I’m pretty much opening this to get some clarification on what it means to be a Jew. I’ve seen religious, secular and cultural sides presented from those of the Jewish faith, and of course, those outside it. But faith, as a descriptive, doesn’t seem to apply to all Jews.
In another thread, the fact was brought up that there are secular Jews. OK, got it. No problem with that. I’m Catholic and always had a deep faith in my Church. If you don’t beleive in Christ dying on the cross, don’t. If you do and don’t agree with my form of worship, cool with me. But I don’t know any Jews personally, so I have to ask these things here.
So what defines a Jew? I have no other venue to ask so many people at once, so it’s going here. I’ve asked a few questions concerning the Jewish faith in other threads and learned a lot. But I’m in no way an expert on the subject.
But my main question is, is being a Jew faith or culture based?
NOTE: To avoid a less-than-3-hour sending of this thread to the Pit, please keep it civil.
At the risk of sounding flip, the only proper answer to the thread-title question is “Yes.” Like “homosexuality,” it has several definitions or connotations with substantial overlap but not full identity. You could have a Lutheran Jew, an atheist Jew, an Inuit Jew, a Gabonese Jew, an Ainu Jew, a French agnostic Jew… and in each case the definition of “Jew” shifts slightly. That the term can be applied to Sammy Davis Jr. and Maksim Litvinov should convey a suggestion of its flexibility.
Yes, there are Jews who no longer personally maintain what has historically been considered Jewish faith or practice. But when a “non-faithful” Jew is asked to define what makes him or her Jewish, there is no getting around the fact that whether by ancestry or by personal inclination, the origin of this identification came from someone who held of and practiced the faith.
It doesn’t make sense to call it an ethnicity when it’s possible for outsiders to convert in. No one can convert to being Irish, or Italian, or Arab, you either are or aren’t. A person can become a Catholic or a Muslim, but that won’t change his or her ethnicity. A non-Jew can become a Jew. That is enough to take away the possibility of it being an ethnicity.
The problem with regarding it as solely a faith is that membership conveys certain properties that we normally only associate with cultures and ethinicities; this might just be a limitation of the definition of ‘faith’ though…
I guess so. Can’t say I ever thought much about it, but I guess it would be some form of Eastern European…my mother’s family is from Austria, my father’s, from Poland.
Of course, Jews in Europe were a separate sub-group from the main population. I suppose it might then be possible to say that they were a distinct ethnic group, traceable to ancient Judea.
But I still wouldn’t consider “Jew” to be an ethnicity. Non-Jews who lived in ancient Judea never thought of themselves as “Jews.” A non-Jew can become a Jew by accepting the covenant of the faith. It all comes down to the faith at its root, even if the identification is based on an ancestral faith rather than a personal one.
And of course, I forgot the part I wanted to add to this. With regards to Judaisim as a faith, how do “secular Jews” fit into the picture? This is perhaps the catylyst of my OP. I don’t know enough about the Jewish faith to know what to make of that phrase. I know that “secular Christian” makes no sense, but that’s the faith I was raised in.
Identity is a complex thing both as something chosen by one’s self or externally imposed and the two interact.
To an Orthodox Jew being a Jew is both a matter of faith but also a matter of Law. Most would reject someone as a Jew even if (s)he professed the faith and the education if (s)he failed what they considered a legal deinition and would accept as a Jew someone who had a mother who was Jewish by the Law even if that individual caled themselves another thing (secular or Christian). To others the identity of Jew is a religiously defined by having a Jewish parent of either gender and being raised as a Jew. To others it is a cultural heritage.
Words have multiple meanings and identity depends on who’s asking and who’s answering. If it seems fuzzy it is because it is fuzzy.
But then is “Black” any more clear? Most American “Blacks” have “white” in their ancestry. Why are Obama and Tiger Woods, for example, “Black” in America? Fuzzy stuff that also depends on who’s asking and who is answering.
I certainly hope that my answer above sounded honest and serious. I certainly didn’t mean it as anything but.
Definition of Jewish: To be Jewish is to be party to the national covenant that was entered into by the ancient Israelites. One can be a party to this covenant either by his/her ancestors having entered into it (i.e., being born Jewish) or by entering into it of ones own will (i.e., converting).
Now, here’s the sticky part: how exactly is that covenant defined? Obviously, Orthodox Jews define it as a set of rigidly defined responsibilities to fellow man and to G-d, set forth in the Torah and its accompanying oral traditions. The other streams of Judaism define the covenant differently. But the one thing that all such streams have in common is that they will not consider Jewish anyone who does not accept the covenant as they understand it (or does not have such acceptance by means of heredity).
Which brings us to your next question…
By this definition, “secular Jews” are parties to the covenant who deny and/or shirk their responsibilities under it.
I am as secular a Jew as the world has likely created…to my mother’s great (at times) dismay. I was raised a Jew and attended hebrew school as a child. But I appear to have been born without a gene for ‘faith’ in any religion. Again, to my mother’s great dismay.
But I still self-identify as a Jew. I’m pretty confident that suffices. When I speak with other Jews I’m certainly get considered as being ‘in the clique’ as it were though most of the older ones give me advice to get back in touch.
