(Is “being a Jew” a characteristic of race or of religion? There is a deep confusion about this issue, which is yet another indication of the imponderable mystique of the quality of being Jewish. While everybody seems to be in agreement when identifying ‘Jewishness’ as a particular religious affiliation with any of the several, even if religiously incompatible branches of Judaism, there is a resistance coming from the Jews themselves when it comes to equating Jewish with the specific race. Such an equation is supposed to remind the world about Hitler’s racial profiling of the Jews, and the stigma attached to it. There is also a good point here: being Jewish is a much broader concept than the question of race. But avoiding it altogether creates an utterly preposterous situation, which ends up making no sense at all. One of the most obvious discrepancies here is that assigning Jewishness to religious Jews only, leaves out millions of secular Zionist, non-religious Jews, who, by the way, constitute a clear majority of the population of Israel.)
The tricky and elusive character of the Jewish phenomenon is underscored by the curious controversy with regard to the proper definition of Jewishness. Are the Jews a race, or a religion, or perhaps, something else? This question has been raised and addressed in highly ambiguous terms so far, and I doubt that clarity will ever emerge out of the existing ostensibly perpetual confusion, which is yet another piece of hard evidence in the testimony to the special nature of the Jewish wonder.
Calling the Jews a race has become outrageously politically incorrect, since the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich, which used to treat the Jews as such. Calling the Jews “a religion” is simply ridiculous, as an overwhelming majority of them are decidedly irreligious, or actively involved in other religions, such as Christianity, and including a broad variety of smaller Christian and pseudo-Christian sects and denominations; or Buddhism, Hinduism, and all sorts of other whatnot else. There is a sort of compromise reached when identifying one’s Jewishness as a cultural thing, adherence to the broadly defined Jewish tradition. In other words, a person is Jewish if he or she identifies himself or herself as Jewish and is eager to maintain a Jewish home. This is not a sufficient definition either, for obvious reasons. A “Jew” who does not wish to be identified as Jewish and does not maintain a Jewish lifestyle, is still somehow considered a Jew. The fact that there are a substantial number of “Jewish Christians,” often referred to as “Jews for Jesus” in American Evangelical churches and elsewhere, characteristically referred to also as “completed Jews,” thus being segregated from both Gentile Christians and Judaism-professing Jews, is a clear indication of the incredible complexity of defining being Jewish.
One of my staple sources on world religions, the BBC World Religions Project, has an eye-opening entry on Judaism, portions of which must be quoted here as another shocking piece of irrefutable evidence:
“Judaism is the original of the three Abrahamic faiths which also include Christianity and Islam. There are twelve million Jewish people in the world, and most of them are in the USA and Israel. There are 320,000 Jews in the UK… 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust in an attempt to wipe out Judaism.”
The wholesale mishmash is patently obvious in this weird passage. Judaism and the Jewish people become indistinguishable in the statistics, and the Nazi rationale for exterminating the European Jewry is strangely attributed to a fight against Judaism, which is plainly ludicrous and screamingly misleading. However, the next passage may shed some light on the nature of the confusion:
“Jews believe that the Jewish People are specially chosen by God, and it is the idea of this specially chosen race, that leads some to conclude that Jews are a race, and not just a religion. This suggests that there are many people who identify themselves as Jewish without necessarily believing in, or observing any Jewish laws.”
Ironically, the last paragraph above explicitly endorses the description of the Jews as a race, rather than as a religion, which may produce an impression of putting the controversy to rest, even if in such a politically incorrect manner, but which, in fact, succeeds only in sweeping it farther under the rug.
On the one hand, it is impossible in any meaningful way to separate the Jews from the religion which grants them their special world-historical status. Even a non-religious Jew, as long as he or she subscribes to the concept of being Jewish, rather than trying to efface all traces of such identification from his or her life--- in vain, as they may or may not find out as soon as their children restart the family search for the roots,--- even this non-religious Jew cannot assert his or her Jewishness without seeking an adequate reaffirmation of it in the religious claim of Jewish exceptionality. Thus, we can now conclude that Jewishness, although it cannot be equated to a religion by any stretch of imagination, cannot exclude it either and--- in the broader sense of Judaism as a world-historical mandate of the eternal Jew on a global mission,--- Judaism indeed defines the condition of being Jewish.
