Earlier this week the Institute for Jewish Policy Research/JPR released a report on attitudes of Jews towards the issue of climate change. I recommend it, not in the least because I know of no other work on the subject. You will find all sorts of interesting things there. Some findings are, sort of, predictable, for example, a majority of nearly 70% of British Jews think that climate is definitely changing and a negligibly small minority of 2% think it is definitely not. Further, just over 60% of British Jews think that climate change is happening mainly or entirely due to human activity. So far the-largely-predictable findings. Others are less so-my personal expectation would be that a lot of people, perhaps as many as one third, would simply say that they do not know much on this subject, or at least that they are not sure about the cause of climate change. Not so. Those who choose these categorical ‘Do not know’ positions are a small minority, perhaps 4%-5%. With respect to climate change, British Jews are ‘a community of certainty’, that is for sure…
The best part of the report, however, is still ahead of you, dear reader. It is the part I choose to reproduce here, so remarkable it is. The table I reproduce illustrates differences in attitudes to climate change by voting intention, or, to put it more colloquially, political preference. About 90% of the Labour party supporters thinks that climate change is mainly or entirely due to human activity and less than 40% of the Conservatives party supporters think that. Other positions on climate change follow the same pattern when it comes to differences between people with different political preferences.
Institute for Jewish Policy Research
How is this possible-asks the simpleton in each and every one of us. That Simple Son from the Passover Hagadda; he does not work only during Passover, let me tell you…he is full on in other times too. Climate change is a matter of scientific investigation, is it not? Either it is happening or it is not. Either it is due to human activity or it is not. There must be a single correct answer to that, in the area of science. And if there is-then what kind of sense does ‘having an opinion’ make? Do these opinions actually measure how well scientific facts are known to people? This is very unlikely-there is no way in which one can seriously maintain that Jewish Labour supporters are less educated than Jewish supporters of the Conservative party, and vice versa. What is this about then? That political split on the reality of climate change so neatly across party lines signals one thing only: we cannot treat people’s opinions as a medium of scientific truth. And we cannot hope to pick up from the results of this or any other attitudinal survey what is ACTUALLY happening with climate change. Climate change belongs to science, and it should be illustrated by science and not by asking people’s opinions about it. Straightforward enough, right? Even obvious…Why to go on about it then?
Because this very thing-asking for people’s views and using these views as a window into objective reality, illogical as it is-happens a lot in an entirely different area: a study of antisemitism. Two major surveys of Jewish communities, both conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in 2012 and 2018, asked Jews in Europe what they think about antisemitic sentiment. Both surveys, but especially the second, found very significant proportions of Jews saying that antisemitism in their country is a very big problem and that it is increasing. In the 2018 FRA survey of European Jewish communities about 85% of the respondents indicated that antisemitism, in their view, is a problem in their societies, and about 40% indicated that it was a VERY BIG problem. There was moderate variation between Jews in different countries with respect to this assessment. The 2019 American Jewish Committee survey showed the situation with Jewish opinion in America was no different from Europe. Here we have it: Western Europe and the USA-places where survey after survey of the general public (not Jews!) register very low levels of declared negativity towards Jews feature as places where absolute majority of Jews are worried about antisemitism!
The last observation merits reiterating, and strengthening. Surveys of general population on a variety of attitudes run all the time. They are running as I keypunch my immortal words. A potential donor once told me that he will not sponsor survey number 157 on antisemitic attitudes showing that antisemitism is low. He had a point. The number of surveys of general population asking about attitudes to Jews in Europe may have exceeded 157 by now….They all show that antisemitism is low in Western Europe, yet Jews are worried. Looking at trajectories in antisemitic incidents does not help much, or, rather, heightens the uncertainty. In all, or nearly all, countries of Europe the police, ministries of Justice and Interior collect statistics on antisemitic incidents. In some places, there have been increases in incidents but these are not real increases. They reflect better registration and reporting. Measures to improve registration and reporting are deployed everywhere in Europe, or almost everywhere. How can one gauge a trend in antisemitism with ongoing improvement in a measurement tool? One cannot. So-again: No real rise in antisemitic incidents registered. No worsening in attitudes towards Jews. Yet, Jews are worried. This discrepancy is the best kept secret of the branch of social sciences called ‘antisemitism research’.
Nobody in that world of antisemitism research can tell you what is going on, that is even if they are aware of the discrepancy. (More often than not they are not aware, by the way). But it is getting even better…Not only Jews are very worried about antisemitism that cannot be captured by alternative measurement devices, but not all Jews are on the same page with respect to that anxiety. And if that is not enough-anxiety about antisemitism is differentiated precisely by political preference. Just like the opinions about climate change. Voting preferences as such were not captured by the 2018 survey of European Jews, for example, but some indirect measures of political preferences are there and they can be cross-referenced with Jews’ opinions about antisemitism. Other surveys, such as the 2018 survey of Jews in Canada asked about political preferences explicitly. And here is the thing: the more politically conservative Jews in countries like Canada, the UK, and France are those who worry more about antisemitism, and significantly so. In certain places the differentiation is at a level observed with the climate change: where a majority/significant proportion of ‘conservatively-minded’ Jews say antisemitism is a very big problem, a relatively small proportion of ‘liberally-minded’ Jews say it is. This is correct even when other characteristics are controlled for, i.e. when ‘conservatively-minded’ Jews are compared to the ‘liberally-minded’ Jews of the same age , level of education, level of religiosity and level of exposure to antisemitic acts. Further, it has been demonstrated that among Jews a general critical view of the surrounding society, as a society ridden with xenophobia and racism, is associated with perceiving it as antisemitic. There is a scientific paper about it-for anyone who can handle that kind of stuff-but I have presented the essentials.
Where does this all lead? Jewish views of antisemitism, even when appropriately measured by the existing standards, are not telling us much about how much antisemitism is REALLY an issue, let alone how dangerous it is. They tell us something about Jewish feelings and as long as feelings matter-and in contemporary politics they do-Jewish feelings should be measured and taken into account in policy debates. But measuring them and ‘taking them into account’ in some more or less specific way does not suffice. ‘Understanding’ Jewish feelings involves more than that. It involves knowing how to ‘marry’ them to the objectively measured reality: why Jews feel the way they do and how to explain the discrepancy-real or imagined-between what they say and what other attempts to gauge the reality render, and why some Jews say X and others Y.
I started this essay from climate change, and deliberately so. It is, from the Jewish perspective, a more neutral subject. Which helps to obviate it all: the fact that Jews on the Left think that climate change is a result of human activity does not make it so, and it does not preclude it either; the fact that they also think antisemitism is a not a very big problem does not make it so, and, similarly, does not preclude this. Other, objective, ways to measure antisemitism (or climate change) are needed. What are they? With respect to antisemitism this question is not just ‘not answered’, it is not even asked all that much. Such is the state of play in this area….And, by the way…not much changed in the past five years. It is about five years ago that I said these very words for the first time. Many books have been written since then about how Trump is bad for Jews and about how Corbyn is lethal for them, and even about how to fight antisemitism. Not to mention the avalanche of surveys! How to understand the existing levels of antisemitism and the existing levels of danger-we still do not know. The hidden towers over the revealed – רב הנסתר על הגלוי