Jewish in America - How do we define groups II

Great Debates
1

In another thread we explored how group identities form in America using Black/White as a first case study. The general issues are ones of detrmining how: others determine how to identify us; how we identify ourselves to others; how we self-identify privately; all according to various, occassionally conflicting factors, including bloodline, external features, and cultural attributes. In that thread a strong argument was made that for Black/White identification it is, well, black and white - a remnent of the old “one-drop” rule. If you have any combination of any “significant” bloodline to African ancestry and any external appearence at all of that descent, then you will be identified as Black by others, and since such an external identification is so influential on how you are treated in this country, then your public (political) self-identification almost must be “Black” as well. Private identification was of little interest to most posters in that thread. Any additional comments about Black/White are invited to that thread.

Here I would like to continue the general theme here with thequestion of “who is a Jew?” This question has different answers depending on who you speak with. Is it bloodline, cultural identity or religious only and does it change for which face we are talking about (externally imposed, self-identified public, and private internal)? I am most interested in those cases at the edges. My Chinese adopted daughter, converted according to Conservative guidelines but will deal with having her Jewish identity questioned along the way. A writer interviewed today on the radio whose mother was Jewish, father arrested for collaberating with the Nazis, raised Dutch during WWII by his Dad. Thank you.

2

The rule in our family always was, “if you’re Jewish enough for Hitler to kill, you’re a Jew.”

So even though I’m an atheist, I’m still a “Jew.”

3

Maybe it should be like being an American citizen–if you have Jewish heritage and fit the rules of being considered Jewish by other Jews, you’re Jewish even if you scarf down the bacon cheeseburgers, unless and until you get baptized or whatever in another faith?

4

I heard and interesting question related to this matter. If Gen. Clark gets elected president, would he be the first Jewish president?

As I understand the story, his father was Jewish and his moth was not. His father died when he was about 4 and his mom remarried a Baptist. He was raised Baptist.

So biologically he’s half Jewish, but he wasn’t raised in the culture and doesn’t practice Judaism.

So, would he be the first Jewish President?

5

Religious-wise, you are considered Jewish if your mother was Jewish.

Culturally, much more difficult to acertain - could it be as simple as if you consider yourself to be Jewish?

Grim

6

There is no such thing as “biologically Jewish.”

7

That about sums it up as best as anyone is going to in this thread.

8

Being someone who is currently researching Jewish history in America, this is an interesting subject to me.

According to halachah , one is a Jew if his/her mother is Jewish (one of the few, if not only, faith that has matrilineal descent).

Yet, in America, it becomes a much more difficult situation to describe…especially with intermarriages.

The Reform “Movement” says that even if the mother is not Jewish, if 1) at least one parent is Jewish and 2) the child is raised a Jew, then he/she is Jewish. The Conservative, Orthodox, Sephardic, etc. communities do not support this idea. But just because the others disagree with an opinion, does that make the opinion in question invalid?

Following this line, many Orthodox Jews claim that Reform Judaism is not a “real” Judaism. I would pose the question: who are we to decide whether a person is or is not a “real” Jew just because they are Ortho. or Reform? According to Orthodox belief, a non-observant person who was raised Ortho. is “more” of a Jew than an observant Reform one. (And I may as well say it here…I was raised Reform, but I do not any longer associate with it; I’m more of a conservative Jew, leaning towards Orthodox). I personally think that all this bickering about which Movement is “proper” Judaism and whatnot is absolutely absurd. It’s for this reason that I like the Sephardic ideas: some are more observant, some are less observant, some are secular, but they all consider themselves as “Jews” plain and simple. None of this “well, I’m Reconstructionist” or “I’m conservadox.” It’s simply “I’m a Jew.”

Why can’t we all just get along?

9

A few days ago I heard a radio report that used the term “Jewish race.”

Are the Jews generally considered a separate race from an anthropological viewpoint? Are there other races that are defined by their religious practices?

10

Good lord, someone still uses that phrase? What station were you listening to, WKKK?

11

From an anthropological standpoint, there are no “races” of people, only different characteristics which some find important for social reasons (such as skin colour).

Some people may be genetically closer than others (i.e., share a common ancestor closer in time), but skin colour and other characteristics are a poor indicator of this. Indeed, it is only determinable by DNA studies.