Added to this must be the process which, presumably, allows a Gentile to become a Jew. This can happen in case a Gentile is married to a Jew or has a partial Jewish heritage, but in practice a Gentile has an extremely low chance of being converted, if there are no compelling reasons for it, such as a strong Jewish connection. The conversion itself is a strict religious procedure, thus once again reaffirming the religious component of a person’s Jewishness. Moreover, only strict Orthodox conversions are recognized as legitimate in the State of Israel, despite the pronouncedly secular character of the Jewish State. Attempts of the American Reform Judenthum to expand the converts’ field, to include “Reform conversions,” are forcefully repudiated by the Orthodox community, creating a peculiar Limbo for the Jewish wannabes: Those who seek acceptance end up undergoing a second conversion process anyway, no bonus points given for the first “phony” try.
A striking case of secular Judaism is Zionism, a nationalist political movement, having little, if anything at all, to do with religious worship, often openly atheistic in its theological outlook, yet unthinkable without a clear and direct identification with the traditional religious concepts of the Jewish people, such as the term Zion itself and the Biblically promised return of the exiles to the Promised Land. Some people call Zionism a secular religion, but I am reluctant, however, to acknowledge the latter term as a legitimate entity. I would rather favor a more subtle consideration of Zionism in particular as a special extension of Judaism acquiring a unique form, like almost everything else around and within the Jewish phenomenon.
On the other hand, the stubborn insistence that the Jews are “a race” is essentially deficient, as it downplays the enormous role of “religion” in Jewish life and destiny, as specified in the previous paragraph, but also in the factual side of what the concept of race signifies. A distinction insisted upon by some scholars between a Hebrew and a Jew implies a higher degree of racial cohesiveness in the former, and, therefore, a distinctly higher degree of racial diversity among the Jews, as a number of different peoples with their cultural roots in Judaism. But even the “Hebrew race,” as an Aramaic branch of the large Semitic family, which originally came out of Arabia, does not carry any racial purity. Harper’s Bible Dictionary, while misleadingly calling the Jews “members of the Hebrew race,” at the same time also informs that “there are evidences in the Old Testament that the Hebrews knew themselves to be a composite race,” pointing to the following passage in Deuteronomy 26:5:
“A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there with a few and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.”
(I am deliberately avoiding the familiar distinction between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic/Mizrahi Jews, in which case, although their historical circumstances are different, there is never any doubt that they proceed from the same Semitic family, separated but not alienated from each other as a result of the Diaspora. There is also a peculiar question concerning the term Black Hebrew, which seems to contradict what has been said above about the distinction between Jews and Hebrews. However, the term “Black Hebrew” has been rather contentiously chosen, causing serious objections on the part of the mainstream Jewish community for which reason it cannot be called as an expert witness in the present linguistic argument. In this connection, see the enlightening entry Black Hebrews In America, to be posted later.)
Racial purity is not so much a subject of historical interest, however, as it is a present-day headache for the countless cases of mixed marriages, and for the status of the children in such marriages. Orthodox Jews do not recognize as Jewish any person whose mother is not patently Jewish. Reform Jews, on the other hand, are ever so eager to expand the Jewish ranks, and to boost the corresponding statistical numbers, that they will actually accept as a bona fide Jew a person who would have passed the Aryan racial purity test in Nazi Germany, and that with flying colors!
Which, of course, once again creates a mess around the question of who can be called a Jew, and, unlike in the case of official conversions, where the Orthodox community still holds the upper hand, the surreptitious self-proclamation of Jewish identity, on the part of marginal and spurious Jews, may be the surest backdoor entry for the questionable wannabes, further eroding the racial component of the Jewish identity.
Thus the race thesis is refuted as well at least on the grounds of Jewish multi-ethnicity, but by now the issue has already become moot on the strength of a variety of other considerations.
So, how are we to conclude this discussion, which must by now have shed some light on the complexity of the issue under consideration, but has not produced a clear-cut solution this way or the other?
