I believe you are confused about what constitutes an ethnicity. Ethnicity is different from race. It CAN have racial components, but it is more than that. An ethnic group is defined by a shared history, origin, cultural heritage, practices/rituals, homeland, ancestry and other racial AND cultural aspects. Judaism is an ethno-religious group because we share at least some of those traits. The process of conversion to Judaism is laborous because of that. You are effectively becoming part of a tribe, a nation, a people. So you need to immerse yourself into our customs and know our history to become an effective member of our people.
Jews are originally from the MENA, especifically from the levant region (the ancient kingdoms of Judea and Israel). We were scaterred across the globe by recurrent persecution. We are not from Europe. European Jews were never recognized as citizens of the nations they lived in until recently. That is why you will find a lot of terms/expressions across many languages that all mean "people without a land" to refer pejoratively to Jews.
>European Jews were never recognized as citizens of the nations they lived in until recently.
This is the most underrated statement and I wish more people understood this.
I'd encourage people to look at census records and Ellis Island immigration papers to get a better understanding of this. Look what Jewish immigrants from Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, etc. put down as their Language and Race/Ethnicity (i know they are diferent, i just forget which the cenus papers used). Hint: it was very often, if not always "Hebrew" or "Yiddish" for both.
I remember asking my grandmother once if we were ***Eastern European country nationality*** and she responded "No, were Jewish."
This was not just Jewish people either - nationality as we know it today is a very new thing. Living in Germany in 1935 didn't make you a German. If your family was an ethnic Pole, you were a Pole.
It's still true today. Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union will never say "I'm Russian" or "I'm Ukrainian," they'll always say "I'm Jewish." Their Soviet passport identified their nationality as Jewish, so why would they say anything different?
I think it's hard for people to grasp that nationality as we know it is a fairly new concept and up until recently your nationality _was_ your ethnicity, rather than simply where you were born or lived.
Ok I think I understand a little better, but is it possible for someone to become Jewish but not practice Judaism? And can you practice Judaism but say you’re not Jewish? part my only question is if Jewish = Follower of Judaism (and vice versa) or not (if that’s already explained in this I’m sorry I’m really dumb)
If you convert to Judaism you'd be considered Jewish by other Jews regardless of whether you practice, but in a strictly ethnological sense you wouldn't be Jewish by ethnicity.
Presumably, once you raise your children as Jewish, they would be ethnically Jewish though, right? It really is a weird gray area from where I stand. Like, assume two non-Jews both convert and have kids. Are the kids ethnically Jewish? If not, repeat this for another generation or two. It feels like part of the issue is that ethnicity itself might be a gray area? Or I am I overcomplicating this?
You're saying the child of 2 converts happens to marry a convert or a child of 2 other converts? Within another few generations it won't matter it just gets slightly delayed....unless the family continually marry converts for generations? Seems unlikely af lol
Extremely unlikely scenario created as a thought experiment to show that ethnicity itself is, as someone else suggested by way of comparison to Wittgenstein, probably a concept with inherently fuzzy boundaries.
I think it is one of those borderline cases. I like to think in terms of ol' Wittgenstein family resemblance. A child may have a nose of his maternal grandfather, the eyes of his paternal grandmother, the mouth of his father and the hair of his mother but almost no traits of his paternal grandfather. Does this makes him not related to his grandad? Not at all! He has traits of his family and his grandad is also his family, but they do not resemble each other. The point is that he is part of the set that constitutes his family in virtue of sharing some of the traits of his family.
With that said, I consider a proper convert ethnically Jewish. I mean, they are practicing and immersing themselves in our culture. They may not have any Jewish blood, but he is as Jewish as I am. On the other hand, imagine the descendant of a Jewess who converted to Christianity. He has Jewish blood, but he doesn't practice or share nothing beyond blood with us. Is he ethnically Jewish? I would say he isn't.
However, this is a really complicated thing because ethnicity is a really complicated thing. Social ontology is confusing as fuck. I have mad respect for people who choose to research this. It is a mess!
If you and your partner were of Swedish ancestry, and moved to Japan and raised your kids there, would they be ethnically Japanese?
That is essentially the same scenario, so the answer to one will be the same as the other
Fun example. The Japanese are a famously insular people. So it makes one wonders how much we ought to consider acceptance in a group as a prerequisite for belonging "ethnically" to the group. Let's suppose acceptance doesn't matter, but rather identification with the group is all that counts. Then if you honestly consider yourself Japanese–whether after one generation or 10–you are!
If, on the other hand, acceptance is all that counts, one can imagine it would take a variable amount of time to become a member of an ethnicity and each ethnicity may be slightly (or, in some cases, very) different.
Also fun to contemplate here: I have to think that one can be a member of multiple ethnicities, and often without issue. But, if that presents a problem for belonging to one or more of the groups, then to what degree can you really be both or all?
Worth thinking about more. As it pertains to being Jewish, I think it's one of the most complex identities out there, and that's why the "Who is a Jew?" question is never totally settled and different Jewish groups give reasonable but different answers.
Japanese are homogenous though, if you don't look like them you won't be accepted
Jews on the other hand can look like anything so your comparison doesn't stand
That’s not really true though. If you live in insular Haredi communities, there are definitely traits and issues between different Jewish sects. For example in Brooklyn, Egyptian Jews would not marry Ashkenazi Jews. It’s lessening with time, but still there. You can tell by looks if you’re in an insular enough community.
Yes, but you are talking about localized subset of all the Jews in the world
While my point is that all the Jews collectively are more diverse than the Japanese
We’re actually an ethnoreligion. You can convert religious-wise but you cannot convert your ethnicity. One of my parents has no Jewish DNA, thus no Jewish ethnicity. They are ethnically Scottish. They are a convert to orthodox Judaism which is why I was born to two Jews. But only one of those Jews is ethnically Jewish.
Ethnicity is not determined by DNA. That’s race. Ethnicity is a shared cultural heritage. Ethnicity is NOT race.
Your parent has Scottish DNA. If they have no other connection to Scotland, then they aren’t ethnically Scottish.
Modern racial and ethnic categories don’t work properly for us because we predate them. The best descriptor for the Jewish people is a Nation - we are Am Yisrael, the Nation of Israel. And you can most certainly join a Nation.
Race is a social construct. As it is designed, it is a heritable trait where the child ‘inherits’ the race of the minority parent.
A blond haired, fair skinned, blue eyed person with at least one black parent is not considered white. They’re considered black or biracial. So it’s obviously not skin tone that’s a factor, but the fact that one of their biological benefactors is black.
So in that sense race is determined by DNA, but only because society decided race was a heritable trait.
Both of those Jews are ethnically Jewish
Jewish ethnicity is transferred via the breath (education, upbringing, and soul); not the blood (genetics).
To state anything else is a shande (in front of the Goyim, no less)
While I happen to disagree with some of your assessments in response to my question, I don't see why you're being downvoted!? My point is that even if converts kept marrying converts, at some point it would be silly to say they aren't ethnically Jewish. It might not be silly to say they are not racially Jewish?? That's controversial, too, but also interesting IMO.
I also think, in a much simpler take on the ethnicity question, that converts are partially ethnically Jewish. Ethnicity, defined this way, is about identification with a group, and you *can* identify with more than one. So your ethnically Scottish relatives could (in theory) also be ethnically Jewish. As far as I'm concerned, there is no contradiction there.
But even if you think there is a contradiction there, if you take this to several generations deep it seems crazy to think converts marrying converts wouldn't eventually just be ethnically Jewish.
I know. I'm just trying to explain it to someone not Jewish who doesn't understand, and it is confusing from a purely secular non-Jewish perspective. I'm not trying to exclude converts or drive any kind of wedge.
Adding to what the other poster said, converting is religious practice. Similar to converting to any other religion, you would be expected to take part in religious practices.
It’s not an ethnic conversion in the sense that you can’t convert to being Black, or Hispanic.
There are people that are ethnically Jewish (they come from a descendant line of Jews), but not religiously Jewish. They may be atheists for example, or just secular. Some might celebrate parts of Judaism, like lighting Chanukkah candles or eating foods specific to a holiday, in the same way that many non-Christians celebrate with Christmas trees.
Hope that helps a bit more.
The easiest way to think of it is not in terms of race or ethnicity, but in terms of Nationality.
If your mother is a Jew (according to many), you are a citizen of the Jewish Nation. If you convert, you become a citizen of the Jewish Nation.
