost £112 million that was distributed in 1997, the largest categories of recipients were 'Israel-related' (£27.4 million), followed by those concerned with the 'strictly Orthodox' (£18.7 million), 'education' (£10.6 million) and 'welfare' (£4 million).

In keeping with the existence of so many organizations, it is apparent that several thousand members of the Jewish community fill voluntary posts on boards of trustees, take on the burdens of office and accept final legal and moral responsibility for the running of each organization. The Jewish voluntary sector is probably unique in the proportion of the population involved as trustees, as well as in the high level of contact between the trustee and client groups. The intriguing issues regarding governance of the Jewish voluntary sector were recorded in a third report by Margaret Harris and Colin Rochester.⁵ Using qualitative research methods and selecting organizations that reflect the range and diversity of the Jewish voluntary sector from the JPR database, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the chairpersons of thirty-six organizations. The main variables taken into account in selecting the organizations approached were geographical location, size, income, staffing, structure and field of operation. The interviews focused on personal backgrounds, the interviewees' motivations and how they had been recruited, their views on the advantages and disadvantages of being chairperson, composition of the governing body, the role and work of the governing body, decision-making, and perspectives on issues facing boards and Jewish voluntary agencies generally. Complementary information was also solicited from senior paid staff, using two focus groups, one in Manchester and one in London.

Among the major findings of Harris and Rochester's study was that some of the organizations aimed to operate as voluntary membership 'associations', with board members not only undertaking a governance function but also playing roles filled by staff in other organizations. In this case, board members and staff both perform governance functions. Division of responsibilities between staff and board members varied over time and according to different areas of work within the organization. Many of the trends in the Jewish voluntary sector, such as increasing professionalism and the influence of business management principles, also occur in the broader voluntary sector. However, this study found important ways in which the governance of Jewish voluntary organizations can be distinguished from that of non-Jewish organizations in the United Kingdom, often resulting in the governance of Jewish voluntary organizations being more complex and onerous than that of other organizations. There were different ways in which organizations in the study responded to the problems of recruiting board members, with clear benefits for organizations with time limitations on service as a board member.

The fourth piece in this series considered Jewish schooling.⁶ This report assessed the situation brought about by the paradox of a steady and continuing decline in the size of the UK Jewish population over the last fifty years, alongside an increase of 500 per cent in attendance at Jewish day schools. The report emphasized the fact that communal expenditure on Jewish education by the end of the twentieth century amounted to tens of millions of pounds.

The growth in attendance at Jewish day schools has followed a prioritization of this issue by communal leaders. Jewish schooling has also been affected by government educational policies that have fundamentally changed the provision of day school education across the whole of the United Kingdom. Despite the importance of proposed government initiatives on the future directions of Jewish schooling and the major changes that have occurred, people still knew or understood little about the effectiveness of Jewish educational provision. By interviewing headteachers, teachers, educational psychologists, directors of services, communal leaders and parents, this report set out to assess the provision of education and performance of primary and secondary Jewish day school pupils in general and Judaic subjects, to assess the key strategic issues facing Jewish day schools in the short to medium term, and to begin analysing the needs and wants of Jewish parents.

The report highlighted five overall strategic concerns: provision of places, human resources, financing, communication and information, and provision for children with special educational needs. It noted that the sector faces key strategic choices and questions over the best ways to develop, raising these issues as a basis for debate on the future directions of Jewish day schooling within the community. This debate should involve not only those already immersed in Jewish education, but also those specialists in the educational, policy and academic worlds with the expertise to help plan for the future. It outlined a need to employ the know-how of people who had not previously been part of the discussion, principally because they had never been approached.

A fifth report was a companion study to the schooling report, and dealt with the issues facing a community that is not only declining numerically but also ageing.⁷ The study provided a strategic assessment of older people's care provision within the organized Jewish community, and detailed the historical development of social care, demographic changes and the range of services currently being provided. In particular, it focused on institutional care provision within Jewish residential and nursing homes, which account for the large majority of communal and government funding. It addressed key policy concerns that relate to financing services, provision of places and human resources, issues that have previously only been approached on an ad hoc basis and without adequate evidence.

The report was designed to aid in the planning of long-term care facilities for older Jewish people, offering information to help providers and those who use Jewish services plan effectively for the future. By piecing together the elements needed for effective strategic planning, including demography, legislation, expectations and barriers to change, it is possible to enhance effective decision-making. It also raised issues urgently requiring further research, especially the changing role of communal and inter-generational support structures, the effectiveness of various models of institutional care, health issues specific to the Jewish community, mental health needs and human resources.

