My point is that it’s not. Whether or not you are Irish is a legality. Of course, people are free to consider themselves whatever they wish: Irish, Japanese, Martian, etc. We’re arguing at cross purposes. How many people have ‘Jewish’ on their passport as their nationality? The point that I agree with is that someone can decide that they do not consider themselves Jewish, even if they are recognized as such, just as a non-religious Jew who has never been near Israel can consider themselves a Jew. As has already been pointed out in this thread, other conventions of recognizing ethnicity do not apply here.
Whether or not you’re a citizen of the Republic of Ireland is a legality, whether or not you’re “Irish” is more nebulous.
Just as in any proper shell-game, one needs three shells to deceive the mark.
Of the many Jews that came from Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and Brooklyn that settled in Palestine and founded the modern-day State of Israel, many were athiest, especially among those within the government. But yet, these Zionists had the chutzpah to lay claim to the real estate of Palestine through a covenant that God made to Moses.
Actually, we lay claim to it through the barrel of an Uzi.
To elaborate: I think that Zagadka’s model is correct - every person has a Nationality (which is a legal term refering to the color of their passport), an ethnicity or culture (which is semi-self-described - i.e., a Mexican immigrant [legal!] will probably be considered Mexican by other Americans, whether or not (s)he self-identifies that way) and a religion (or the lack of one) - which is completely self-determined. Confusion ensues when two of the terms use the same word. Thus “Irish” is both a nationality and an ethnicity. “Jewish”, OTOH, is both an ethnicity and a religion. The OP is clearly about ethnicity/culture, which is the meeting point between the two examples we have been using. And, as Captain Amazing has rightfully pointed out, it is the fuzziest of all three characteristics, because it is neither completely self-determined nor completely externally imposed. It also need not necessarily have anything to do with either nationality or religion - I dare say that many black people probably consider themselves part of some larger ethnic and cultural whole by virtue (or detriment) of the color of their skin alone.
And of course I agree that it would be ludicrous for me to claim to be part of the, say, Chinese Ethnicity or Culture… but the OP (and my discussion) were more about claiming or denouncing ethnicity/culture when a connection - even a tenuous one - does clearly exist.
Razorsharp - this not being the Pit, I will restrain myself and say only that your allegations are both irrelevant to the discussion at hand and just plain wrong. If you wish to continue the debate, start another thread (Israel/Palestine has been bashed to death around here anyway, but I’m always game for one more round :))
Dani
In the Soviet Union, Jews had “Jewish” listed at their nationality. To be fair, the Russian word "natsional’nost’ "has a meaning closer to the English word “ethnicity,” but people with other religios beliefs (even in an officially atheist state such as the USSR) were not required to list any religious affiliation, even ethnicities which had almost 100% overlap with a particular religion in practice. (Denial is a powerful force.) People would go to great lengths to hide their Jewish background; bribes to change the entry on the “fifth line” to something less likely to call attention (usually “Russian”) were fairly common.
When I worked with Soviet refugees, those who were Jewish used to remark bitterly that they had to leave the Soviet Union before anyone would consider them Russian.
Right, otherwise known as armed robbery.
You know, it’s that type of attitude that leads me to believe that if Moses were to decend Mount Sinai again today, he would be just as pissed-off as he was the first time he came down.
Well, being that it has already been established that one can be Jewish and an athiest, there is no irrelevancy present.
“Plain wrong”?? Wrong about what, that there were no athiest Zionists within the movement creating the modern-day State of Israel? Wrong about the founding of the modern-day State of Israel being premised on the Mosiac covenant? If not, how then did it come about that the new country would be named “Israel”?
Only in the sense that the American Revolution was an illegal insurrection. The United States was taken from its rightful rulers at the point of a Kentucky rifle
Absolutely wrong. The whole “God gave us this land” crap came much later. The founding of Israel was based first and formost on necessity, and seondly on the historical basis of the Judean kingdom destroyed by the Romans - a cultural fact, not a religious belief.
C’mon - give us something new.
Alessan:
Isn’t that second part a bit revisionist, Alessan? Was Herzl’s Uganda suggestion really shouted down because of an attachment to ancient Roman-era nostalgia? Heck, Babylon was (at the time of the earliest Zionist congresses) more recently a home to the majority of world Jewry than Israel/Palestine was.
