A New Context for Europe’s Jewish Communities
The landscape of organized European Jewish life has undergone substantial change in recent years. In countries previously under Communist rule, dozens of new organizations and programs have been created, while in Germany, infrastructure has been developed to serve the country’s new Russian-speaking Jewish population. In the West, resurgent concerns about antisemitism and interfaith relations have made their mark on communities, while at the same time a new trend towards building Jewish life outside traditional structures has generated considerable innovation. Nowhere are things standing still; in every community, the impact of new patterns of identity and affiliation, of technological advances and of demographic change, is being felt. For Jewish leaders in Europe – lay and professional, establishment and non-institutional—these are both challenging and exciting times.
Europe’s Jewish leadership is uniquely positioned to observe these developments and to share insights into the contemporary situation. For the ICCD, building a clearer understanding of the outlook and priorities of top decision-makers and opinion-leaders is therefore an intrinsic part of our efforts to advance informed, strategic Jewish community development across Europe.
To that end, we have just completed a major opinion survey examining lay and professional leaders’ perspectives on European Jewish communal life. The European Jewish Leaders’ Survey collected data from over 250 individuals in 31 countries in order to investigate both current perspectives on key internal and environmental issues, as well as prognoses on what the next decade may bring for European Jewish life.
The European Jewish Leaders’ Survey explored a host of issues informing the perspectives and policies of Jewish leaders across Europe—from the debates over conversion and integrating interfaith families, to the scope and quality of programs for various target populations and the prospects for a new generation of leadership. It also investigated how and to what extent antisemitism, migration, European integration and events in Israel are shaping current and future communal priorities.
The result is a multi-dimensional, leader-driven portrait of Jewish Europe today, drawn from a variety of institutional, generational, ideological and regional perspectives. The report contains valuable insight into the agendas and concerns of both established and emerging decision-makers and opinion-shapers as they look ahead to the second decade of the 21st century.
Data collection, analysis and reporting were carried out by Gallup Europe (Brussels), one of the world’s leading research consultancies. Gallup contributed an unequalled international reputation and extensive experience in trans-national and new technology survey research, including major projects for the European Commission.
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For further information, please email us at contact@jdc-iccd.org.
For an executive summary of the report, click here
