When Nudrat Afza learned that her friend’s synagogue was closing she began a multi-year project to document the city’s declining Jewish population. ‘In Bradford people from different communities respect each other,’ she says
  • palordrolap@fedia.io
    101·
    1 day ago

    TL;DR: I suspect they’re not dying or leaving. They just don’t attend synagogue any more.

    I don’t have any evidence one way or the other, but it’s definitely the case that Christians are increasingly secular and not attending churches up and down the UK, causing the closure and deconsecration of many, and so I have to believe that it’s the same thing that is happening with those of the Jewish faith.

    Likewise, many people of religious upbringings are moving away from religion altogether, adopting agnosticism or atheism.

    That said, it’s worth noting that this decline in religion is less true of the Muslim communities than it is of the other Abrahamic faiths (which is not to say that it doesn’t happen), so it kind of makes sense that it ended up being a Muslim documenting all of this.