The final piece to be published in this series, which will appear after the analyses of the current survey, will be Ernest Schlesinger's Creating Community and Accumulating Social Capital: Jews Associating with Other Jews in Manchester, a report that examines voluntary associations of Jewish people in the Manchester conurbation. The recreational associations that Schlesinger discusses, such as football leagues, golf clubs and drama groups, provide a case study of the background elements of 'Jewish community', which contribute to the well-being and continuance of being Jewish, to the stock of Jewish 'social capital'. Here, Jewish people come together informally or semi-formally to be with one another, to interact and to strengthen bonds. People have a layered involvement in society and, for some, these informal associations are their only connection with other Jews outside the family, while for others they are just one of many. Changing circumstances, such as life-cycle changes or residential location decisions, can increase or decrease active involvement in more formal institutions. These voluntary associations reinforce and extend Jewish networks and connectivity, helping to create and maintain links between diverse sectors within the Jewish community.

The survey

The survey of Jews in London and the South-east is the key piece of research in the LTP project. Whereas the bulk of the information and data in the previous LTP reports was provider-based, giving a somewhat 'top down' and historic perspective, the survey polled the consumers and potential consumers of Jewish voluntary sector services. There is an urgent need to collect information from existing clients, prospective future clients, donors and ordinary members of the Jewish population concerning their current and future needs and expectations. This market research survey was designed to fill this void.

The survey of Jews in London and the South-east is the second part of a national survey. The first part was conducted in Leeds in July and August 2001. Leeds was chosen because in many ways it reflects British Jewish communities outside Greater London. Settled in large numbers towards the end of the nineteenth century by Jews from Eastern Europe, the Leeds community--in common with others outside London--has declined in population, while ageing at the same time. As a consequence, the burden of providing services is heavier than before, falling upon an ever-smaller number of individuals in their productive years.

However, there was another reason for choosing to conduct the first part of the national market survey in Leeds. The Leeds Jewish community has traditionally been compact and highly concentrated and remains tightly clustered within the Leeds LS17 postal district and adjacent areas. With such a high concentration, several of the sampling and other methodological issues could be more easily tackled in Leeds before embarking on the much more complex Greater London project. At the same time, the size of the Leeds community and the potential for a relatively high response rate promised that the results from the Leeds survey could be analysed with a sufficiently high level of statistical significance. In the event, we aimed at complete coverage rather than the a priori selection of a sample, attempting to send questionnaires to as many households in Leeds with a Jewish adult as could be reached.

The Leeds questionnaire had three sections. Section A was a general section, which all respondents were asked to complete; section B was designed to elicit responses from people aged 75 and over or who were infirm; section C was for respondents with school-age children. In the format in which it was mailed, there were 111 separate questions in section A, 26 in section B and 8 in section C. The Leeds questionnaire formed the basis for that used in the survey of the Jewish community in London and the South-east and the vast majority of the questions asked in Leeds were replicated in the London questionnaire. The sectional structure of the London survey questionnaire is illustrated in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1: Structure of the Greater London questionnaire

The sample

The current London survey differs from the 1995 study of social and political attitudes, JPR's previous large-scale questionnaire survey of British Jewry.⁸ That survey examined a representative sample of British Jewry, including a substantial proportion of people who were assimilated, 'married out' or uninvolved in any community activity. Its aim was to produce a profile of the community defined in the broadest possible terms and concentrate on the interface between Jewish identity and the social and political attitudes of Jews. Although it filled a crucial gap in the knowledge base of the community, it was not focused on issues that affect the key decisions that need to be made by voluntary sector organizations. Moreover, while the 1995 study sampled 2,194 Jewish households across the whole of the United Kingdom, the present survey of the potential market for Jewish services covers just Greater London, and is based on 2,965 completed questionnaires returned between February and April 2002. This makes it the largest direct survey of British Jewry ever.

Figure 1.1 Distribution of London survey households

From the outset, we were aware that we needed to produce a questionnaire that would address practical policy planning issues head-on. And because so many services are delivered at the local level, we needed to tackle sampling problems bearing in mind geographical location.

Because we were interested in the potential market for the Jewish voluntary sector, some difficult decisions had to be taken at the outset. We decided that we would sample in specific areas rather than attempt to cover the whole of Greater London.

With a limited budget, we wanted to maximize the likelihood of our reaching Jewish households and this meant sampling in areas in which there was an a priori expectation that we would find Jews, so that some areas would be selected whereas others would not. For example, we chose to sample in the Edgware area of the London Borough of Barnet when we could have equally well sampled Finchley, with a similar Jewish density and socio-economic profile.

For reasons of economy we made the conscious decision not to sample the Haredi (strictly Orthodox) community in Stamford Hill. For the most part, this community does not draw on the services of the larger mainstream Jewish voluntary organizations. They run parallel services and will continue to do so. Moreover, during the planning period for the current survey, the Haredi community commissioned a social survey of the Stamford Hill area in which the community rabbis had indicated what types of questions would be sanctioned. In the light of this development, we decided that the response rates would be so low as not to justify the added expense. Similarly, we restricted our search for Jews in those areas in which their numbers and densities would be low. Our only venture in this direction was to sample the diffuse population of Jews throughout South London, and the low response rates from this area confirm the futility of attempting a similar course of action in other parts of the metropolis with small Jewish populations.

