Believing and belonging: what drives European Jews

Towards the end of Saturday’s sidrah of Tetzaveh, the second of a two-part instalment on the assembly of the Tabernacle and the kitting-out of the priesthood who will serve in it, there is an explanation of what this great national enterprise is all about. It is place where the children of Israel are to encounter the Divine Presence. “And I will abide among the Israelites,” God says.

Across the Jewish world, there are many thousands of synagogues, institutional descendants of the Tabernacle in the wilderness. But as survey after survey has revealed, levels of religious belief among Western Jewry are strikingly low.

This was apparent again in the findings of a poll of European Jews which were published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research this month. When asked what was very important to their sense of Jewish identity, belief in God (33 per cent) was less than half that of the top markers associated with Jewish peoplehood — remembering the Holocaust (78 per cent) and combating antisemitism (73 per cent).

More than 16,000 Jews from a dozen European countries, including the UK, took part. The information was collected in a survey primarily about antisemitism conducted by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency in 2018. Now the data on Jewish identity has been analysed in a report of more than 100 pages by Daniel Staetsky, senior research fellow at JPR, and the world’s leading Jewish demographer, Hebrew University Emeritus Professor Sergio DellaPergola — a follow-up to their study of the continent’s Jewish population two years ago.

Or rather data on Jewish identities. Because the authors of the report are keen to stress the diversity of Judaism and Jewishness today, which is made up of “multiple threads” rather than being reducible to a simple definition.

Euro-Jews fall into three main blocs, they find. Traditional religious, who belong to exclusive Jewish communities that “emphasise religious leadership”: those bound by ties of peoplehood who belong to Jewish associations that mayinclude synagogues but without the cultural exclusivity of the traditional religious: and cultural Jews who feel connected to Jewish history and heritage but without necessarily affiliating to communal institutions.

This diversity, the authors argue, is important not only for Jewish community planning to recognise but also for external policy-makers, because the groups may differ in their responses to contemporary issues — for example, more religious Jews are likelier to regard criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

European Jews nevertheless are more likely to identify themselves in terms of religion rather than ethnicity, though that varies between countries. Thirty-five per cent define themselves solely by religion: and another 23 per cent by religion together with another category. Parentage, culture and heritage are the most common definitions besides religion.

But among the young, religious belief has proportionately been gaining strength. For those in the 16 to 29 age bracket, 39 per cent said belief in God was very important to them, compared with 24 per cent of the over-70s.

Examining religious trends, the authors find that the percentage of those who describe themselves as Charedi or Orthodox rises from just five per cent of the over-70s to 22 per cent of the under-30s.

If you compare childhood upbringing to Jewish allegiance as adults, then the percentage of Charedim rose from four per cent to five per cent: Orthodox from seven to eight per cent; Reform from 10 per cent to 15 per cent. But the “traditional” fell from 29 per cent to 24 per cent. And the biggest jump was in the “Just Jewish” Jews from 27 per cent to 38 per cent, indicating an overall shift away from denominational self-definition.

(Those of mixed faiths dropped from seven to six per cent: those who found none of the definitions applied to them from eight to five per cent; and eight per cent of Jewish adults were not raised as Jewish, such as converts.)

Around two-thirds of the population belonged in the same way as they did as children.

The most observant, from Charedi to traditional, now collectively comprise over a third of Jewish adults — 37 per cent — “a minority but a sufficiently large one to be able to significantly influence the overall atmosphere and style of the Jewish community”.

When it comes to practice, attending a Seder on Pesach (74 per cent) is the most popular, following by fasting on Yom Kippur (62 per cent); 47 per cent light candles most Friday night, 34 per cent eat kosher meat at home, 23 per cent attend shul weekly and 15 per cent do not switch on lights during Shabbat (the survey did not ask about Chanukah).

Only 17 per cent of the sample kept none of these observances.

The authors found “a genuine increase in the interest of many Jews in Europe in a more committed and sustained manifestation of their Jewish identity”. They speculate that the experience of antisemitism and hostility to Israel may have strengthened “interest and motivation in belonging to a Jewish community”.

Overall, they argue that European Jewry is “strong” and that a “robust” sense of Jewish identity can be maintained outside of a religious outlook.

On the other hand, they note that it is religion that provides “higher resilience” against assimilation. They compare the Jewish population to boiling soup where the thinner layers on top evaporate, leaving a fuller-bodied broth in the pot.

The Jewish Identities of European Jews — Why, What and How can be downloaded from jpr.org.uk