It is perhaps the uniqueness of the Jews (shelo asanu kegoyei ha-aratzot--- for He has not made us like the goyim of the world, in the words of the Aleinu prayer) in the world-historical context of humanity, which turns any attempt to categorize them, like we categorize everybody else, into an exercise in the absurd.
Our best solution in resolving the problem highlighted by the question in the title of this entry is to leave it unanswered, in recognition of the simple fact that not every question, which can be asked, must or can have an answer…
The tricky and elusive character of the Jewish phenomenon is underscored by the curious controversy with regard to the proper definition of Jewishness. Are the Jews a race, or a religion, or perhaps, something else? This question has been raised and addressed in highly ambiguous terms so far, and I doubt that clarity will ever emerge out of the existing ostensibly perpetual confusion, which is yet another piece of hard evidence in the testimony to the special nature of the Jewish wonder.
Calling the Jews a race has become outrageously politically incorrect, since the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich, which used to treat the Jews as such. Calling the Jews “a religion” is simply ridiculous, as an overwhelming majority of them are decidedly irreligious, or actively involved in other religions, such as Christianity, and including a broad variety of smaller Christian and pseudo-Christian sects and denominations; or Buddhism, Hinduism, and all sorts of other whatnot else. There is a sort of compromise reached when identifying one’s Jewishness as a cultural thing, adherence to the broadly defined Jewish tradition. In other words, a person is Jewish if he or she identifies himself or herself as Jewish and is eager to maintain a Jewish home. This is not a sufficient definition either, for obvious reasons. A “Jew” who does not wish to be identified as Jewish and does not maintain a Jewish lifestyle, is still somehow considered a Jew. The fact that there are a substantial number of “Jewish Christians,” often referred to as “Jews for Jesus” in American Evangelical churches and elsewhere, characteristically referred to also as “completed Jews,” thus being segregated from both Gentile Christians and Judaism-professing Jews, is a clear indication of the incredible complexity of defining being Jewish.
One of my staple sources on world religions, the BBC World Religions Project, has an eye-opening entry on Judaism, portions of which must be quoted here as another shocking piece of irrefutable evidence:
“Judaism is the original of the three Abrahamic faiths which also include Christianity and Islam. There are twelve million Jewish people in the world, and most of them are in the USA and Israel. There are 320,000 Jews in the UK… 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust in an attempt to wipe out Judaism.”
The wholesale mishmash is patently obvious in this weird passage. Judaism and the Jewish people become indistinguishable in the statistics, and the Nazi rationale for exterminating the European Jewry is strangely attributed to a fight against Judaism, which is plainly ludicrous and screamingly misleading. However, the next passage may shed some light on the nature of the confusion:
“Jews believe that the Jewish People are specially chosen by God, and it is the idea of this specially chosen race, that leads some to conclude that Jews are a race, and not just a religion. This suggests that there are many people who identify themselves as Jewish without necessarily believing in, or observing any Jewish laws.”
Ironically, the last paragraph above explicitly endorses the description of the Jews as a race, rather than as a religion, which may produce an impression of putting the controversy to rest, even if in such a politically incorrect manner, but which, in fact, succeeds only in sweeping it farther under the rug.
On the one hand, it is impossible in any meaningful way to separate the Jews from the religion which grants them their special world-historical status. Even a non-religious Jew, as long as he or she subscribes to the concept of being Jewish, rather than trying to efface all traces of such identification from his or her life--- in vain, as they may or may not find out as soon as their children restart the family search for the roots,--- even this non-religious Jew cannot assert his or her Jewishness without seeking an adequate reaffirmation of it in the religious claim of Jewish exceptionality. Thus, we can now conclude that Jewishness, although it cannot be equated to a religion by any stretch of imagination, cannot exclude it either and--- in the broader sense of Judaism as a world-historical mandate of the eternal Jew on a global mission,--- Judaism indeed defines the condition of being Jewish.