Even amongst the non-religious Zionists (of that time), the notion that the Torah/Tanakh could be considered as distinct from “Jewish culture” was laughable. Whether or not they believed in an actual divine covenant with Abraham et al, it was certainly the Biblical-era history - Joshua, David, Solomon - that formed the historical basis for Zionist insistence on Palestine as the location for their homeland. Not Roman-era.
All of which kind of gets back to the point I made in my first post to this thread - it’s darned near impossible to isolate any element of “cultural Judaism” that is not somehow rooted in “religious Judaism.” You can be a Jew without observing the religion, but that doesn’t mean that Judaism is not a religious designation - it just describes an ancestral religion rather than a personal belief.
Chaim, by “Judean kingdom destoyed by the Romans” I was referring to the entire historic Jewsih presence in Israel, from Joshua Bin Nun to Bar Cochvah, a presence eliminated in the second century, including David and Solomon.
However, our keen-edged friend here was referring to Israel’s “Founding Fathers (and Mothers)” such as Ben-Gurion and Weizman, who were, indeed, largely atheists and agnostics. He doesn’t seem to realize that although they ddd not believe in God, they probably believed in David, and definitely believed in the Maccabees - in other words, they believed in a historic right to the country, if not a religious right. That’s one reason why they regected Uganda.
The othe reason (besides the climate) was that they knew that they were the exception, and the majority of European Jews at the time were religious to some degree or another. They knew the conceptually, any place besides Palestine would be too hard a sell.
Well, the OP was about being culturally Jewish in the U.S., with no connection whatsoever to Israel, so I thought starting a discussion about the roots of Modern Israel was irrelevant to this thread and would be better placed in another. But I seem to be in a small minority here, so…
No.
Yes. See below.
Precisely because the connection was cultural more than religious. If the connection were religious, the country would have been named Judea rather than Israel. In the Jewish religious tradition, the ancient kingdom of Israel (the “Northern Kingdom”) symbolized all that was antithetical to the naescent “Jewish” (that is - Judean) religion. Also, the Israeli Declaration of Independence Begins with the words
(Declaration of Israel’s Independence 1948.) Again, the context here is national and cultural, rather than religious.
This is, I think, almost exactly the point I made a few posts back - that “Jewish” is both a religious and a cultural designation - which causes a lot of confusion, especially because there is a fairly wide, yet far from complete, overlap between the two!
Dani
In 1948, what cultural similarities were shared by Europeon Jews and the indigenous Jews of the Holy Land other than practices and observances both groups would have shared through their common religion?
And the name “Israel” gets its origin from where?
One of these days I’ll get around to writing a book about the uncle of a Jewish friend of mine. The children’s book, Bubba the Jew, will be about the guy who runs a fish camp out of the back of his gas station in Rural North Carolina.
(My friend’s uncle actually isn’t Jewish, but the book title is too good to pass up).
Daniel
From the Jews’ legendary eponymous ancestor, Jacob son of Isaac son of Abraham, who changed his name to Israel after he spent a night wrestling with an angel and got his thigh put out of joint (whatever that means). And from the ancient northern kingdom of Israel which the Assyrians destroyed. And from the Jews’ custom for at least the past two millennia of referring to themselves as “the children of Israel” or “Your [God’s] people Israel,” and of saying, when a male baby is circumcised, “Let his name be called in Israel _______.” What is your point?
His point is that the State of Israel is illegitimate because those darn Jews who founded it were atheists who tricked everybody into thinking they were the same Jews who are in the bible.
Is that a good summary of your viewpoint, Razorsharp?
Which, of course, makes no sense, because if these atheists didn’t think of themselves as Jewish, why would they take the very big trouble of founding a Jewish state in the first place? Where’s the angle? And if they did think of themselves as Jewish, then obviously it means more than just in the religious sense, because these people weren’t religious, right?
No, my father felt it was more important to honor a promise than to marry my child’s mother. And yes I didn’t marry her because of my dad, at the time being disowned would’ve been the worst thing that could possibly happen to me.
Now you’re catchin’ on.
Another thing that bugs me. While supposedly the American government is bound by a Constitutional seperation of church and state, the American taxpayer has been forced to contribute to the founding and maintenance of a country based on the Book of Genesis.
While, on the otherhand, communities across America, whose citizens have a tradition of Christian observance, are forced, at the point of a government gun, to remove plaques of the Ten Commandments from their local courthouses.
Wheels within wheels, Alessan. Wheels within wheels. 