Jews are not necessarially biologically closer to each other than to non-Jews, and they don’t share external characteristics such as colour in common; nor is there such a thing, from an anthropological POV, as a biological “race” of people in the first place.

Rather, Jews are an ethnic group that happens also to be a religion. They are an ethnicity for the same reason other ethnicities exist - because they think they are one; and so do others. To Jews, the quality of “being Jewish”, while it no-where appears in their genetic make-up as a definable characteristic, is socially important, just as the (equally arbitrary) quality of having dark skin is important for social reasons to others - thus creating the “Black” ethnicity.

In summary, “ethnicity” is defined by people depending on what they find important: it may be based on objective physical characteristics (such as dark skin), but it is not objective in and of itself.

Judaism is an odd ethnicity, as it is also the name of a religion. As a generalization, the quality of “being Jewish” is considered by many Jews to be more important for self-identity than (say) skin colour (although there are all sorts of subdivisions within Judaism itself).

12

From Abbynormalguy

This is true (depending on how you define “real”), but I don’t know any Orthodox who would dispute that the Reform are Jews. Unless, that is, the person is a convert. Who accepts what conversion can get pretty tangled, although the rule of thumb is that the branch that did the conversion, or ones more liberal, will accept the conversion, while more conservative branches won’t.

But then you get into the point, earlier alluded to, that the Reform will accept a person as Jewish if they have a Jewish father, at least if they do something to assert their Jewishness before bar/bat mitzvah age.

I personally like Eve’s definition, though.

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Kelly, I agree with you wholeheartedly as far as describing what the situation is …however, I’d personally like to see it exist otherwise (hence my little plug about sephardic culture above). For what it’s worth, all of these different “movements” have their origins in Ashkenazi culture. In Sephardic culture, you don’t see any of this. You are not a “reformed” Jew or a “conservative” Jew or anything like that…you just simply ARE a Jew.

Here’s another thing that has always kinda irked me about the non-acceptance of other “Movements”…one of the central aspects of Judaism is that there really isn’t any one interpretation of what is Judaism. There are standards (like the Shulchan Aruch) and whatnot, but they are all entirely man-made…except for perhaps Torah itself. All of these man-made standards are interpretations based upon Torah and the subsequent texts. Certainly, there can be schools of thought (I’m failing to remember Rabbi Hillel’s “competitor” in the area of schools of thought)…but even in the ancient days, there were differing schools of thought, but both schools acknowledged that the other was valid; they just had a disagreement about their approach to the Law, etc.

Judaism was built around differing opinions, and it’s for that very reason why I find the Orthodox rejection of non-Orthodox “Movements” to be absurd. At the same time, though, I wouldn’t be given the light of day, as I’m not Orthodox myself. It’s a vicious cycle, ain’t it?

14

Eve, you do see your self-contradiction?

For your self-identification you used the negative definition of others (Hitler) … the Jewish equivilent of the “one-drop” rule … but then dismiss biological heritage as being relevant to identification. (It also must be noted that it is not only Jew-haters who buy into the biologically Jewish myth; my own father, May He Rest In Peace, loved to play the Who’s A Famous Jew game, and would take full credit with pride of the Grand Mishpacha for someone having a Jewish father but raised Christian as being a Jew anyway)

So let us use you as a case example. Atheism, shmatheism. I was an atheist for a large portion of my adult life and still felt myself to be religious, I just felt that Torah stories were stories to make points that told greater truths and that the religion’s value were in the ethics and complexities that the stories were really about. I am no more or less religious now that I have become a soft theist. I am still faairly unobservant even though I always saw the value of ritual even as an atheist. I presume that you also consider yourself arelgious. So are you “a Jew” because some Jew hater might declare you a Jew on the basis of some definition of a Jewish race … which you disavow … but still defacto declaring yourself Jewish on the basis of biology? Or because your were raised in a Jewish family amidst Jewish culture of some form? Clearly the religious rules of who is a Jew, whether they be Reform or Orthodox, are not the critical factor to your self-identity as an areligious woman. And given your areligiousity, does your self-identity as a Jew have a role of any significance in your private self conceptualization? If so, why?

