Jewish ethnicity vs. Jewish religion

Great Debates
1

Yesterday, in the BBQ Pit, specifically in this thread, I learned something that I had never ever heard of before, and really had never given any thought to. I grew up in a Methodist family, with a few converted Baptists, but by and large, my family was not very observant. Yeah, we went to church on Sundays, and we “believed” in Jesus, but we were by no means fundamental.

After I married and had kids, I realized that my children needed some sort of spiritual “guidance” that I couldn’t provide, and we joined the nearest church with the largest youth group - in essence, the church that our neighbors took their kids to. It’s Southern Baptist, and almost immediately, I began to feel the differences in what I grew up with and what my children were being exposed to. To say that I was uncomfortable with the approach would be an understatement.

Anyway, that’s my background. With that in mind, I learned yesterday that, despite what I believed growing up my entire life, that “being Jewish” did not necessarily mean that there was a different race of people that were Jewish. That it wasn’t a double statement - you were Jewish, and you practiced Judaism. At first, I stood by my statement, and then after some “quickie” research on the internet, I found out otherwise.

Naturally, I am floored. Why did I believe this way in the first place? I called my brother, who could best be described as a athiest, and he doesn’t understand why I thought this either. My fundamentalist Southern Baptist friend (who I love to bait, but really apparently am not able to yet), disagrees, and stands by the “separate race, separate religion” belief. We agreed to ask my boss (who is back from deposition today, so I may not be able to check back here as often as I like), who “is” Jewish (whatever that means by now), and he backed up my research. Although, he did add that there were “some” who held to the separate race theory - he would go so far to say that there may be identifiable characteristics (such as if you are Irish, you likely have red hair and fair skin), but he wouldn’t ever say who “some” were that held to my original understanding.

So, my question, so that I can debate this with my fundie friends and possible educate other friends - how and why did the separate race theory come about? Is this some throwback to the Arian belief - and I’m guessing here as I haven’t had time to research this question - that the people who practiced Judiasm were somehow inferior so that had to be a separate people to justify this belief? I’m truly confused. And, why is it when presented with I felt to be irrefutable evidence, some people cannot embrace a new idea? (I guess that last question may be beyond the abilities of this board, let alone any board).

Trying to learn,
STG

2

Well, Judaism recognizes anyone born of a Jewish mother (or Jewish parent, in the case of Reform Judaism) to be a Jew, no matter what that person believes. He could be an atheist, and he’d still be a Jew under Jewish law.

Also, for much of recent history (the past 2000 years, give or take a few), Jews have generally been treated pretty badly and ostracized, so Jewish culture developed seperately from the cultures in which the Jews were living. So, a seperate Jewish identity did develop, beside that of shared religious beliefs.

3

The term anti-semtism/antisemitism (there seems to be no agreement on whether there’s a hyphen there or not) was coined by antisemites who wished to distinguish the old-time Catholic led persecution of Jews (which was targetted against the practice of Judaism)and their ‘scientific’ ‘Darwinian’ approach which held Jews as a distinct ‘inferior’ race (this persecution was also against the descendants of Jews that had converted to a different religion). However despite it’s grounding in the cod-racial science of the day it was (/is) little different from the Jew-hatred seen in events such as the various blood-libels. It was also deeply linked to the idea of an Ayran people.

In the pre-holocaust days of Zionism, a poltical philosphy that was formed partly as a reaction to this antisemtism, the idea that Jews were somehow at least a distinct ethnic group gained currency. But this was in response to the problems of uniting groups with little or nothing in common rather than any deep-seated racial philosphy.

4

That’s cultural.

On the ‘racial’ issue I think it’s largely beholden to the ‘stereotypical Jew’ of New York. Eastern European immigrant, short of height, dark curly hair and dark eyes, somewhat pale skin, goes into accounting…

That sort of thing.

But there are Jews of all sorts of colors and sizes. I myself am a very non-observant Jew with medium brown hair and eyes, average height, etc. Very little seperates me (appearance-wise) with your generic North American. If anything I look more English than Jewish.

