In a survey among leaders of European Jewish
communities, 40 percent of respondents said antisemitism is the most serious
threat to the future of Jewish life in their country.
The result appeared in the Third Survey of
European Jewish Leaders and Opinion Formers, which was published Monday
by the International Centre for Community Development of the American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee, based on replies gathered last year from 314
respondents.
The figure is the highest
recorded by JDC since it launched its first survey of this kind in 2008. That year, only 10
percent of respondents ranked the phenomenon as the most serious threat facing
their communities. In the following survey, conducted in 2011, that figure rose to 26 percent.
The results match other
surveys that show increasing concern among Jews over antisemitism following the
multiplication of hate crimes in Western Europe after 2000 in connection with
Israel and jihadist attacks on Jewish targets, beginning with the 2012 slaying
of three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse.
In 2013, nearly one-third of
5,847 European Jewish respondents to an EU survey said they “seriously considered emigrating” because of antisemitism.
Still, in all three JDC
surveys among leaders of European Jewry, a majority of respondents ranked
internal problems as the most serious threat facing their communities.
In 2011 and 2015, the problem
of “Alienation of Jews from the Jewish community life” was ranked as most
serious by more than half of respondents. In 2008, 38 percent of respondents
named the “Increasing rate of mixed marriages” as their communities’ no. 1
threat.