The bottom line is that our sample cannot be regarded as wholly representative of British Jewry and we do not make such a claim. It undercounts at both the extreme secular and religious fringes of the spectrum. This is not to say that our sample does not contain highly secular and assimilated Jews on the one hand, and the strictly Orthodox on the other: it does. The difference between our sample and a truly random sample is that we picked these populations up in the areas in which we sampled rather than expending energy and a limited budget in trying to locate them elsewhere.

In addition, we undersampled singles of all ages and renters because of the greater tendency of these groups to live in flats rather than single-family dwellings. Given the areas chosen and the survey method adopted, this was always going to be the case. The data source used contained names and addresses but not flat numbers. However, owing to the need for anonymity in sending out the questionnaires, we mailed to addresses without any names. In order to avoid mailing confusion, it was necessary to eliminate multiple occupancies at a single address.

Our undersampling of singles and renters resulted in the under-representation of the young (more likely to move frequently and thus harder to locate). The decision not to sample Jews in areas of low Jewish density meant under-representation of the secular (because many live in areas in which there are few Jews). There was also an under-representation of the poor (partly a consequence of the areas selected and partly related to the probability that they live in flats) and of women, as fewer single-person households were contacted.⁹ Similarly, we asked that the person filling in the form in each household should be the adult member with the most recent birthday. This was to avoid sampling bias. However, there has to be some question over whether households actually followed this rule as 51 per cent of the respondents were males from a population in which males comprise just over 45 per cent. Thus perhaps another form of sample bias is evident.

One final point is that all the respondents in this survey are members of households. It does not therefore include any people living in institutions, a point to be borne in mind throughout the report, and especially in the chapter on older people.

Chapter 12 outlines the principal technical details relating to sampling.

Summary

Despite the limitations caused by sampling difficulties, the fact that we achieved almost 3,000 completed questionnaires from across a broad spectrum of Jews is an indication of the great value of this survey. In short, it is the largest single survey of a Jewish population in the United Kingdom. Given the large size of the sample it is possible to produce statistically significant results for a wide variety of data subsets. More importantly, it provides a large amount of previously unavailable data--which is geographically sensitive--that can be put to use by planners and decision-makers to the benefit of the Jewish community.

In the following chapters, we present the major findings on a variety of issues. Chapter 2 presents the main characteristics of the demography and residential location of London's Jews. It also contains basic information on Jewish affiliation, practice and outlook. Chapter 3 concerns issues of housing and migration. Chapters 4_6 deal with issues of lifestyle, including health and illness, communication, leisure and participation in Jewish cultural activities. Chapters 7 and 8 concern charitable donations and attitudes to voluntary work. Chapters 9 and 10 address the two areas that account for the lion's share of the budget of the Jewish voluntary sector: schooling and care for older people. The main findings are presented in this preliminary report and both of these areas will be the subject of separate and detailed JPR reports in the coming year. The report's conclusions are summed up in Chapter 11. And, finally, Chapter 12 outlines the technical details of the survey.

Notes

1 Margaret Harris, The Jewish Voluntary Sector in the United Kingdom: Its Role and Its Future (London: The Institute for Jewish Policy Research 1997). [back]
2 Peter Halfpenny and Margaret Reid, The Financial Resources of the UK Jewish Voluntary Sector (London: The Institute for Jewish Policy Research 2000). [back]
3 Ernest Schlesinger, Grant-making Trusts in the Jewish Sector (London: The Institute for Jewish Policy Research 2000). [back]
4 The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) indicated in 1998 that only 5 per cent of the national total of 186,000 registered charities were GMTs.[back]
5 Margaret Harris and Colin Rochester, Governance in the Jewish Voluntary Sector (London: The Institute for Jewish Policy Research 2001). [back]
6 Oliver Valins, Barry Kosmin and Jacqueline Goldberg, The Future of Jewish Schooling in the United Kingdom: A Strategic Assessment of a Faith-based Provision of Primary and Secondary School Education (London: The Institute for Jewish Policy Research 2001).[back]
7 Oliver Valins, Facing the Future: The Provision of Long-term Care Facilities for Older Jewish People in the United Kingdom (London: Institute for Jewish Policy Research 2002). [back]
8 Stephen Miller, Marlena Schmool and Antony Lerman, Social and Political Attitudes of British Jews: Some Key Findings of the JPR Survey (London: The Institute for Jewish Policy Research 1996).[back]
9 This is a problem well known to social scientists. It was encountered most recently in the 2001 UK Census, in which massive efforts were made to make accurate estimates of 'missing' populations, which are known to include, among others, men in their 20s and people living in privately rented flats. [back]