Puzzlegal: This thread started out as a side discussion here:
Puzzlegal: There was discussion as to “how Jewish is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s current head of state?”, and it led to this digression. As there seemed to be a lot of interest in this, it is now its own thread. Everything above this point was added by me, Puzzlegal, for context. Below this sentence is a post made by Alessan.
That’s because Jews don’t make that distinction, either.
As far as most Jews are concerned, if your mother is Jewish and you self-identify as Jewish, then you’re Jewish. It doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist or a Lubavitcher, you’re as Jewish as any other Jew.
The division between “cultural Jew” and “religious Jew” that people in this threat are trying to apply is an imposition of a Gentile worldview on Jewish thought, and is deeply offensive. Please stop.
From the parameters of the question a large number of self-identified Jews in America don’t count. Maybe most. What counts as “actively practicing”? If I am an atheist who goes to Yom Kippur services out of an appreciation of the tradition, am I practicing? Not by any Orthodox standard. But by standards of American Jewishness fer sure.
I don’t know about the question being offensive, but to many Jews it is at least ignorant and not with any meaning.
No, this isn’t the scenario I had in mind. I was asking about people with sincerely held religious beliefs which they and a like-minded community would recognize as Judaism.
I’m fully aware of the practices you describe, which are by no means limited to Jews. They’re simply not what I’m asking about.
Somebody has to say it. Judaism is a religion. Atheists are not Jewish any more than they are Scientologists. They may have been raised by Jewish parents and be totally sympathetic to Jewish issues, but by definition atheists do not have a religion.
Nor is being “culturally Jewish” a universally meaningful phrase. That is usually applied only to Eastern European Jews and their emigrant descendants. Historic cultures of Jews in areas from China to Ethiopia would not be identified as culturally Jewish even if they were practicing, believing Jews, and might not even understand the distinctions modern American atheists make.
Similarly, German Jews who arrived in America earlier than the larger number of Eastern Europeans emphatically did not want to be associated with what was to them a different culture but were lumped together by anti-Semites who insisted identifying all Jews into a single entity to discriminate against, a major reason why atheists today continue to fight against Jews flipping the enlarged entity to make a point that they object to.
If somebody self-identifies as an atheist Jew, most atheists will roll their eyes and let it go, knowing that the concept of religion does strange things to brains that can’t be comprehended rationally.
My god belief would be described as atheism by most. It certainly isn’t the God of Torah, more a Spinozan influenced pantheistic thing, nothing that gives a fuck. Still I believe in the religion of Judaism which to me, despite the Sh’mah, is less about God than it is about lots else about how we live our lives, about which myths have meaning and why, and identity (and that discussion could be a long one). Those beliefs are sincerely held. I do not observe dietary laws, I do not wear a kippah, I do not don T’fillin, I do not attend services regularly. I do participate in a Seder most years, do pay Temple dues, and do sometimes make it to High Holiday services. A large number of like-minded American Jews, of the world’s Jews, would recognize that as Judaism. A few would not.
So would I count according to the parameters?
Nice that you are willing to create the definitions for other people. One thing however that Orthodox rabbis and the rabbi of my childhood Reform temple (when discussing my then hard atheism) would agree on however, is that you are wrong, even as they’d define what is being “observant” in very different ways.
To the Orthodox I cannot run from being a member of the Jewish religion. I am an apostate to their eyes, a horrible thing, much better to be a righteous Gentile, but a member of the Jewish religion? Even if I said no, to them I am.
My childhood rabbi liked to tell me that I was more religiously Jewish than many of the other kids in the congregation who would answer “of course there is a god”. To him the fact I cared enough about the idea that I was thinking about it and arguing over it, while discussing and debating what these stories mean to us today … that was being religiously Jewish.
Feel free to say “it” or whatever you like. The fact remains that Judaism the religion, be it from the perspective of the Orthodox or from a Reform one, is not so much about what one believes as what one does.