So for me it’s largely a cultural and self-identification thing. By ‘culture’ I mean that I come from a group of people (in Chicago) who are descended in part from the Jews of Eastern Europe. These are the people you see so often portrayed in television and film. ‘Gevalt!’ and ‘Oy!’ and suchlike caricatures are the stereotypcial ‘jew’ persona in the United States because of the strong presence in New York City and the portrayal of NYC as ‘the US’ in early film and television.
But to say that’s ‘Jewish Culture’ and leave it there ignores a great deal of other cultures. Playing that stereotype in Ethiopia or Iraq or wherever there are Jews won’t get the same laughs. It’s purely an American thing.
Now, I remain a Jews, regardless. I’m simply not a very good one.
Judaism is, under ideal situations, not only a religious and culture, but also a national system. The Torah sets forth rules for a court system, divides up land, explains rules for those with governmental power, etc. None of these things are faith-based, except for the need to first believe that Jews have to follow the system set forth in the Torah. But these are not meant to govern lives only in a religious fashion. I can be a fully observant Jew without ever caring which portion of land went to the Benjaminites or how many horses a Jewish king should have. These are rules for an independent country, not just a religion.
Judaism as it as practiced today, because we are without a country governed by Torah principles, is a religion, with codes of conduct and belief. Secular Jews are, from the Jewish perspective, members of the Jewish religion who should follow those codes of conduct and belief but are, as Chaim said, shirking their responsibilities.
Jews started out as a nation (or, more properly, part of a nation) – the nation (or tribe) of Judah; the kingdom of Judea. The Old Testament spends most of its time berating the Israelites for “doing evil in the eyes of the Lord”. Or, in other words, being secular (or pagan, or whatnot). So saying Judaim started of as a religion is rather ingenuous.
After the Diaspora, Judaism maintained its cohesiveness due to both internal and external pressure. The internal pressure was the codification of Judaism as a (pure) religion, and societal pressure to conform to that. The outside pressure was the unwillingness of most populations to accept the Jews as peers and equals, pushing them inside, where the abovementioned social pressure “kept the faith”. Judaism thus became a religion and a culture.
Today, with the state of Israel and far more acceptance of Jews in Western society than ever before, both of these pressures are largely absent, pushing Judaism back toward a national/cultural definition (which of course is not perfect either – Israeli does not necessarily imply Jewish, and certainly the reverse is not true – but in general…)
So basicly, the answer is “some of all of the above”
As an aside – Chaim and Zehava, I have to admit that I am at least mildly offended by your insinuation that as an aetheist I am somehow a lesser Jew than either of you!
I wouldn’t call it a faith. To me, that implies a Christian way of thinking about religion, where a profession of faith is central and obligatory. On occasion, people give me Christian evangelical literature. These pamphlets all seem to end in a quick summary of how to become a Christian, emphasizing a profession of faith. Professions of faith have never been central to Judaism, despite the efforts of Maimonides and others. Judaism is more concerned about doing the right thing, rather than thinking the right thoughts. A Jew is a Jew, whether born or converted, whether frum (observant) or not. The existence of the Jewish people as Jews is based on the covenant with G-d at Sinai. In the Talmud it is said that all Jews, regardless of when they lived, or will live, were present at Sinai, either as corporeal beings or souls.
Using the Old Testament as backup for saying it didn’t start as a religion is ridiculous. Are we accepting the Old Testament as authoritative about the history of the Israelite/Jewish nation? Then how do you ignore Exodus 19:
The OT is very clear that it is the covenant that made the Israelites into a distinct nation, not mere ancestry, and certainly not sovoreignty/area of residence. The fact that the OT later criticizes their slips into paganism (and it was very much paganism and not secularism; seculatism is a very recent phenomenon) does not mean that it was considered a norm for Israelite worship. In fact, at least as far as the Northern Kingdom’s sinfulness goes, it’s pretty clear that their slip into paganism was caused by a calculated political maneuver on the part of Jeroboam rather than any prior-held widespread belief.
Nothing could be further from the truth…I think of you as fully a member of the Jewish covenant as the greatest Rabbi.
But considering you’re a self-decalred secular atheist, it should hardly be surprising to you that I do not think you’re fulfilling your end of the covenant. Sorry if that offends you, but that’s just that way it is. Atheists have historically done a rotten job of fulfilling covenants with G-d.
I think the word ‘shirking’ comes with a sufficiently negative connotation that it appears overly critical.
I view it more the same way my mom and older members of the family beat on me about it when I go home. We speak the same language…but not always in the same way.
I’d often wondered about this also. As far as the secular Jew thing: I realize this is not a real cite, but I saw comedian David Cross doing stand-up a couple years ago, and he talked about how he’d been raised Jewish but he decided he didn’t agree with the religion (he didn’t believe in God, for one thing). He was talking to a rabbi about it; apparently, according to (orthodox?) Jewish belief, “Jewishness” is passed on maternally. So when Cross claimed he was no longer a Jew, the rabbi shot back with: “Well, is your mother’s vagina a Jew?”