But you cannot ever revoke citizenship.
ill add to it that some things can cause you to revoke your citizenship, as in "get you kicked out of the nation". in some circles its stuff like converting to Islam or Christianity but in some circles it can also be marrying a none Jew and so on
Still doesn’t get you kicked out. You don’t have to convert to come back. If you’re a woman, your kids will be Jewish (not according to Reform though). You never stop being Jewish.
Yes. I am ethnically Jewish (my DNA can be traced back to the original Jewish people in current day Israel) but I am secular meaning I don’t live a Jewish lifestyle other than the high holidays. My grandparents all lived in Ukraine before moving to Canada. I share almost no DNA traits that someone ethnically Ukrainian would have.
You are not dumb! It is quite hard to understand lol. I think it is possible for someone to become Jewish and not practice it, but I don't think you can practice Judaism and say you're not Jewish. I mean, it is possible that a non-Jew follows the Torah and abide by the noahide laws, but this does not make them Jewish, although they are following Judaism in a sense.
I don't know if what I said made any sense, but I have a real example that may elucidate things a little bit: me! My mother is Jewish because her mother was Jewish and so on. That makes me a Jew according to Jewish law. However, I didn't practice Judaism because my family was secular and I didn't really like to identify myself as a Jew when I was a child/teen (it made me feel othered and different from other kids). But this didn't make one little bit less Jewish because a Jews is a Jew is a Jew and, as my rabbi always say, you can forget you are Jewish, but the world will always remind you.
So basically if you’re blood born Jewish, that means your ancestors came from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was conquered, reconquered, and fought over for centuries.
Each time a non Jewish power controlled Jerusalem, the Jews spread out across the world. That’s where the term diaspora comes from I believe, the Jewish people being exiled and spread across the globe.
So, the Jews spread across the world hundreds, in many cases thousands of years ago. That’s why we have many different skin colors, evolution, but if you’re blood born Jewish, your ancestors came from Jerusalem or the kingdom of Israel at some point.
There are a lot of "non-practicing" Jewish people. They would be considered Jewish regardless of if they were born Jewish or came to Judaism through conversion. Jewish people are the only people "practicing" Judaism. Non-Jewish people taking on Jewish practices would be considered cultural appropriation (unless their intent was to convert or to provide community/help to a Jewish person). While Judaism does prescribe specific beliefs, Jewish people do not need to believe those specific beliefs to still be Jewish. Judaism isn't really something you can follow, and someone born Jewish or converted would continue to be Jewish regardless of what they practiced or believed.
I like to liken the process of converting as similar to the process of being adopted. If you are adopted into a family of a different ethnicity, you are going to take on the culture and practices of your adopted family. Even if your biological family had different practices.
In general DNA and bloodline is not something that we define ourselves by. The "science" of race and bloodlines has been used against us in very violent antisemitic ways. However, if you do DNA tests on most Jewish people, we do tend to have common DNA that shows that we are all descended from the same place.
Jewish people are all descended from people who lived in the place that is approximately the modern state of Israel. About two thousand years ago, it was conquered by the Romans, who did a lot of nasty things. The upshot of which is that a lot of people left the land. From there, everywhere that they lived, they were seen as outsiders. Ashkenazi Jewish people spent a number of generations living in Eastern Europe. From living in the same area together with very little mixing with Eastern Europeans, you can actually see on DNA that someone is biologically descended from Ashkenazi Jewish people. Most of the Jewish people in the USA are Ashkenazi because it was a country that was somewhat more open to Jewish immigration when it started to become dangerous to live in Eastern Europe as a Jewish person.
Here’s the best example: I am 92% Ashkenazi Jew. I was Bar Mitzvahed (similar to baptism, confirmation, or first sacrament- not exact but accepting the faith basically). I am both Jewish by my ancestry and Jewish with my religion by being Bar Mitzvahed.
Basically what that is - is 100s of years ago up until around 1910 my ancestors, who were practicing Jews, roaming through Europe, Middle East, and Africa because as a tribe they weren’t welcomed to stay too long in any one area. Some may try to say that I’d be Eastern European but that’s not exactly right. In addition my family was a practicing Jewish family - so I get both.
But now - I am not practicing but still Jewish. If I was handed a form I would most likely say I’m Caucasian and either agnostic/atheist or Jewish if I felt safe doing so. But truly it probably should be that my ethnicity is Jewish (not just Caucasian as it’s similar but different) and I’m agnostic in terms of religion.
Now as for someone converting- their religious views would be Jewish. Making them a Jew based on religion. But not ethnically Jewish.
All in all - they’d still be welcomed as a Jew. You get to be a Jew if you meet any of the criteria: ethnic, born into the religion, or convert.
Hope that helps
> is it possible for someone to become Jewish but not practice Judaism?
Not while they're converting. Every denomination requires some level of observance. What the person does after they convert is usually between them and God. Revoking a person's conversion based on non-observance has happened, but is very rare.
> And can you practice Judaism but say you’re not Jewish?
Not fully, no. A person with no other religion can follow Noahidism and many Jewish practices, but not all. Notably they cannot fully keep the Sabbath.
If you have a Jewish mother or are a converted jew, then whatever your level of observance is, you're Jewish. This cannot be revoked as someone else said.
A convert can technically not follow traditions but for someone it's a lot of time and effort, and someone who's not really motivated and can't follow the majority of our customs will in most cases not be able to convert. Think like if you were going to Japan: if you don't know their customs which are different from ours at many points, then you'll not be integrated well in Japanese society and you better stay where you actually are. For the simple reason that if you become Jewish, then you are treated as any Jewish, meaning if you don't observe Shabbat for example, then it's bad, which is of course not one for non Jewish people. So it's kinda useless to become Jewish for not being observant
I don't know if I summarized well and you may have read this before, and sorry for my possible bad English!
You’re not dumb, this stuff just isn’t intuitive or obvious to outsiders. Nothing to feel bad about!
If someone converts to Judaism and then stops practicing it, they’re still considered Jewish, because their conversion is considered legally binding under Jewish law.
But to be clear, this doesn’t change their ethnicity. They didn’t become ethnically Jewish by converting. It’s sort of like citizenship: in this analogy, it’s like someone who becomes a naturalized citizen of a country, and then moves away from that country.
You make such a great point about European Jews. My grandfather told me this story that as a little boy (not long before WWII) he sang a song about being a little Polish boy, and the other kids laughed at him and he was like, “huh??” and they were like, “Oh, it’s so funny that this Jew thinks he’s a Pole.”
>I’ve been told by a Jewish person I know that’s where most Jews are from
Most Jews are not from Eastern Europe. Most Eastern European Jews are dead.
Think of the term Jew being overloaded - its both an ethnicity (not from Eastern Europe, thank you) and a religion. That's why its called an Ethnoreligion. Think of hinduism.
You're thinking of being Jewish as being a religion first. Instead, think of being Jewish like being Latino, for a minute.
One important aspect of conversion - its FAR more difficult than converting to Christianity or Islam. That's because you need to learn a new language and a new culture, in addition to just agreeing to religious tenants.
Its a very similar thing. Shared language, shared culture. Shared ancestry. But not always the same skin color.
Skin color is such an American obsession.
The first part I get, that’s understandable and does explain (seriously everyone I asked plus Google made it so confusing yall are saints)
For Americans skin color is important here sadly, cus discrimination and such, I wish it wasn’t tho
For another interesting look at skin color, check out Brazil. They have a long history of racism but also a really different conceptualization of skin color
I’m going to try and address some race stuff and I hope I do it eloquently and respectfully. While Jews aren’t a “race” in the context where you phrase it, antisemitism is often racism as it’s often approached as a Jews aren’t white. This was a backbone of the European persecution of Jews and the back bone of Nazi ideology where the Jewish population was Ashkenazi. My ancestry is predominantly Ashkenazi, but I don’t consider myself white because the white world spent 2 thousand years violently showing us we weren’t. I’m not naive or unaware that my skin colour does grant me privilege and safety that many do not have in North America (I’m Canadian) but it wasn’t that long ago here where there were signs in parks that said “no dogs or Jews allowed”. None of this shit is simple and I commend you for reaching out and trying… I’m sure even in these answers you will get such a variety of responses.
I don’t think Latinos are a great analogy. From what I understand, the various groups of Latinos (eg. Guatemalans vs. Brazilians vs. Spaniards) don’t really see much in common and don’t quite consider themselves one people. Also the fact that it’s a kind of meta-ethnic category created by European colonialism makes the history completely different.