Judaism is a religion, yes, but that’s not the only thing it is.
So you recognize the existence of some sort of category of “non-Gentile”. But to most folks, including most Jews, that category is synonymous with “Jew”.
Now, what kind of category is it? That’s a little more difficult to answer. It’s not precisely a “culture”, because as you point out, many aspects of culture are different for different Jews. It’s not precisely a religion, because a person can be a member of the category without being religious. It’s not precisely a race, because it is possible for someone born not a member to become a member. “Tribe” is sometimes used, and that’s about as close as any word, though it doesn’t mean quite the same as other things that are called “tribes”.
But then, lots of things in the real world don’t fit neatly into some category or another.
If Jews resent members of other religions claiming them, that how can it be okay for Jews to insist on the Jewishness of people who don’t believe in their religion?
You apparently hold to the tenet that you are allowed to determine your own definition of your beliefs, but others are not if they don’t agree with yours.
My entire point is that I, and only I, get to define my status. Not you, not Orthodox rabbis, not Reform rabbis. If you want to get historical, note some instances of states doing so, giving Nazis the right to look back at peoples’ grandfathers instead of what they professed. Self-determination is what you might call a sacred principle, one that even Webster gives a non-religious denotation to.
As for what you do, Life is about what you do. Doing good without any adherence to or even notice of a god is an achievable goal. I care about others doing good as members of my society, but I care about their reasons for those actions if they come bundled with actions that I don’t consider good. All religions are bundles of beliefs that have consequences in secular society.
Jewishness is a term that has so often be imposed by outsiders that when given the chance Jews roar about embracing the term. I say “Hooray!” to that. Doing good, however, means that the term should never, ever be imposed on anyone who is reluctant for any reason.
I agree with this. If you ask me, I am a Jew. If you ask me, I am at least an agnostic, but really an atheist. And I am a Jew because my mother was. And her mother was. Although if the Mt-DNA is to be believed, if you go far enough back, there is a non-Jewish woman in the ancestry of most Ashkenazim like me. Make of that what you will.
ISTR reading that Israeli rabbis are more and more looking at DNA testing and less at mom’s documentation for vetting.
The reason was the influx of Jews from the former USSR. Traditional state antisemitism “compressed” the Jewish community, so they married each other and stayed intact. But the Soviets diffused their Jewish community, imposing social conditions that forced loss of integrity and outside marriage.
What you are going on about has nothing to do with your deciding unilaterally whether or not I am, or anyone else, is barred from being religiously considered Jewish because YOU on your own have declared that it is impossible to be religiously Jewish if one is an atheist - that by definition (yours) atheists are not Jewish.
Let’s take this statement at face value, and ignore that the issue was your trying to define MY status:
Well first off all I know about your status is the somewhat cryptic
Literally meaning “I have never been not Jewish a day in my life.” Fine by me. I have no basis to know why you declare yourself “not not Jewish”, don’t quite understand what are meaning to say when you say that, and do not care.
But community identity in general (be it religious, citizenship, whatever) ideally requires some degree of overlap between three things: self-identification as a member of that class; a significant portion of other members of that class agreeing with that identity; and some outside that group using that label.
Phineas Jones can call themselves a U.S. citizen, or Jewish, or whatever … but they and they alone do not get to define their status. Nor of course do others alone get to decide status other than in their own minds.
Now doubling back to the point: your claim that an atheist cannot religiously be Jewish. Well, for many self-identifying Jews with no active god concept and who are minimally observant, there is broad overlap.
For most of them a wide variety of Jewish traditions, from Orthodox to Reform to Reconstructionist, identify them as of the Jewish religion.
They identify as being of the Jewish religion, albeit not very observant and with no active belief in God of Torah
Very few others would try to say that despite the first two they are not Jewish because THEY know better. There’s you, and maybe someone else I’d guess.
Honestly you are like those Mormons attempting to impose membership into your created group of “not not Jewish” but “not of the Jewish religion”. That is not okay.