5

Both my parents and both sets of Grandparents are Jewish so I have always been told I’m a Jew just because of that.

I believe in Christianity and call myself a Christian and that has been explained to me that I am now a “completed Jew”. That meaning a Jew who has found the messiah.

You would not be able to pick me out of a crowd and say I am Jewish by my looks, but my maiden name would definately give it away.

6

Well, Judaism is not a race simply by virtue of the fact that you can convert to Judaism, but you cannot convert to another race.

The racial angle of Jew-hatred is a fairly new phenomenon. Until about 150 years ago, no self-respecting Jew-hater would have held the racial angle. Usually, a Jew was given the choice of converting or the sword; but once he chose conversion, he was usually left alone[sup]*[/sup] and welcomed into the Christian community.

The racial angle came into play largely during the second World War. The Nazis really didn’t care what religion you practiced. If you had enough Jewish grandparents, then it was “off to the camps” with you.

Zev Steinhardt

[sup]*[/sup] Yes, there were times (the Spanish Inquisition being the notable case) where Jewish converts to Christianity were still regarded with suspicion [and in that case, justifiably so, since many Spanish Jews only outwardly gave the appearence of conversion while continuing to keep Jewish practices in private]) but cases such as that were the exception and not the norm.

7

Here’s the quote where I began to understand, but am still searching:

Now, further in the thread, I came accross this:

{{note, I’m not singling out tomndebb as a single authority - I just found his posts easier to find when searching back through the thread - darn internet connection…}}

So, I got the idea that yes, one is Jewish by way of background, and one is Jewish by way of religion, and can be either/or/both - along the same lines as one can be considered an Irish Catholic or an English Protestant. But it’s not a separate “race” of people - as in Native American, or Asian, etc.

But let me ask this - a friend pointed out that there were specific things that made her think there was a separate classification of people - namely that Tay Sachs disease was predominant in Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews. Is this just another misconception?

8

Well, actually, that would make you a “former Jew who converted to Christianity.” Nothing wriong with that, but you are not a Jew, “completed” or otherwise.

9

That was “explained” to you by Christians, not Jews. If you knew anything about Jewish doctrine you’d know that the Jewish Messiah is not divine and cannot be worshipped.

10

Just to complicate matters for you … it also depends on which Jewish movement you look to as authoritative.

The Orthodox and Conservative Movements indeed consider a Jew by sake of matrilineal descent a Jew (albeit an apostate) even if they convert to Christianity. (So Jonathon will always be a Jew by Chance, so to speak.) The Reform movement says that it can be either matrilineal or] patrilineal if and only if the child was raised with a Jewish identity and declares themselves Jewish.

And anybody can convert with enough study.

In practical terms “Being a Jew” has both cultural heritage/ethnic connotations and exclusively religious ones. I am not so sure that this is really so recent an occurance either. Remember this is an ancient tribal belief system. Being Navaho is also both an ethnic/cultural identification that one keeps even if one becomes Muslim and lives in Iran, while presumable the tribe could and did “adopt” new individuals into the tribe through the years who took on Navaho religious practices as well.

It is more that most religions before Christianity were serving
a prime function for members of one extant cultural/nationalistic group (“peoples”, not “races”) … Christianity developed the concept of a religion that trnasversed multiple different ethnic/nationalistic identities (“peoples”).

11

Under Jewish (and Israeli) law, a conversion to Christianity amounts to a renunciation of Judaism. Regardless of ethnicity you are no longer a Jew once you convert. Messianic Jews are not allowed citizenship under the law of return for this reason.

12

WRT Jewish law, you are wrong, Diogenes. The rule is “once a Jew, always a Jew.” Whereas I could provide non-kosher food to a non-Jew, for example, I could not provide it to a Jew who “converted.” However, WRT to certain laws, Jews who “convert” to other religions are treated as non-Jews (i.e. they cannot count for a minyan, etc.). But should they wish to return, no formal conversion is necessary, as they are still considered Jews.

Zev Steinhardt

13

It is certainly true that Tay Sachs is more prevelent in Eastern European Jews, but there are issues like this with lots of different ethnic groups. For example, the French-Canadian and Cajun population groups have very similar rates of Tay Sachs.

Any group that is reproductively isolated may show certain traits in a greater percentage than other groups. The fact that they are Jewish doesn’t really enter into it, since there are many other ethnic groups of Jews (Saphardic, Ethiopian) that don’t share this trait.

14

And, IIRC, the rate of Tay-Sachs is decreasing in the Eastern European Jewish population by dint of a greater genetic diversity. It doesn’t have to do with a person’s specific heritage, just with geographic distribution. Insular people and people who only marry within a certain community tend to have more genetic disorders. (The Hapsburg chin and high rate of hemophilia in the European nobility are other examples.) So, basically, T-S is being “bred out”.

Now to address the OP, since I was the first to question STG’s assumption in the first place.

My own experience was that Jewish religion and Jewish ethnicity are two different things. I spent a lot of my childhood in Los Angeles, which has a fairly large, well-established Jewish community. My grandparents would often take us grandkids to breakfast on Fairfax Avenue, which has block after block of stores and businesses catering to Jews. You can find newspapers in Hebrew and Yiddish, imported Israeli food, all kinds of kosher food, good Jewish deli, and stores that sold religious articles like mezuzot, tallitot* (the prayer shawl), and so forth. I think at one store I visited with my Hebrew school class, one could purchase a shofar (the ram’s horn blown during High Holy Day services), and order a Torah scroll. This neighborhood was no different from Little Italy, Little Saigon, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, or any other ethnic neighborhood in that it was a neighborhood that had attracted Jews and Jewish businesses, just as other neighborhoods attract people of other ethnicities.

Even as an adult, I revel in my Jewish heritage. Even though I no longer actively practice Judaism and profess to be a spiritual agnostic/atheist, I still consider myself Jewish, and identify as Jewish. I wear a Star of David necklace, eat lox and bagels (but not with relish, as that would be gross* ;)), and have a freezerful of Hebrew National hot dogs that I would sooner die than eat with cheese. At the same time, I love a good cheeseburger, wave the flag on the Fourth of July, and generally think of myself as a good American.

And, FTR, I look more Irish than my husband does, and he’s actually Irish. [sub]Yeah, I know. Aaron’s gonna be a drunk who’s gonna buy his liquor wholesale. Like I haven’t heard that a few million times.[/sub]

Hope that helps explain things a bit.

Robin (nee Rosenthal, married name Cartwright)

15

Don’t worry too much about being confused, smalltowngirl, it is a confusing topic (actually, multiple topics), on which you often cannot even get learned people to agree.

Different aspects:

Judaism, the religion: As zev noted, once a Jew, always a Jew although a person may be an apostate who has stopped observing their religion (or even denied it). I am not sure what the position is regarding grandchildren. If a person is born to an apostate Jewish woman, I do not know what the rabbinical view is toward that person as Jew or Gentile. (And if the grandchild is Jewish, is the great grandchild?)

Jews as a race and ethnicity: As I noted in the other thread, the word race has different meanings that would allow the Jews to be seen as the Race of Abraham (in the older usage) but would put them in the Caucasian Race (in the more recent, but also obsolete usage). As with any group that has maintained a high degree of intramarriage, one can talk about their “ethnicity” (although the Jews are actually spread across several different ethnic groups). Recent genetic studies have demonstrated that most Jewish groups do have a fairly close paternal relationship (following the Y chromosome) extending back to the period of the Babylonian Captivity. They found that the maternal relationships (following mtDNA) are a bit more diffuse, but that where the Jews in the Diaspora, the female line is also fairly consistent within that region. (This would be consistent with Jewish men moving into a region and, initially, taking local wives, but then, once established as a group, keeping marriage within the group.) While this does lend itself to enough “ethnicity” to make diseases such as Tays-Sachs more prevalent among the Jewish community of the Ashkenazim (the separate ethnic group of northeastern Europe), there was still enough diversity and mixture with the surrounding peoples to prevent any justification in calling them a separate race.

To further confuse the issue, there is the whole trend of nineteeth century ethnology (giving rise to the nonense embraced by the Nazis). During the nineteenth century, different ethnologists tried to create races out of all groups, with long treatises written to identify the Germans and French and English and Italians as separate races (with the author’s group being superior, of course), even though a cursory knowledge of the migrations in European history following the fall of Rome should have been enough to demonstrate that none of those groups could have possibly been a “pure” race.

That strange variety of ethnology made it over to the United States and was used to shape and rationalize immigration laws for many years. Among those laws, that generally were written to identify people by nationality, the Jews were often named as a group, separate from their nationality (so that Russian and Polish and Austrian Jews might be treated differently than Russians, Poles, and Austrians who were not Jewish). The immigration laws reinforced the beliefs of the people who wanted to divide up the world into races and put Jews into their own, separate group.

Since most Jews tended to adhere to their religion, it was fairly easy to spot them as “different,” further reinforcing the notions of separateness that were applied to them.

To further aggravate the situation, the nineteenth century also saw the rise of the belief in the “Jewish Conspiracy.” Different libels had been written against the Jews for “plotting” different ill deeds through the centuries, but in the nineteenth century, some people began to look at the Rothschilds and other “Jewish bankers” as a monolithic force and people with axes to grind began making up weird accusations of world-wide plots. This led to the hoax of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and the claims that Henry Ford published against “Jewish financiers.”

So, what started out as simple (if profound) religious differences (with a tiny grain of ethnic identity) came, in the 20th century, to be expanded into the notion of a separate “race” of people who were attempting to subvert and conquer the world. There were many texts written on the “character” of “the Jews.” Jews were one of the groups picked out by the Ku Klux Klan for intimidation. The current crop of extreme right-wing pseudo-Christian nut jobs often talk about the U.S. government as the “Zionist Occupational Government.” After a while, even people who do not go along with the hate groups are liable to let a certain amount of the terminology filter into their speech. (And prior to the 1960s, there was no serious social inhibition against disparaging Jews, so a lot of nonsense was included in mainstream literature as “fact.”)

I do not know where you, particularly, picked up the ideas you had, but there are certainly lots of sources for those ideas floating through late 20th century American society.

And don’t worry: no one is going to confuse me with an expert.

16

Well, as several posters have already mentioned, a Jew by birth can convert to another religion, and a non-Jew can convert to Judaism, so there are no absolutes, but:

I don’t have a link or a reference, but I recall stories of a study of genotypes some time back that examined Iraqis and Polocks - both Jewish and non-Jewish.

The study results claimed that Iraqi and Polish Jews were genetically closer to each other (as groups) than either group of Jews was to other natives of their own country.

Also, besides Tay-Sachs (I actually had to be tested before I married), I think far many more Jews than Europeans carry blood type ‘A’ (yours truly included)

So one might say that Jews are an ethnic (not racial!) group.

That said, I can easily pass for an Irishman or Scot when I visit those countries (Love them!) - until I open my mouth to speak, of course :frowning:

AND - I am a complete atheist, yet I consider myself to be Jewish, and choose to live in Israel. Why? Well - because my parents did; because I was raised in a certain culture, even if I have discarded the more religious aspects of it; because it is home. So- yet another kind of Jew - a cultural Jew.

So, to summarize a long-winded post, I would say there are actually four kinds of Jew:

  1. Religious Jew - Believes in the tenets of Jewish religion (Hi Zev!)
  2. Ethnic Jew - Genetically close to other Jews, more so than to the general population around him/her
  3. Cultural Jew - Grew up with other Jews…
  4. Israeli - I consider a Druze who has fought in the IDF and has been willing to set down his life for Israel as much a “Jew” (if not more so) as an Orthodox Jew who refuses to take part in the Israeli way of life or its defense.

Note that a Jew may fulfill any combination (or all) of these criteria - e.g. I fulfill criteria 3&4 and possibly (probably - no converts in my family’s known history) criterion 2. American Orthodox Jews fulfill 1&3 (and again, probably 2)

Probably got you confused worse than you started out - but maybe now you can understand why it’s hard being a Jew :slight_smile:

17

Also, for clarity on all this ethnicity vs. religion buisness, it’s worth noting that:

  1. The “once a Jew, always a Jew” rule also applies to those who converted to Judaism; that is, if a Christian converts to Judaism, then converts back to Christianity, zev still can’t buy them a cheeseburger. And they don’t need to go through the conversion ceremony again to return to practicing Judaism.

  2. Children born to a mother who is a convert to Judaism are still automatically considered Jewish “by blood;” that is, they don’t have to go through the conversion ceremony to be officially considered Jews. Whereas in the Orthodox and Conservative movements, the children of an ethnically-and-religiously Jewish father and an unconverted Gentile mother are not officially Jewish without formal conversion, even if they’re raised Jewish, subscribe to all the beliefs of Judaism and observe Jewish customs.

Disclaimer: I’m not Jewish myself; I’ve done enough research that I think I’m pretty sure about these points, but zev, can you confirm or deny?

18

:sigh: That’s what you get for posting long replies! Tomndebb certainly did a better job than I did on the genetic part and on the histric angles

I still stand by my “four types of Jew” summary, which means that looking at Jews as a separate group is both correct and incorrect to some extent (and depends on which of my criteria you are willing to accept)

19

And let’s not forget about the infamous “fifth line” of Soviet passports (internal identity documents, not passports in the usual sense; passports for foreign travel were a separate documents). The “Fifth Line” was the spot for listing one’s nationality. Nationality in Soviet terms (and as I understand, this was also the case for much of the East Bloc) meant ethnicity, not citizenship. Drove me bonkers when I was there in 1989; one of the first questions one is asked upon meeting a new person was “what’s your nationality?” I would answer “American,” of course, which was usually met by puzzled stares. “But aren’t you Jewish?” was the general reply. “Yes, but what’s your point?” “Well, then you’re Jewish, not American.” “But I’m both. Why can’t I be both? I’m not even observant. I’m traveling on a U.S. passport, not a Jewish passport.” This generally went around in circles until I gave up.

In the Soviet Union, listing “Jewish” as one’s nationality would make it very simple for others to engage in institutional antisemitism, to varying degrees depending on the era and the situation, as one had to show one’s passport in all official situations, such as in applying for a job or for admission to educational institutions. (Oddly enough, for collective purposes such as on the census, the census enumerator would take your word for your nationality. And if your parents were of different ethnic backgrounds, you could choose which one to list on your passport when you turned 16. Bribes to passport officials were also far from unknown.)

None of the following is specific to Jews or Judaism, but for some more academic background on issues of ethnicity, nationality, and perception in the Soviet Union, check out:

Hajda, L. and Beissinger, M., eds. *The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics and Society. *Westview Press: Boulder, Colorado; San Francisco, California; and Oxford, England, 1990.

Karklins, Rasma. *Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below. *Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

Simon, Gerhard. * Nationalism and Policy Toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitarian Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist Society. *Westview Press: Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford, 1991.

20

Here’s something I’ve wondered for a while but never researched: my maternal grandmother was a Jew. She wasn’t particularly religious and her daughters both became Christian. I am agnostic.

Does any Jewish sect’s law recognize me as a Jew? Sounds silly, but the logic I was going with is "If you’re mother’s a Jew, you’re Jewish- my sorta-kinda-Christian mother is by this definition a Jew, which makes me the son of a Jewish mother (oh, you have no idea).