Added to this must be the process which, presumably, allows a Gentile to become a Jew. This can happen in case a Gentile is married to a Jew or has a partial Jewish heritage, but in practice a Gentile has an extremely low chance of being converted, if there are no compelling reasons for it, such as a strong Jewish connection. The conversion itself is a strict religious procedure, thus once again reaffirming the religious component of a person’s Jewishness. Moreover, only strict Orthodox conversions are recognized as legitimate in the State of Israel, despite the pronouncedly secular character of the Jewish State. Attempts of the American Reform Judenthum to expand the converts’ field, to include “Reform conversions,” are forcefully repudiated by the Orthodox community, creating a peculiar Limbo for the Jewish wannabes: Those who seek acceptance end up undergoing a second conversion process anyway, no bonus points given for the first “phony” try.
A striking case of secular Judaism is Zionism, a nationalist political movement, having little, if anything at all, to do with religious worship, often openly atheistic in its theological outlook, yet unthinkable without a clear and direct identification with the traditional religious concepts of the Jewish people, such as the term Zion itself and the Biblically promised return of the exiles to the Promised Land. Some people call Zionism a secular religion, but I am reluctant, however, to acknowledge the latter term as a legitimate entity. I would rather favor a more subtle consideration of Zionism in particular as a special extension of Judaism acquiring a unique form, like almost everything else around and within the Jewish phenomenon.
On the other hand, the stubborn insistence that the Jews are “a race” is essentially deficient, as it downplays the enormous role of “religion” in Jewish life and destiny, as specified in the previous paragraph, but also in the factual side of what the concept of race signifies. A distinction insisted upon by some scholars between a Hebrew and a Jew implies a higher degree of racial cohesiveness in the former, and, therefore, a distinctly higher degree of racial diversity among the Jews, as a number of different peoples with their cultural roots in Judaism. But even the “Hebrew race,” as an Aramaic branch of the large Semitic family, which originally came out of Arabia, does not carry any racial purity. Harper’s Bible Dictionary, while misleadingly calling the Jews “members of the Hebrew race,” at the same time also informs that “there are evidences in the Old Testament that the Hebrews knew themselves to be a composite race,” pointing to the following passage in Deuteronomy 26:5:
“A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there with a few and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.”
(I am deliberately avoiding the familiar distinction between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic/Mizrahi Jews, in which case, although their historical circumstances are different, there is never any doubt that they proceed from the same Semitic family, separated but not alienated from each other as a result of the Diaspora. There is also a peculiar question concerning the term Black Hebrew, which seems to contradict what has been said above about the distinction between Jews and Hebrews. However, the term “Black Hebrew” has been rather contentiously chosen, causing serious objections on the part of the mainstream Jewish community for which reason it cannot be called as an expert witness in the present linguistic argument. In this connection, see the enlightening entry Black Hebrews In America, to be posted later.)
Racial purity is not so much a subject of historical interest, however, as it is a present-day headache for the countless cases of mixed marriages, and for the status of the children in such marriages. Orthodox Jews do not recognize as Jewish any person whose mother is not patently Jewish. Reform Jews, on the other hand, are ever so eager to expand the Jewish ranks, and to boost the corresponding statistical numbers, that they will actually accept as a bona fide Jew a person who would have passed the Aryan racial purity test in Nazi Germany, and that with flying colors!
Which, of course, once again creates a mess around the question of who can be called a Jew, and, unlike in the case of official conversions, where the Orthodox community still holds the upper hand, the surreptitious self-proclamation of Jewish identity, on the part of marginal and spurious Jews, may be the surest backdoor entry for the questionable wannabes, further eroding the racial component of the Jewish identity.
Thus the race thesis is refuted as well at least on the grounds of Jewish multi-ethnicity, but by now the issue has already become moot on the strength of a variety of other considerations.
So, how are we to conclude this discussion, which must by now have shed some light on the complexity of the issue under consideration, but has not produced a clear-cut solution this way or the other?
It is perhaps the uniqueness of the Jews (shelo asanu kegoyei ha-aratzot--- for He has not made us like the goyim of the world, in the words of the Aleinu prayer) in the world-historical context of humanity, which turns any attempt to categorize them, like we categorize everybody else, into an exercise in the absurd.
Our best solution in resolving the problem highlighted by the question in the title of this entry is to leave it unanswered, in recognition of the simple fact that not every question, which can be asked, must or can have an answer…
No comments:
Post a Comment