I get that YOU think god belief is THE essential critical feature of being of a religious group. And for many faiths it is. My outsider understanding of Christianity is that belief is first and central, for example. It is not so much first and central to being Jewish. Really placing that high on the list was something created in medieval times by Maimonides, and while of course the religion promotes having a god concept, along with various rites of practice, neither are MUST have items.
That quote “If only they had forsaken me and kept my Torah.” is key. The debate in modern times is how to interpret Torah, very literally or as something to be used as stories that teach key cultural values and priorities (all of which can also be learned and accepted without god concepts IMHO).
There is (relatively small) set of Jewish Congregations that belong to the Secular Humanistic Jewish denomination. The movement explicitly eschews the supernatural and appeals for divine intervention. They nevertheless consider themselves part of the Jewish religion and have rabbis. You do not have the power to take that identity away from them.
You’re treating me as some sort of individual freak, rather than as a member of a group that obviously exists. And yet you state that according to your definitions that no such group is possible. Do you not realize how incredibly insulting that is? Imagine in any other thread telling a member of a group that they don’t exist because you define them out of reality. You cannot tell me what I am because you define me against my wishes. Dude, that’s fucking Nazi thought, as I already said. How did Jews ever get themselves into this bind? I’m flabbergasted whenever I run into this mental blindness.
It should also be obvious I that I only used the word Gentile in response to Alessan’s use of the word in post #40.
And it should be obvious that I have been thinking about this subject for a very long time, possibly even longer than you’ve been alive. Your condescending explanation of religion to me is unnecessary. I assure you my credentials are impeccable.
@Exapno_Mapcase , since you are apparently incapable of discussing this question calmly, I am officially directing you to not take any further part in this thread.
Then I return to the question of what counts as an avowedly religious Jew?
Can a Reform Jew be considered avowedly religious in your book?
My business partner and friend is Temple president of a Reform congregation. He attends services every Friday. (I have no idea what his God belief is. It has never come up.) But any Orthodox Jew would look at how he lives and consider him an apostate. Would he qualify if he was a world leader?
The impression I get from posters is that if someone says explicitly and unequivocally, “I am not Jewish”, then of course we can take their word for it, but, on the opposite side, there is no canonical way to distinguish “avowedly religious Jews” from other Jews. To be consistent, if someone says, “I am Jewish” then we should take their word for that, too, but that leaves a third category of people who never checked a box, as it were.
If you conservatively want to count only those in the first case (who explicitly identify as Jews) then your question becomes more defined. Beyond that, you probably don’t want to start discerning whether someone who says they are a "secular Jew, “reform Jew”, or whatever counts any more than you would if if they are Karaite, Hasidic, or whatever.
ETA So, getting back to Ben-Gurion, I am not familiar with his writings to know what he said, but the encyclopedia article claims that he was the head of the Jewish Agency, and that he refused to define himself as secular, so that seems like strong evidence that he should be counted as a Jewish head of state.
What practical bearing does such a question have on this thread? That is, are there any edge cases besides Zelensky to which it is relevant? (Recall that Ben-Gurion and other Israelis are already out of scope.) If so, simply name the leaders in question along with a brief statement of their religious beliefs, and we can simply note that they’re debatable cases without actually getting into any further debate.
The practical bearing is that the question as asked seems to me to be incoherent and unanswerable as a factual question. Perhaps especially for Judaism (for reasons articulated by @Alessan but also in some places and times advertising “practice” would have been unwise; most would be at least publicly pretty secular), but even for “Christian”. “Actively” or even “avowedly” practicing without understanding what is meant is going to full of edge cases even for the mainstream religion. Every US President said they were - which ones meet your standard? Even with a better definition of the terms it would be hard to answer for many of them. Did the Quaker Nixon count as actively practicing?
It is possible to get answers of which leaders self-identified as Jewish, but answering even which of them were definitely not “practicing” the religion would be near impossible.