The field of research on contemporary antisemitism and Jewish life: Working towards a European research hub

In this report:

As part of the EU strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life, the European Commission (EC) committed to creating a European research hub on contemporary antisemitism and Jewish life and culture, in cooperation with EU Member States and the research community. To do so, the EC first commissioned the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) to assess and report on the need for such a hub, including researching the field's landscape in terms of topics, geography, individuals and institutions involved.

To develop its findings, the research team analysed the holdings of the European Jewish Research Archive (EJRA), JPR's free-to-access repository of social research on Jewish life in Europe since 1990. The report makes several recommendations about what the proposed new research hub will do, emphasising the importance of recruiting, training and retaining researchers for the field, enhancing research quality, building stronger links between researchers, and improving the connections between research findings and policy initiatives.

Some of the key findings in this report:

• The field has a disproportionate focus on antisemitism and the Holocaust, and a comparative lack of focus on key issues about how Jews live their lives today, such as education, culture, Jewish identity and demography.
• The number of researchers who have devoted their entire careers to the field is modest at best, and they are dispersed across multiple disciplines.
• While there are many European universities with academics and departments focused on Jewish Studies, no institutionalised research field of ‘Contemporary Jewish Life’ exists anywhere on the continent.
• There is no evidence of systematic and organised Europe-wide forms of organisation that connect researchers involved in studying contemporary Jewish life; they rather tend to convene around specific, short-term projects, and function largely independently of one another.