Yeah, but my skin is the same color whether I’m allowed to be in the DAR or not.
And just to be clear, no one questioned my great-grandmother’s research. She was very explicitly told that the DAR was a Christian organization, whether you had an ancestor who fought in General Washington’s army or not. By the 1970s, the DAR was no longer a Christian organization. It was an organization for people of any faith who had an ancestor who fought in General Washington’s army. (Or however a veteran of the “correct” side of the American revolution is defined. I am not currently a member of the DAR, although my grandmother did at one time get some sort of certificates for all us cousins.)
I don’t think these shared languages are enough to make Jews a singular ethnic group. Personally, I think other cultural commonalities are a lot more important.
But you know what? If Jews self-identify as a singular ethnic group based solely on their shared languages, I’m not going to tell them they’re wrong since I’m an outsider looking in. I have my opinions, but I also respect self-identification.
Every observant Jew I’ve ever met knew enough Hebrew to perform required religious rituals - that was one reason Hebrew was revived as a language for modern Israel, as all Jews worldwide had some familiarity with the language even if they weren’t fluent in it.
How is this different from all Catholics being able to speak some Latin, all Muslims being able to speak some Arabic, and all Hindus being able to speak some Sanskrit?
I know a few words of Swahili because it’s kind of hard not to pick up something when you grow up in an Afrocentric household. But I don’t think this means I share heritage with the Swahili.
It’s not just language, although that’s important, but also customs and in some locales shared oppression. There is also the Cohan Modal Hapoltype demonstrating descent from a common male ancestor for the Cohanim or hereditary priests of Judaism dating from about 3,000 years ago, a time which many believe corresponds to the Exodus from Egypt. This CML is found in 80% of ALL cohanim world-wide - meaning it occurs among Sephardic Jews of Western Europe, Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe, the Ethiopian Jews, Jews of North Africa, Jews in India and Asia… so even if they have very different facial features and skin tones Jews ARE linked by a genetic relationship. Jewish tradition says that all Cohanim are descendants through the male line of Aaron, brother of Moses. Apparently they’re all the male-lineage descendants of someone who lived a little over 3,000 years ago.
This is probably not limited to just Jews, but with Jews there is evidence for the linkage as well as thousands of years of written history and record keeping. Not so much for other groups. You could probably assemble descendants of, say Genghis Kahn and find as much variation in phenotype as among the Jews, it’s just that the descendants of Genghis Kahn have not identified themselves as a discreet group, and do not share a language, customs, and religion.
As far as catholics, Muslims etc go its not. But I’m not the one arguing that they aren’t a discrete group. The difference between that and you picking up swahili is down to why you speak it. Hebrew is the language of my people. It’s a lingua franca that connects me to the rest of the tribe as well as through history.
You learning swahili is like me learning Spanish because I grew up in Los Angeles. It is one of the languages of the area, but does not connect me to anything beyond that location.
Believe me, there are few native-speakers of Swahili in southwest Atlanta!
I was exposed to Swahili because Atlanta is a predominately black city, and the school system of my youth thought it was important that the schoolchildren be exposed to African things. I remember my math teacher in the seventh grade (my Jewish teacher!) awkwardly drilling us on our Swahilli vocabulary words after our math lesson. It was kind of crazy and cringe-worthy in restrospect. But you’re incorrect in assuming it was taught in the same spirit as our Spanish and French lessons. It was taught to us because someone on high believed that black children benefit from having a pan-African experience.
I actually meant that I learned to speak Spanish growing up in LA because there are so many Spanish speakers in the city you just kinda pick it up. I did have some formal lessons, but I learned more from my best friends mom than I did in school.
That’s interesting and surprising about Atlanta though. Culture and the way it develops is strange and fascinating.
Naah. I personally know ethnic Jews who admit to only knowing “Shalom” and “Lehaim”. That’s as much Hebrew as* I *know, doesn’t make me Jewish. IMO, it seems problematic to use the use of a revival language as a marker of ethnicity - for instance, what about the pre-50s Beta Israel, who didn’t use Hebrew for their liturgy?
Note, I’m not disagreeing that “Jew” is an ethnicity, I think it very much is.
I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t know the words to the Shema. But my sample is probably biased.
I do take issue with the idea that Jews don’t have a common language though. Hebrew has been the common language, if only in liturgy, for millenia. In sub cultures ladino and Yiddish were the language of the sub cultures until very very recently. But the common bond was herbrew. I don’t know about Beta Israel enough to know how they fit.
I would also say observance of the religion is only one aspect of being a jew. I personally like what Rabbi Kaplan had to say on this subject in Judaism as civilization. But being a jew is about more than simply being Jewish if that makes any sense.
Possibly, but I don’t think the people I know would consider that “knowing Hebrew”, any more than I’d consider me knowing the words to Pater Noster constitutes me “knowing Latin”. I get that you used the “a few words” qualifier, but for an ethnicity, I’d argue they should be a few conversational words in common to matter.
I take issue with the idea that a liturgical language can be an ethnic one, or else all Catholics everywhere were one ethnicity up to 2nd Vatican council. And all Muslims are one ethnicity now, still.
They used their own languages until the 50s.
I’d agree. Almost every Jew I know is secular (the exceptions being a Cohen and his wife, funnily enough)
So would you not consider the Irish and their speaking of Gaelic and ethnicity given that actual Gaelic is only spoken by a small percentage of Irish? Even if it’s not conversational it’s there in the background informing the culture.
I get where you are coming from, but I think it misses something fundamental about the role Hebrew plays. Again, my sample may be skewed. I was raised very modern reform, high holidays only, jewish. As a teenager I got hooked into Modern Orthodox because of my grandfather’s friends and my wanted a greater connection to him. I rejected religion wholly for a number of years in my 20s and now find myself feeling most at home in a Reconstructionist Shul. Through all that I have always been a Jew before anything else, and Hebrew and to a lesser extent Yiddish, has always been part of that.
Don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely sub groups and the American Jewish experience is disproportionately skewed Ashkinazi and Reform. Maybe those are sub groups. Ethnography isn’t really my field. But I knew many Sephardim growing up (we had a large Shephardic Persian Jewish community where I lived) and while they are different, they aren’t THAT different.