Malthus, how does your ethnic group identification fit in my daughter to the mix? Or the Bene Yisrael of India? Or Ethiopian Jews? and so on. Are they all one ethnicity because they/we declare it to be so? Even though their versions of the faith differ substantially and their looks and cultures do as well? I think that you would say so, and if so I would suggest a substitution of the word “tribe” as catching the flavor better.

15

As far as the ethnicity schtick goes, here’s my take.

First we’ve already established that “race” per se is a construct completely made up by man and rejected from any and all scientific arenas (except for those run by Klansmen and Neo-Nazis and the like, but that’s a whole 'nother can of worms)

Ethnicity is also a completely human construct, yet for whatever reason, it is more accepted in the social sciences. (as to why? I don’t know)

Now, getting to Jews as an ethnicity…we may see drastic differences between the Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Indian Benei Yisroyael and the Ethiopian Jews. However, to the public at large, it’s tomato-tomahto. To illustrate, in America, we generally classify anyone from the Indian subcontinent to be of the “Indian” ethnicity. However, in India, it is much more complex…and I’m not even talking about the “outlawed” caste system.

There are distinct differences between the Indians of Bengal and the Indians of Punjab and the Gujarati Indians as well (just to name the three Indian ethnicities that I’ve come into contact with at my university). To them, each group is a separate entity, yet at the same time, they have some common bond that classifies them all as “Indian.”

To make another illustration, think about Americans. We have Texans, New Yahkahs, Suthenahs and the like. You bring someone from Austin, someone from the Bronx and someone from Biloxy, Mississippi into one room, and tell them to discuss their differences, they are all like night and day, yet at the same time, they are all Ameicans.

Why can it not be the same with the different “flavors” of Jews?

16

I admit to not knowing much about the Sephardis, so I’ll stick with writing about the Ashkenazi.

The split does seem somewhat more severe now, but I think that maybe too much is being made of it. I don’t think there’s usually any particular rancor involved (though there are exceptions); it’s more an attitude of “you’re not doing it right.” There’s a lot of truth to the old joke that Judaism is more a family quarrel than a religion.

Also, up until the 19th century, there wasn’t too much variability in Jewish observance. It was only when the Reform movement was launched that the idea that many mitzvot could be bypassed gained currency. In earlier times, there may have been differences in how to interpret a mitzvah, but the value of the mitzvah was not in question (although some, like temple stuff, had become inapplicable, and some embarrassing stuff was quietly overlooked).

BTW, you’re thinking of Shammai.

17

As to the slight hijack …

There once was this Jewish guy, Sidney, who got stranded on an island. Years later he was rescued. Before leaving he had to show his rescuers around - he was proud of what he had built! “Here’s the Temple, here’s the infirmary, here’s the butchering facility, here’s the farm, here’s the Temple …”, “Hey!” interupted one of his rescuers, “didn’t you already show us a Temple?” “Yes,” Sidney answered, “this is the one I don’t go to.”

Anyway, most Orthodox would still recognize me, the nonobservant secularized gnome, as a Jew, but might have a problem with my daughter (the one adopted from China). But neither would they have approved of her converting at an Orthodox Mikveh, since we do not live an Orthodox life. In many areas where diverse Jewish faces are seen, she will have no problem being seen as a Jew by other Jews, but in some locales her identity will be questioned by Jews because she does not fit their external expectations. Would Hitler consider her a Jew?

18

In Israel You are only jewish if your mother is a Jew.

In Nazi Germany you are jewish if you practice judaism, Or if you have more than 1 jewish grandparent(or display jewish prominence in apperance.
Whoever said there is no such thing as a biological Jew,must not beleive there is such a thing as a biological bosnian, german,Englishman,Chinaman…ect. Remember…Israel was a nation once upon a time,with their own bloodlines…some of them very famous…the Levites, They make more than just great pants, They made king David, and Jesus.

19

Oh and Abby, I agree. I still like “tribe” better, with its implication of a group bound by a variety of conventions, mainly just because ethnicity has a different flavor to me, but that’s just me.

20

Also - the the orthidox jew,if you are born of a jewish mother you are a jew no matter what. If you become a christian, you are a “messiahanic jew” Remember…afterwall Christanity and Islam are both a seperate branch of Judaism,they all use the old testament as their root. :slight_smile: