Jonathan Boyd, at The Blogs

Nov 3, 2020, 2:40 PM

Corbyn shamed but the damage has been done

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (Via Jewish News)

There’s no great triumph to be had in the shaming of Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the UK’s Labour Party. Yes, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has found that the Labour Party that he led until earlier this year responsible for unlawful...

Jun 25, 2020, 12:31 PM

Jury still out on Jewish Covid-19 data

The finding that Jewish men are significantly more likely than Christian men to die from COVID-19, even after taking into account differences in age profile, location, socio-economics and ethnicity, is odd to say the least. In decades of international research about Jews, nothing like this...

Jan 31, 2019, 12:34 PM

Squeezing the wiggle room between anti-Zionism and antisemitism

Protestor holds a sign urging the boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel (Jewish News)

Most Jews maintain that calls for boycotts of Israel are at least ‘probably’ antisemitic, if not ‘definitely’ so. Data JPR gathered for the EU in 2018 demonstrate that 75% of UK Jews hold one or other of these positions; across Europe, the average is 82%....

Jan 17, 2019, 11:48 AM

Why select a Jewish school for your child?

The numbers of children in Jewish schools in the UK continue to rise, as they have done for decades. Part of the reason for that is simply the demographic growth of the Charedi community – high birth rates there mean more children, more children mean...

Dec 13, 2018, 12:54 PM

Antisemitism data no reason to cry ‘gevalt!’

An orthodox Jew and a boy pass two police officers in Antwerp, Belgium, on Sunday, May 25, 2014. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe via Jewish news )

There’s no getting away from the grim findings of the latest European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) survey of Jewish people’s experiences and perceptions of antisemitism. Levels of concern have risen more or less everywhere in Europe since the last study in this series...

Jul 6, 2017, 12:26 PM

Slow erosion of middle-of-the-road Orthodox Judaism

Synagogue membership figures have been falling for at least a generation, if not considerably longer. But the overall decline masks important developments at the denominational level. Critically, the sector that has declined most sharply is central Orthodoxy – broadly understood as the United Synagogue, the...

About Me

Jonathan Boyd is the Executive Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, an independent research organisation based in the UK specialising in the study of contemporary European Jewish life. He holds a PhD in education and MA and BA in Modern Jewish History, and is the author of numerous sociological and demographic studies of Jews in the UK and across Europe. A former Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Institute in Israel, he is a Board member of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ) and a regular columnist for the Jewish Chronicle.