Study reveals Covid’s ‘extraordinarily disruptive’ impact on UK Jewish life

Analysts polling thousands of British Jews about their Covid lockdown experiences say Jewish communities handled the pandemic well but that online synagogue prayer services were unpopular, writes Adam Decker.

While lockdown posed challenges for everyone, the authors of a new report by the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (JPR) say it was “particularly difficult” for Britain’s Jews because “so much of Jewish life – particularly Jewish religious life – depends on social interaction and assembly”.

The restrictions on liberty quickly forced many aspects of Jewish life online, they say, including cultural events, services, charitable fundraisers and private religious occasions such as weddings and bar or bat mitzvahs.

Noting a “sudden proliferation of online Jewish content” catering for everything from prayer services to learning, the report addresses “the challenges this posed to more halachically-observant Jews”, who do not use electronic devices on Shabbat.

Less than one-in-10 Orthodox Jews say they live-streamed services on Shabbat, compared to half of all progressive Jewish respondents, yet up to 39 percent of Orthodox Jews say they streamed services either side of Shabbat.

The polling data, from last summer, was taken from 4,150 people who identify as Jewish in some way, and reveals that in the three months before lockdown, around 54 percent said they attended at least one Jewish religious service. The closure of UK places of worship from March to July 2020, however, forced synagogues to “reimagine” services, with 42 percent saying they subsequently attended at least one service online.

A year later, in the first half of 2021, only 31 percent of respondents were physically back in synagogues, despite the buildings reopening.

JPR said this showed “the overarching picture of how people were experiencing prayer services remained fundamentally changed, with a substantial proportion taking place online, and synagogues far emptier than before”. Respondents said the online activities they would most likely continue post-lockdown were educational programmes and lectures, while the least likely to be taken forward were online prayer services, which enthused less than a third of those polled.

The authors said this “highlights the fundamentally social dimension of Jewish prayer services which does not appear to translate to the online environment as easily”. Jews aged in their 60s were shown to be the most reluctant to return to face-to-face gatherings, while religious Jews were almost 50 percent more enthusiastic about in-person meetings than secular Jews.

JPR director Jonathan Boyd said the study “reveals how extraordinarily disruptive the pandemic was to Jewish life, while also pointing to the creativity, adaptability and resilience of Jewish organisations in the midst of the crisis”.

He added that while Jewish communities “managed their way through the turbulence rather well”, it was “still too early to see the lasting impact on Jewish life”.