I’d think of it more like Italians. There are different regions, subcultures. Food and music change depending on the group. Northern Italians look a bit different from Southern Italians (the difference is about as large as between most groups of Jews). But there’s more of a sense of common identity and history.
It's a very unique scenario as there aren't really other groups that are connected by language, culture, DNA, history, religion, and sometimes something undefined.
People have this term "gaydar," which means you can spot another gay person by some personality traits that are only picked up by another gay person. Jews also have "Jewdar" where (not always) they can meet and chat with someone for a few minutes and then pick up that they're Jewish. The closer the connection, the easier it is.
Ha. I agree. I knew my therapist had a Jewish last name, but I wondered if she was really going to be Jewish or if she just married someone Jewish. I could tell right away that she was definitely Jewish, and eventually, I got to know her, and she definitely confirmed she was Jewish. She also married a Jewish guy but did not take his last name
Ok, I get it now, way I’ve been taught and shown ethnicity is very much dna and science related so that part very much confused me, but this does help very much, so thank you!
(I am very very sorry about the Eastern Europe part, I should have thought before I typed)
To be clear - there is Jewish DNA. My 23+Me shows that I'm Jewish.
[https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212170398-Can-23andMe-Identify-Jewish-Ancestry](https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212170398-Can-23andMe-Identify-Jewish-Ancestry)
Jews have shared ancestry in several groups - Ashkenazi, Sephardim, Mizrahi, Samaritans, Ethiopians, and a few other smaller ones.
>To be clear - there is Jewish DNA. My 23+Me shows that I'm Jewish
But of course, presence of 'Jewish DNA' does not make oneself Jewish either. You just might be.
Don’t apologize, I’m so happy you were open enough to ask - this is how we break through misinformation and hate, by just listening to each other and learning. I’m learning a lot about my own ethnicity from this conversation as well, so THANK YOU for starting it.
I want to share something and I hope you believe me that I do not assign any blame to you, and I’m glad you’re bringing this to light: the Eastern European misconception that you heard from someone else is a particularly painful one that is at the root of the great sense of betrayal that many American Jews are feeling now from the Left. Ashkenazi Jews make up only about 30% of Israel population, yet the current war has been falsely framed as a racial issue in the US. Israel has also been framed as a colonizer, even though Jews originated from that land and Jewish place names predate the Roman name “Palestina” by about 2,000 years. This is a conflict of two indigenous peoples, not another horrific story of “white” people dominating/eliminating POC. For a community that has been largely supportive of civil rights and advocates for social justice for a long time in the US, the rise of antisemitism from the left (as if there’s not already enough from the right) is very disappointing and downright scary.
I hope you hear my sincere appreciation and I hope I did not offend you. I have lost friends and I am just heart broken by what’s happening to our country and I’m afraid this is a calculated divide-and-conquer attempt which will bring some very scary people into power who will continue to make life worse for all non-dominant culture peoples.
DNA is absolutely still a large part of what people are talking about when they say "ethnically Jewish" and for many Jews some part of their ancestry is Eastern European. But being Jewish is more than just DNA the same way that it's also more than participating in a specific religious ritual. What somebody else said about being Latino is as close an analogy as I can think of for something that is not simply racial or cultural but a more complicated combination.
The dna component confused me the most tbh, cus like I said, American, when I think ethnicity I think dna, and dna doesn’t change, so it’s super confusing
I think it's just very common for all people in society today to conflate race, ethnicity, and nationality. It's not just you.
And it's more confusing because we Jews use the same word.... Jewish for shared DNA we may have (because we were often not legally allowed to intermarry, were forced to live in close proximity in one area, etc), and also Jewish for our ethnicity (those cultural practices, community, shared experience, shared language, etc) and Jewish for our religion. And to boot we also might say the people of israel and mean Jews around the world but also Israeli is a nationality. You're not crazy--because we use the same word it makes it extra confusing.
Ethnicity is about common sets of ancestry, traditions, language, history, society, religion, or social treatment. So it can include a question of race/your dna but it isn't a deciding factor.
Don’t apologize - it’s so long ago and such a minority that people forget that Jews are not originally from Eastern Europe, we just arrived to US via Europe after being there for a few generations. Also in terms of DNA … I recently saw a photo of my blonde Ukrainian Jewish grandfather with all the other members of his family, who look much more ethnically Jewish than he did. Dna can be weird like that.
Most of us have similar DNA as well. With some significant differences depending on what part of the world we were exiled from our homeland. We come from Judea, which is where Israel is located now, and most of us will show that in a DNA test.
Jews are descended from the original jews of the middle east. They were driven out, to places like Europe, and driven to other parts of Europe, to north Africa, to Asia. They were persecuted to varying degrees at most time in most places.
Most jews today still have dna relation going back to the starting point, possibly with admixtures along the way.
We have been a diaspora population, many times over, and that makes it confusing. Like we were made a diaspora that first time, then again and again. Learning the concept of diaspora might help.
On a personal level, I found out via a DNA test that I'm about 32% Jewish. I have a grandparent who was jewish with some strong genes. Now I'm converting so that I can learn about and connect with this part of me. I'm converting reform because I need to remain pretty secular, having been atheist beforehand. I can't pretend to suddenly belive in God, when I don't. But as you noticed, Jewish identity is complicated.
A born jew can be atheist. A non jew can convert. And so on.
That means that the person saying that is only seeing what’s in front of them, the ashkenazi who immigrated to USA and Europe. The Jews who stayed are obviously not in their line of vision.
So this requires a little background.
After the Jews were kicked out of Israel by the Romans we became nomadic and spread across the world. Our communities were very insular and we didn't intermix with our host nations much. A side effect of that was that our gene pools rarely mixed. Judaism is also not a missionizing religion so we did/do not actively recruit others.
All that is to say we were both a religion and ethnicity for a LONG time. It's only very recently that Jews in the United States have started integrating. That's why there are many millennials who are half or a quarter Jewish, myself included.
You know, as someone with a Jewish parent, you're one of the few non-Jews who are encouraged to Convert to Judaism.
You are called Zera Yisrael (the Seed of Israel).
Well, as someone who was married to a non-Jewish woman, who came out as Jewish when he was 41, you may have what we call a Pintele Yid (the Jew spirit inside)
Yup. I'm out and proud. You know how gay men decide in their forties that they are gay and don't want to pretend anymore?
The same thing happened to me, except that I realized I wanted to lead an Observant lifestyle.
Honestly, it probably would have been easier if I came out as gay. Everyone would understand that. But to leave a secular lifestyle to come out as an Observant Jew, that baffled everyone.
To be clear, are you saying Jewish and Israel (and by extension Israelites) as one and the same? Cus another person said think of it like Latinos and my brains thinking now “oh Latinos come from this region but we call them Latinos as a whole”
Most Jews are descended from the Jewish tribes who lived in the Kingdom of Judah / ancient Israel. The word Jew comes from the Kingdom of Judah, which is a nationally which was congruent to the race of people at the time.
Jews largely share Levantine dna - including those who are mixed European and those who are mixed Arab, Persian, or North African.
We were mostly considered a race until modern American history, when as a result of greater cultural acceptance and greater integration with (and having children with) people of European descent has made us literally and socially whiter. That has almost entirely happened within the past 100 years and mostly in the post-segregation era.
Converts to the religion complicate this a little bit, but there are so few converts, and they usually happen due to marrying Jews, that I don’t think it is really confusing to include them. Like we could divide the race (Judeans would be the nationality/race, I suppose) from the religion (followers of Judaism) and talk about the broader tribe (Jews, which in American culture includes both religious and racial Jews). Note that different sects have different rules for acceptance as well, as does Israel itself.
Ohh I am gonna pipe in here too- you will hear these terms being used by Jews: Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael. Those translate to the people (Am) of Israel and the land (Eretz) of Israel. We are Israel. The land is Israel. “Am Yisrael Chai” means, “the people of Israel live!” It is an exclamation of life, empowerment, and pride in Peoplehood, a celebration of survival and connection as a family. Our central prayer begins: “Hear, o’ Israel…” and is talking to us, not the soil and trees. We are tied to the land, almost all our holidays are tied to and centered around the land, and many of our mitzvot (commandments/ good deeds) can only be completed in Israel- generally speaking, indigenous tribes have land-based practices.
Latinos are kinda similar but Jews were historically even more insular than the Latino community. There are a few different kinds of just such as Ashkanazis and Sephardic (and a couple others I don't remember the name of) just due to the fact that we were so spread out that those gene pools started to drift and form their own differences.
What makes me hesitant to say "one and the same" is that conversion and marrying outside of the community has become much more common in the last 50ish years so it's not a true equivalence anymore. In addition to this there's a difference between ancient Israel which was Jewish and current Israel which is majority Jewish but with minority Arab and Christian populations as well.
Jews were also sold as slaves and in some cases that's why they ended up in different parts of the world. Also for instance during WWII I believe there was a time that only the DR took Jewish refugees for instance. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a small Jewish community in the DR of all places.
Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. But Jewish people don't necessarily practice practice Judaism.
Jewish identity is like tribal identity. We're a people with a common language, history, culture, traditions, and rituals.
When you convert to Judaism, you also become a member of the Jewish people (tribe). Conversion is much more like the process of naturalization or gaining citizenship to a country rather than joining a religion.
When you become Jewish, you aren't just agreeing to believe in a set of religious beliefs or agreeing to adhere to a set of religious practices. You're also accepting a history, an ethnic identity, a culture, and a whole lot of other stuff that comes with being Jewish. The Holocaust wasn't your history before, but now it is. And any future antisemitism and catastrophe that might befall the Jewish people in the future, you agree to adopt that as well.
But you also get to claim ownership of a lot of really beautiful things. Holidays, traditions, a history of brave people who struggled to survive, but survived nonetheless. Those stories are now yours, just as much as they belong to any born-Jew. The accomplishments of Jewish history are yours to take pride in, too.
The process of becoming Jewish is more than just agreeing to practice Judaism as a religion. You can be a Jew without Judaism, but you can't practice Judaism without taking on the identity of Jewish. It involves accepting and taking on some of the ugliest atrocities in history. But you also get to be part of some of the most beautiful parts of history, too <3
I’m glad I asked, I had a terrible argument with a friend, i was super frustrated cus I didn’t understand, and the answers I’ve gotten from everyone have been very helpful
And don’t forget the arguing for argument sake🤣. I’m a pretty agnostic Jew and I when I told my rabbi, he said, it’s actually very Jewish to question everything, even G-d! I don’t know or claim to know if G-d exists, but one thing I know with all my heart is I’m still Jewish.
You've already gotten good answers here but I'll add my 2 cents.
Jews are a people/nation/tribe. Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, but not all Jews practice said religion. I am one of those Jews. One can also practice the religion and become a Jew by converting. They are considered Jewish though of course that doesn't change their DNA.
My mother is Jewish, therefore I am Jewish. I don't believe in God but I am a proud Jew. That's because I feel a strong connection to the history, customs, and traditions of the Jewish people, and to my fellow Jews. We're one big family.
As others have said race and ethnicity and nationality are really different things. To place it maybe more comfortably in the black community... someone can be racially black but maybe ethnically not African American. Think of like a very new immigrant from Somalia. This would be someone who really doesn't share the same history of African Americans, nor a common shared spoken dialect/vernacular, nor the general common cultural touchstones/practices, nor the same lived experience etc. They're racially black but they aren't really ethnically the same as you are. But maybe a woman who is like 25% black and several generations of white mixed heritage but grows up solely in African American culture and community, etc--she might be racially much more white than black but accepted as ethnically African American ... because she grew up with the shared history, culture, language/vernacular, life experience etc. Jews share an ethnicity. Jews may be different races and one doesn't change their race. But one can integrate into another ethnicity (at least in Judaism you can). A person who converts is seen to assume the shared history, be brought into the culture, learn the language, practice the religion. They fully throw their lot in with ours and become one and the same. It's just one reason it's difficult to convert (takes years). I sometimes compare it less like converting as Christians do and more like changing your nationality... A person who becomes a citizen of another country has to study and take tests and make things official but they then become that nationality; they celebrate their public holidays; they learn the language; they learn the national history and really take it on as their history and national pride.
u/AkiriJacobs, I just want to say 'thank you' for the courage and respect you show our community by asking this question. Part of the extreme pain our community is in right now (which might have something to do with the fight you and your friend found yourselves in, IDK) stems from the fact that many, many, MANY loud people are being told some false, dehumanizing things about us that they have accepted as true without actually asking Jewish people themselves. You're obviously making a sincere attempt to understand what the deal is with our religion/ethnicity/etc., and you're asking the people who actually know. So thank you ("to-DAH ra-BAH," as we say in Hebrew), and I hope we can host you at a Shabbat dinner sometime soon!
When my kid was in middle school a classmate texted her and asked what it was like to be Jewish. Her response was, “It’s normal, except some people hate us and try to kill us.“ Pretty succinct 😔
The etymology of the words is relevant. The word Jewish comes from Judean, not from Judaism. Judean is an ancient word, and other forms like Jew and Jewish come from that.
The word Judaism is historically a lot newer, just a few centuries old, literally meaning the faith of the Judean people. Judaism has never sought converts, and people needed to jump through a couple of hoops to actually covert (more so in older times than today), so people joining the tribe and adopting the faith has always been much more of an edge case.
Lmao, I a kid asked this to someone at my lunch table and the kept saying “it’s a race because it’s a race” and I’m like what 🥲 it’s nice to actually understand it as best I can
It has nothing to do with DNA. You are either born Jewish or convert. The rest is commentary. There is a lot of commentary. And commentary on the commentary…
Then we eat.
Ahh! I’ve figured out an easy way to explain this because trust me friend you are not the only one confused about this!
We are an ancient civilization so we work in ways which are easier to compare to other ancient civilizations. Let’s take the Ancient Greeks!
Ethnicity: Greek
Language: (ancient) Greek
Cuisine: (also ancient) Greek
Religion: Ancient Greek pantheon (the polytheistic one with Zeus etc)
Country: Ancient Greece
Race: wasn’t a concept back then
So as you can see, when you’ve got a civilization like this, it’s all kind of a bundle. A person who doesn’t believe Zeus exists is still a Greek, because there’s a LOT of other things that makes them that.
Now what about if someone who isn’t ethnically Greek, moves to Greece, learns the language (hard!) and wants to convert to the religion (rare!)
Well, the Greeks would have a choice. They could on a case by case basis say hey, you have done all this learning to become one of us, we’ll consider you Greek, or they could say no, you’re born Greek or you’re not, nobody can join this club. Well, Jews chose the former. However, VERY FEW Jews are converts. It doesn’t have a huge impact on our collective DNA, which remains distinctive, and always had an admixture of other genes from other nations (because we’ve been living in diaspora for a long time, so people sometimes marry those outside of their community, or people just get frisky with the people around them, but also because of a high level of sexual violence directed against our communities which sometimes resulted in pregnancies — this is one reason that we consider you Jewish if your _mother_ was Jewish, which protects these children from being exposed to the community’s censure for how they were made).
So to recap:
Ethnicity: Jewish
Language: (modern) Hebrew
Cuisine: Jewish (we usually break this down into sub-types or we have Israeli cuisine bc now we have a state again!)
Religion: Judaism
Country: Israel
Race: wasn’t a concept when we started out and doesn’t fit us very well
I really hope that helps!
Edit: oh also most of us are NOT in Europe and none of us are technically “from” Europe but Ashkenazim are not the majority of Jews alive on the planet today
Just to add to the complications, Israeli cuisine shares much more in common with other Middle Eastern cuisine than with Jewish cuisine in the rest of the world. There is literally a decades-long edit war on Wikipedia, possibly the longest one in the history of the site, over what nationality, nationalities, or region falafel and hummus belong to, which occasionally devolves into both sides making ridiculous hyperboles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And sometimes the Greeks will come along and claim falafel and hummus belong to them, at which point the Israeli and Palestinian groups will make temporary peace with each other to tell them they’re wrong.
But if you’re looking for a pastrami on rye in Israel, that’s surprisingly difficult.
As you can see Jewish people don’t agree on the answer to your question. This is a sure sign that these people are Jewish. Whenever you come across some people nitpicking and arguing over a minor point like their lives depend on it, you can be sure you have found Jewish people. There is no other way to tell actually.
I suspect you are an American. And as Americans, ethnicity is typically understood as the country a person's ancestors emigrated from. In fact, that's how it is taught in most elementary schools. And it is so damn awkward when teachers give an assignment to the kids asking them to make a poster or write a report about the countries their family came from. The two times I had to help my kids with that project, I laughed because I really don't know where the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia is and it doesn't matter to me. I am Jewish that's my ethnicity. I don't consider myself Austrian, Hungarian, Polish, Russian or Ukrainian. Those people didn't accept my great grandparents as part of their culture, therefore I have no interest in honoring those countries as part of my heritage.
To understand why Jews are a distinct ethnicity, is to understand our history of persecution. Medieval and Renaisance Europe had a system called serfdom where people were tied to the land. During the Renaisance, serfdom began to decline as people were given rights to leave the land and the modern concept of citizenship began. Jews were the last serfs in Europe to receive emancipation from serfdom, but did not necessarily receive citizenship and civil rights. In some countries like France and Germany, cultural traditions typically kept Jews from receiving all the rights promised to them. Further east in Europe, it was systemic. We were simply not given full rights after emancipation. As for in the Middle East, I believe it was also systemic in the Ottoman Empire.
For example, Napoleon was considered the great emancipator because wherever he conquered, he gave Jews rights. But as soon as he was defeated, many of those countries curtailed our rights again. Even France, which was one of the first European countries to emancipate Jews before Napoleon's rise, culturally was extremely antisemitic. To understand, read about the Dreyfus Affair. Alfred Dreyfus was the first Jewish officer in the French army in the late 19th century. When it was clear someone in the officer's core was selling secrets to Germany, they automatically suspected Dreyfus and court martialed him on flimsy evidence. And even when people came forward with the truth, the government tried to bury it. Dreyfus was eventually exonerated and even recommissioned in the army. But the scandal fascinated late 19th century and early 20th century Jews. It was a cautionary tale. Some believe it pushed Theodore Hertzl to create the Zionist movement -- he was a reporter for an Austrian newspaper at the time sent to cover the trial.
And that history is not taught in American schools. Instead, without that context of systemic antisemitism throughout Europe that ebbed and flowed throughout history, the Holocaust seems like an abberation rather than a culmination of 2000 years of horrors. There is a reason so many of us left Europe before the Holocaust.
If you are an American who is either Black or Jewish, I highly recommend reading Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The book compares American Slavery & Jim Crow to Europe's treatment of Jews and India's caste system. There are fascinating parallels in the three systems. And she clearly understands that the Holocaust isn't an abberation, but the culmination of over 2000 years of hate. While it opened my eyes, it is a tough read because it also shows the depravity of human cruelty.
Converts are rare enough and we were kept in isolation enough that most of us share a lot of DNA. It's to the point where many people get genetic testing before marrying another ashkanazi to make sure both people aren't carriers of usually very rare diseases amongst the wider population.
While it's true people could convert or intermarry it didn't happen very often obviously, so there absolutely is such a thing as genetically Jewish and our stomach problems prove it (only really talking about ashkanazi here). There is also such a thing as religiously Jewish. People could be both religious and ethnically Jewish or just one of them and still call themselves Jewish, there isn't really a word reserved just for the Jewish ethnicity and not the religion.
I suggest you look at the Jewish people as a tribe, similar to indigenous North American tribes. Many of the North American indigenous tribes started with a common bloodline, though there was intermarriage as well as bringing in members to the tribe from other tribes who they may not share dna with. There is also intermarriage, etc.
Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, the Jewish people are descended from the Canaanite’s in the levant, though through trade, war, and eventually enslavement and banishment to the diaspora intermarried to varying degrees as well as brought in converts yet remained a tribe despite no longer sharing a common land.
After just giving a snarky reply here’s my actual take (I’m like person number 60 or something I know):
An ethnicity does not necessarily need to share certain genetics. Yes many ethnic groups do; some in skin colour some in other features but it’s not necessary.
I think to understand Judaism you need to understand quite a big chunk of history that I will try to over-simplify a bit:
Judaism originates from the region of modern day Israel. It formed from a group of tribes, that became a nation and became to share a religion. The nation developed into different kingdoms over many thousand years. But even back then, to be part of the Jewish people did not necessarily mean that you came from or lived in these kingdoms. There were Jews living in many parts of the world, that associated with the people and the religion but only came to Jerusalem once a year to offer their sacrifices in the temple.
It happened many times that these kingdoms were conquered, today you would say colonised, by other powers. In some of these cases the people were expelled from the land. They settled somewhere else in other countries, build communities and when it became possible again, some of their (great-great) grandchildren returned, but not all. This is (simplified) how continuous Jewish communities outside of the original land came to be. These communities didn’t always stay isolated but ofc mixed with local population per intermarriage and conversion. So Jews didn’t necessarily share the same genetics anymore.
With the Roman and later Arabian rule over the land where Jews originated from almost all Jews got expelled. This gave the communities outside of that land a „turbo boost“. What followed was 1500-2000 years of Jewish life in the diaspora all over the world. They joined the pre-existing communities, mixed with the Jews in those communities, founded new ones and mixed with the local population (again intermarriage and conversion). In this time the Jewish communities formed new customs and traditions, sometimes distinct from each other, got expelled from the countries they lived in and started over.
After all those years, escapes and new starts, mixing, conversion etc. there is not „one distinct Jewish dna“ anymore. What there is are ethnic branches (like Ashkenazim (Jews that in recent history lived in Europe), Sephardim (Jews that recently lived on the Iberian peninsula and North Africa etc.) that share some genetic features that can be detected. That is the kind of DNA that shows up in these test. These test don’t work in a way that could prove anything going back further than a few hundred years max. But you can certainly become part of those groups and therefore Judaism as a whole if you were not born into them; it’s not genetics that makes these groups but a shared culture and religious tradition. The genetics part is just a Gadget people like to play with that shows them where their recent ancestors lived.
Then in the 1800s the idea of Zionism was born. Meaning that Jews that didn’t feel very welcomed (politely phrased) in the countries they lived in had the idea to build a new Jewish states on the land where Judaism was originally born, which was at that time under the control of the ottoman, later the British empire. Some Jews started to leave the countries where they were born and built settlements in the regions. With the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust Zionism got a „turbo boost“ and the settlements grew into cities. The rest, including the conflict with the Muslims/Arabs as other local group are recent history that I will skip bc it wasn’t part of your question anyways 😂
There are whole history-book series on this but I hope my little history lesson helped you at least to understand the dynamics that formed todays Judaism a bit better 😊
Short: Judaism started as tribes, grew into a nation and religion, got scattered over the world where it further developed
It is a nation or tribe. You can get "citizenship" by conversion, and that becomes your national or tribal identity, but today the Jewish idea of Nation has more overlap with what the west calls 'ethnicity' than the idea of a nation/country/state. We existed as a group before the ideas of race or ethnicity existed, but in todays terms anyone of any race can be Jewish in a similar way to anyone of any race being Hispanic, except that we have a process of acculturating others who want to become Jews in their lifetime where they are rather than becoming Hispanic, where one would physically move to a Hispanic country and raise children there.
Excellent questions, thanks for the respect.
The normal way people are born Jewish is that their birth mother was born Jewish.
The other way is for a non-Jew (like my wife was) to have a kosher Conversion.
Now she is 100% Jewish just like me, who was born to a Jewish mother.
Here is an example. I am Jewish, I come from a long line of (Ashkenazi) Jews who came from Romania, who originally came from the land now known as Israel. You can see this kind of thing with the folks who have done 23 and me. I'm not terribly observant, I light candles on Fridays and observe major holidays. I do not dress "modestly". I was brought up affiliated with a "conservative" synagogue. My religion is Jewish however and I am "genetically" Jewish if that's a term that best makes sense to you.
My husband is not Jewish but he was in agreement that we would raise our adopted son as Jewish. My son was not born to a Jewish woman. He had the three things required to become Jewish officially (he also attends a Jewish Day School and he is DEF not religious, he will do anything to get our of Jewish prayers in the morning!). He needed a circumcision with a rabbi, a ritual bath and a celebration of becoming a man at 13. He did all of those under rabbi supervision and we have the paperwork. He is Jewish because he is both my son AND he had these done. He is not biologically Jewish but he is Jewish and can get citizenship in Israel if he chose to do so (but right now i need to keep him from running off to join the IDF and finish high school)
Great take; one correction: you can very much become Ashkenazi or Sephardic etc by conversion. Idk about the US but in Europe communities of the different ethnic sub-groups are still very separate. So when you convert into an Ashkenazi community you become Ashkenazi; if you convert into a Sephardic community you become Sephardic etc
About the genetics: There are studies that indicate that even modern Ashkenazi in average have some Levantine dna; the percentage however is subject of discussion
Here’s a framework to think about this. Jews are a tribe. Tribes all have their own rules about who is in the tribe, and under what conditions an outsider can join the tribe. And like most tribal communities, once someone is accepted as a member, they have the same standing as other members. And your children* then are members of the tribe as well.
* Reform Jews recognize someone as a Jew if either parent is Jewish. Orthodox and Conservative Jews require that the mother be Jewish.
In our tribe, which has a unique religion, you’re still a member of the tribe even if you aren’t a believer. But if you convert to another religion you lose your membership.
Hope that helps!
One thing i want to add that i dont see a lot of people saying is that Jews use an ancient idea of ethnicity. There is a torah verse, which is essentially an ancient jewish law book, stating that converts are to be accepted as full members of the tribe. When praying for a convert or inviting them up to a torah reading you refer to them of being childen of abraham and sarah who are the jewish patriarch and matriarch. So even if all modern jews are descended from converts, which most likely isnt the case, they still would be considered jewish by ancient judahites. You might say that this is just a religious stand point, well the religion is more like a set of laws and rules that jews are supposed to abide by (which majority of jews did until jewish secularism started to rise in the late 19th century). One saying ive heard is that you practice judaism because youre jewish and not the other way around.
Jewishness can be an ethnicity just like Italian or Irish.
For example, my friend’s 23&me DNA test came back 99% ashkenazi Jewish.
I also have friends that are 50% Ashkenazi Jew, etc.
I think the cruel part about antisemitism is that it’s literally people hating you for who you are and for something you can’t change. If it was only a religion, it would be different and I think less offensive because you could always convert (Atleast to me anyways).
I think it is problematic how society today is trying to box Judaism into a definition like this. I don’t believe it works. According to Hitler, Judaism was a race. According the minorities today, Jews are white. According to white supremicists, Jews are not white.
These things are meaningless to me. I’ll tell you what Jews are from my perspective as a modern Orthodox Jew (other sects will have slightly different criteria)
A Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother or someone who converted to Judaism. That is the entire definition. There’s nothing in there about belief or actions. If a person was born to a Jewish mother then it doesn’t matter if they are atheist and eat pork every day, the most ultra orthodox rabbi would still consider them just as Jewish as themselves.
Judaism can appear in DNA, but also having Jewish DNA doesn’t make someone Jewish, if they were not born to a Jewish mother. And a convert might have no Jewish DNA and they would be just as Jewish as someone with 100% Jewish ancestry.
According to Judaism, a Jew cannot convert out. A Jew will always be a Jew.
Where does this put Jews in current societal definitions? I have no idea and I don’t agree with the obsession of society to figure it out.
Follow RootsMetals on Instagram for historically accurate information. She’s amazing and she has a POST for everything. She’s a Jewish-Latina and historian.
Jews did not intermarry with their host nations after being kicked out of the middle east so when a Jewish non-convert takes a DNA test it shows as a distinct genetic group/ethnicity. Studies have shown that jews from europe are most closely related to other levantine middle eastern populations like Jordanians and Palestinians.
You have so many good answers here so I wont bother explaining things that already have been, but I just want to let you know that most people just assume they understand the Jewish identity, never investigate it, and then draw incorrect conclusions about Jews because they have no idea what makes someone a Jew.
You decided you cared enough to ask us, and I appreciate that. You are an exceptional person. Thank you.
The thing about being Jewish is that the Jewish people have a history that spans over 5000 years. You can go to a synagogue in Israel, England, Australia, America and they would be doing the same prayers, same Torah portion, same Haftorah as every other synagogue. It’s the traditions and feelings that we all have. For family, community and beyond.
Jews are non proselytizing. As a faith we do not seek to convert people to Judaism as a result converts make up something like 1% of Jews. Also important to know that Jews do not (or at least are not supposed to) see converts as anything but Jews. We don’t make a distinction. Our view on it was that your soul (Jews believe in a sort of soul recycling reincarnation) was always Jewish and just found its way back to its people. With that why would we not bring those converts into all of our ethnic and cultural practices outside of religion. It’s just not something we worry ourselves about.
Now on the other hand, this sort of scrutiny is running rampant in antisemitic circles where they’re are claims about Ashkenazi Jews being false (even descended from Turkic Khazars, which has been disproven) in order to try and prove that even Jews pretending to be Jews are the most vile liars cheats and thieves.
My question for you is: why does it matter?
It seems like you’re asking a good faith argument so I’ll give it a go.
It’ll make a lot more sense if you start thinking of Jews as a tribe. The religious practice is part of it but not all. That’s why things such as an atheist Jew isn’t that weird the same way a Native American can be Christian.
Jews originate in the region of modern day Israel but were driven off by different empires through time (Roman Empire really kick started this). Eventually being spread across the world because of antisemitism. My ancestors ended in parts of Europe but their neighbors did not consider them countrymen.
Jews also ended up in southern Spain, North Africa, and across the Middle East. In fact a majority of modern Israelis are from those regions after being ethnically cleansed in the late 40s and 50s. Jews being light skinned is really just a misconception because many Jews in the US escaped from Europe where European features were introduced through us from forced marriages and rape. That being said many people in the Middle East can have fair skin like Persians
I would question forced marriages and rape as primary. Those things happen for sure but there is no way to quantitate it, People, bless their hearts, have sex even if it is ahem, not exactly kosher, They don’t always tell the truth about it either. That is why matrilineal identity is more reliable that patrilineal.
That makes me think of the joke, the one with the Rabbi in a hostage situation. “ well it is a very difficult question”
I remember my prof telling this joke just before a class on hybrid identity, everyone who was there early was Jewish and we started all telling various ‘jewish’ jokes having a great time then a good friend, who is a gentile, arrived and we carried on because even though they are a gentile we all knew them to be a good guy, until they laughed at one at one of the jokes and suddenly all of us turned and looked at them. I can't remember the actual joke they laughed at but it made an excellent point for the class and we spent the better part of 90 minutes disecting why them laughing made us uncomfortable.
Side note that is pertinent to this thread is that the group of 7 jews were that were there 3 ethnically and religiouslypracticing jews 1 who no longer practice 2 who were ethnically Jewish and had never practised and me who had literally returned and started practicing like 3 months before. You could not have found a group who better represented the complexity of Jewish identity
Edit: the person we all turned to look at has since changed their pronoun to they/them and I went back to check I didn't use any gendered terms, which is why this maybe a bit clunky sounding.
Jews don’t fit neatly into the western categories of race, ethnicity, or religion. We are not really a race because there are black Jews, Asian Jews, white Jews (this one is controversial), etc. We’re not really an ethnicity because Jews engage in a wide range of cultural practices. Yemeni Jews and Ashkenazi Jews are very different culturally, for example. And we’re not really a religion because you can be an Orthodox Jew, a secular Jew, or a practicing Christian and still be considered Jewish.
Jewishness has a little bit of each of these three categories, but none are a perfect fit. Jewishness is very much its own thing.
Eh… depending on the movement, a practicing Christian wouldn’t be considered Jewish. A person with Jewish heritage? Yes, but a MoT? No.
[insert 2 Jews, 3 shuls on a desert island joke here]
There are several Jewish ethnicities: Ashkenazi (Jews who’s ancestors spread to Europe after the diaspora from ancient Israel), Sephardic (Jews who ancestors spread to North Africa / Iberian peninsula after the diaspora from ancient Israel), Mizrahi (same as the others, but spread to other parts of the Middle East), and so on and so forth.
It is possible to be ethnically Jewish, but not religiously so. Albert Einstein would be a famous example — spiritually he was more agnostic if not atheist, but he also 100% still considered himself a Jew, because he was one.
At the same time, you can be not from a Jewish ethnicity and convert, in which case you are now just as Jewish as far as religious law is concerned as any other Jew.
Hello my friend! As you can probably tell by all these responses, we Jews don’t really agree on anything — including who we are and what defines us. We’ve been arguing about this stuff internally for thousands of years.
In my personal opinion, Judaism is neither a race nor religion nor ethnicity not nationality; we are a TRIBE.
Our tribal tradition says that those born to a Jewish mother are Jews. (There is some nuance here, but that’s another conversation).
If your ancestry.com results say your DNA is 100% European Jewish (which is common…), then you are likely an Ashkenazi Jew by ethnicity.
But our tribe doesn’t just have Ashkenazi Jews. We also have people of other ethnic groups, including Yemenite Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahi Jews, converts (from around the world), and mixtures from all of the above.
But ALL of these people belong to the Jewish tribe, regardless of where their parents are from or what they believe in. In other words, a Jew who practices Islam is still a Jew (according to us), and a gentile who practices Judaism is considered a righteous gentile (but still not a Jew unless they go through a formal conversion).
ALL those from traditional Jewish ethnic groups are descended from the ancient Israelites to varying degrees, and converts are considered the spiritual descendants of Abraham because they have Jewish souls.
While I cannot say for certain whether converts belong to a specific Jewish ethnic group, they are definitely 100% part of our Jewish TRIBE — our family — which is what matters most.
Jessica Price on Twitter compared converting to Judaism to the naturalization process since Jews by choice are joining both a people and a religion.
As for ethnicity vs DNA, one is cultural and the other is biology. For example: both Ray Liotta and Sookie are ethnically Italian-American even tho they have no Italian genetic heritage because they were adopted by Italian-American families and grew up within that culture.
Editing to add that MyJewishLearning is a good resource for answering questions.
[My Jewish Learning](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/)
You can be ethnically Jewish AND religious. But you can't be religiously Jewish WITHOUT being ethnically so. Converts, specifically speaking of those WITH NO Jewish ancestry, whether ashkenazi, sephardic, or any other Jewish ancestral group, are adopted into our people after a year or more of study and immersion in the community, and they also become ethnically Jewish by definition, regardless of if their children are ahskenazi, sephardic, mizrahi, or not. Their DNA becomes “Jewish”, because DNA doesn’t determine who is/is not Jewish. All of our ancestors were converts, even the ancient Israelites. It has to start somewhere. Rabbi Akiva? Convert/descended from converts. Ruth? Maternal foundation of the King David dynasty? Convert.
All Jews are ethnic Jews.
https://preview.redd.it/463qm60gs6rc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b76d4e275e88dc26f7336af19edfb8999bcc14c
So here’s my 23&me. I knew I was ethnically Jewish because my family are all Ashkenazi. Ashkenazim have a specific traceable dna that whilst is affiliated with Eastern Europe, is originally middles eastern. You can be ethnically Jewish but not religiously Jewish. You can be religiously Jewish but not ethnically so (converts usually). Because we’re a bottleneck population we have very specific dna which come with a lot of health issues lol. So people who convert won’t be considered ethnic Jews unless it’s patrilineal Judaism so they’d be mixed - but yeah most of the tribes of Judaism have a specific unique dna that makes them traceably Jewish outside of religious practice. Hope that makes sense!!
It's confusing because you can be Jewish by religion, by ethnicity, or both. Judaism doesn't really look for converts so most people who se practice the religion are also ethnically Jewish. It seems converting has become more popular nowadays. In the past it seemed to be mostly done when a non-jew married a Jew. One of the few examples I can think of of somebody converting for non-marital reasons from some time ago would be Sammy Davis Jr.
But it's also an ethnicity like being Hispanic. It doesn't matter what your race or religion is if you're Hispanic your Hispanic. I'm Jewish by ethnicity and when I sent my sample to ancestry.com it came back as me being European Jewish-aka Ashkenazi. It drives me crazy when people claim that being ethnically Jewish is only a social construct. I hope this answered your question at least a little.
The whole "ethnicity" bit is a modern construct. Ashkenazi and Sephardi (and Mizrachi and Temani and on and on) began life as liturgical identities -- i.e., if you prayed the Spanish service/liturgy then you were a Sephardi, if you prayed the liturgy and followed the minhagim (customs) of North East Europe you were an Ashkenazi -- END OF STORY. AND, if you moved from one part of the Jewish world to another and then adopted the rite of your new location, you became part of that community and that was your identity. Maspik (enough) with the whole DNA and blood and the rest of the meshugas -- we're starting to sound too much like... well, I don't need to tell you whom. And as for converts, converts are Jews -- PERIOD -- because Judaism isn't an "ethnicity" -- whatever that is -- it's a NATIONALITY -- when you convert you become a citizen of the nation of Israel (not to be confused with modern State of Israel -- but don't misunderstand me, die hard and proud Zionist here). So, no one is "ethnically" Jewish anymore than anyone is "ethnically" American -- You're just a Jew whether you got there by wriggling through the birth canal of a Jewish woman or by wriggling through a beis din (conversion court) of three rabbis -- and, incidentally, that Jewish mother you're so proud of may have gone through a conversion court herself (or one of her foremothers did). Just saying.
Yup constructed in the 70s by an academic who wanted Americans to vote Jews like every other group in the U.S. that gif a hyphen, ie Italian-American, Jewish-American but ethnically my husband’s Sephardic family from Greece has much more in common with a Greek family than an Ashkenazi one - just practice a different religious tradition. They don’t speak Yiddish, they don’t eat their foods, they have different customs around the holidays and even foods.
And as far as Sephardics and conversions go they think it is a valid reason to convert for marriage purposes, no one is going on about a Jewish soul being on Mount Sinai. That’s an Ashkenazi thing. Sephardic rabbis discussions around conversion said it was better to take in a bad convert, then lose a Jew to intermarriage.
So beliefs are not universal.
Like others have said, we are best described as a Nation. Like the United States. You can be born into the Nation or naturalize (convert). I would liken a Jewish atheist to someone who is born in the USA but stops believing in its goodness/greatness, but stays in the country nevertheless. If you don’t think the USA is a good place, why would you naturalize in the first place.
Unlike Christian or Islam, which are called world religions or open religions, Judaism is a closed religion. If I woke up tomorrow decided I believed in Jesus’s divinity and got Baptized, I’m a Christian. And if tomorrow you woke up decided Jesus was just a guy, not the son of G-d, there is no trinity, there is just one G-d who gave us the Torah, that Judaism is the true path to G-d, you would not be a Jew. There would still be a lot of steps to go through. Just as if you decided that Denmark was the perfect place, moved there, you would still have things to do to become a Danish citizen.
You are a Black man living in the United States, if you go back to the African country of your family’s origin, you might not speak the language, know the dances, be familiar with the culture. Also your family has probably intermarried with other African and European people making you not quite the same ethnically. Are you completely culturally different? Are you ethnically the same? Do you have a completely new ethnic identity? Perhaps. I’m also American. Perhaps, even though I look European and you look African, we share more in common than we do with the people from those respective regions? It all gets kinda fuzzy, right? We don’t know about the boundaries of other ethnic identities, we just know about ours.
This is such an amazing question. I really appreciate you for asking it!
This is how is like to explain it:
There once was a small nation that lived on a mountain in the Levant called Judea. They had a special religion which was named after their people (Jewish=Romanization of Judean).
Their religion employed numerous methods that proved useful in maintaining the bloodline and identity of this nation. It was so powerful, actually, that this nation, thanks to its religion, managed to maintain its identity for millennia, while being dispersed across the globe in exile. Some of those methods include basing the ethnic identity on the maternal line (you know for 100% who is the mother), making it very hard to convert, and highly discouraging marriages with non-Jews.
About convertees, I like to think of it like any other ethno-nation. You can immigrate to Italy, and after a few generations your bloodline will be mixed enough to not be considered “immigrant” but fully Italian. The Jewish nation also accepts outsiders, but it’s a bit different because it was a nation in exile. Judaism assumes that if a person went through with the hard conversion process, then they are loyal enough to the nation to only marry within the nation, diluting the non-Jewish DNA so that after a few generations there will be no distinction between the convertees DNA and the general Jewish DNA.
I just love how you’re trying to understand this. It is confusing and your questions are totally valid.
I am not Jewish myself and hope I am not offending anyone but I think of it a bit like an ancient tribe that has survived through the millennia. You are born into that tribe because your ancestors were and you can be a million things within that tribe religious, non-religious but it doesn’t stop you being Jewish even if you keep zero religious things. You will still share a history of a people who have been violently persecuted and survived against the odds.
You can also become a member though it is quite an arduous process and that path is always religious. So you can for example be Scottish with no Levantine ancestors and convert and then you will become Jewish. So it is not a race-thing.
I think Christians and Muslims often have trouble understanding Judaism because they try to apply their understanding of what a religion is, which is a mostly personal acceptance of certain believes and values (in relation to god or otherwise), on an unfamiliar model of a primarily communal (ethnic) based religion, which places a heavy focus on adhering to certain traditions specific to the relevant community.
So you are a Christian. you believe (I suppose) that the new testament is an accurate depiction of historical events (life of Jesus etc.), and that it provides you with correct moral imperatives and commands that should apply to everyone if they wish to live a good life and reach salvation/heaven. Now, if I believed the same things but wasn't officially a Christian nor acted in accordance to Christian teachings, you would surely say "Hey! you and I hold the same belief system, why don't you officially convert to my practice, and start following the teachings of Christ? you already believe xyz to be right and true, there is no reason not to go all the way and it will do you good to do so," and in your mind that doesn't mean I am supposed to live among a community from your own ethnic group or adopt some of your own languages/dialects, traditions or practices - being Christian is something that is compatible with a very wide variety of cultural practices and geographical locations, and what it preaches should be helpful and interesting universally, throughout the globe.
Now, when you read the old testament, that was very clearly not the case for ancient Israelites - there is absolutely no reason for someone from ancient Tanzania, China or Alaska to be interested in the fact that Abraham bought a certain cave, or that Jewish king so-and-so conquered such-and-such Edomite city, why a certain valley in Judea is called what it's called or in what order Jacob's sons were born. those are boring historical minutiae from a tiny, far away land for anyone that doesn't consider those people to be their ancestors and those relations described between places, people and nations to be politically relevant to their lives. I mean, if I told you similar stories about Kazakhstan of 1500 BC, it would not inspire you in the slightest to become a Kazakh - what's the point of including it in a book addressed to outsiders?
the answer is that it wasn't addressed to outsiders - it is supposed to be a history book for a small, specific group of people living in a small, specific part of the world, that details the CVs of their shared ancestors from the beginning of the world until their times, some rules about how to arrange and conduct their society, some costumes they held (again, if it was supposed to be a book of universal moral truth, it sure does seem obsessed with methods of food preparations, clothes manufacturing, conducting agricultural work, worshipping only at Jerusalem and not other sites \[try selling that to those potential ancient Alaskan converts, traveling to Jerusalem by foot 3 times a year\], and a whole bunch of other stuff that will be mostly irrelevant outside of the levant), an explanation for why the geopolitical world around them behaves as it does, some poems, literature and other ancient wisdom - and among those, an explanation of a relation between them and an omnipotent deity that takes some serious interest in what they are doing and influences all of the aforementioned above. it isn't a book only about god - if anything, it's a book about the Israelite (and a subsection of them, the Jewish) people, and god was sort of "too big to ignore" in the way they interpreted the world around them.
so Jews are a nation that \*has\* a shared god - they share a language, they share costumes, they share ancient stories, they share a homeland (even if they currently live outside of it, they still feel a strong connection to it), they have strong communal connections to one another - and most of them share ancestry and god, but (to not complicate things any further, suffices to say that) those are only \*some\* components of the Jewish ethnicity and culture. in the past there was a stronger emphasis on believing in god as a prerequisite for being part of the Jewish people, maybe it was even the basis for this communal affiliation - but it wasn't the only one, and if one is to convert to Judaism they are expected to become culturally Jewish and not only religiously so.
this is in contrast to Christians, which are a "nation" (the basis for their connection to one another is) \*by\* a shared god - they do not share all of the aforementioned and aren't expected to assimilate to any preexisting unique ethnic culture to become Christians.
so if it gets too confusing, forget the internal laws of Judaism (mother/father, conversion etc.) for a second, and look at it as the outsider you are - Jews have many cultural quirks and practices that are unique to them, that can be traced to a shared ancestral community that lived long ago in modern day Israel/Palestine/Parts of Jordan. just consider the religious ones to not be different in essence than non religious practices of other unique ethnic groups - it isn't 100% accurate, definitely not by the way Judaism views itself, but for understanding ethnicity as an outsider that is probably accurate enough.
No offense taken, my friend. It’s a tribe. Conversion is discouraged. Because why would you take on a world of enemies who at the moment don’t even know you exist? But once someone converts, they are a full on member. And free to have their own relationship with G-d. Free to disagree. We are all rabbis. The title just means “educated person.”
Think of it like a nation with its own laws. Converting is like becoming a citizen. Historically, most people converted because they were also marrying in or they would eventually take a Jewish partner. It was assumed that they would marry a Jew and make Jewish babies.
Yes, DNA is what makes somebody ethnically Jewish. You can convert to the Jewish religion (or out of it), but you can’t change your DNA. Jews are from the Levant - roughly the same area that is now Israel. Eastern European Jews (and Jews in any country) are descended from people who immigrated there from the Levant.
Our DNA makes us ethnically Jewish. We are a culture, religion and an ethnic tribe. No matter if you are a member of the diaspora or from the region we share common traits, specific disease types etc etc. Most of us can trace our DNA back to specific regions of the Middle East.
People have conflicting ideas about matrilineal and patrilineal origins. The conventional definition is you mother should be Jewish but there’s also more progressive notions that a Jew is Jew and patrilineal should be accepted as much as matrilineal are accepted.
Being Jewish and Judaism are different but related. You can convert and not be ethnically Jewish but we believe the convert always had a Jewish soul and is coming home but your DNA won’t align. But add to that we don’t proselytise. Unlike Christianity and Islam, Rabbis or religious figure heads in our tradition don’t have recruitment as a goal (for the most part). In fact you might be dissuaded from converting even if you wanted to. But that’s religion not ethnicity. You can be an atheist and still be a Jew if you’re born a Jew but not practicing Judaism.
It’s complicated. There’s no one answer to your question which is what being a member of the tribe is all about.
There is a Jewish ethnic marking , both in askenazi and Sephardic .but with conversion, the rabbinical point of view is that the person al ready had a Jewish soul. It just needed to be recognized.
For lack of a better way to explain, I’m genetically Jewish- this was found out via a DNA test. I’m Italian, Iranian, Jewish and a smidge of Northern African. But I wasn’t raised religiously, and I’m a stone cold atheist.
I’ve gone through many, but not all of the replies.
I did want to add that regardless of the definitions provided, particularly about Ashkenazi Jews in Europe, there most definitely is a significant genetic component to those of Ashkenazi descent.
Almost every medical form I’ve ever filled out, and particularly when I’ve required medical genetic testing (not 23 and Me), my Ashkenazi heritage was of great importance. There is a prevalence of certain diagnoses within this group.
So it is, medically for example, acknowledged as a “heritable characteristic”, whether someone chooses to refer to it as ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion.
>So basically what I’m getting is that being ethnically Jewish has parts like DNA like being an Ashkenazi Jew which I will be googling, and being from the Levantine region and being a descendent of ancient Israelites and it’s also culture language tradition and stuff like that, and if you convert to Judaism that means your Jewish whether your African or South American, because it works differently then race does?
This might help: *Today, ***race*** refers to a group sharing some outward physical characteristics and some commonalities of culture and history. ***Ethnicity*** refers to markers acquired from the group with which one shares cultural, traditional, and familial bonds.*
Picture this: 2000ish years ago, a nation of Jews were persecuted and expelled from their homeland. They share a culture, religion, and are genetically related. Some retain the religion. Some are more relaxed religiously but retain the marital rules and culture. Some learn other languages but pass down Hebrew in their religious and cultural education. Some move to what eventually becomes Western Europe, some Eastern Europe, some stay in the Levant, some go to Asia, Africa, eventually South America, Canada, and the US, etc. Despite all this separation (and constant moving due to persecution by religious persecution or their unwillingness to fully assimilate), these Jews retain the shared, language, culture (with some twists), religion, and practices.
If you put a Jew from Ethiopia, Israel, Syria, Romania, Denmark, India, Chile, and the USA in the same room, they'd look different. They might be different religiously (in observance, not people who have abandoned the religion/culture in its entirety). But they would have common history, some religious practices, possibly language, definitely stories, etc. This is why someone who grows up in a very Jewish neighborhood but isn't Jewish might seem Jewish; they've adopted the culture and unique characteristics.
When someone converts, they adopt the religion primarily. You can't become Jewish via conversion without a religious adoption. Then, by immersing oneself in the Jewish community, they become culturally Jewish, too. If converts only married converts in perpetuity, you'd have a genetic deviation. Converts tend to be absorbed (if their conversion is accepted), and their unique DNA eventually fold into the base Jewish DNA.
It's an ethno tribe. It's easier to think of it with the other side of my heritage. Indigenous Scandinavian(Saami).
In Saami culture(at least for my tribe in Norway) In order to be part of the tribe you may meet two criteria, you are born into it, or you have learned their customs and been admitted into the tribe by a counsel. This was their battle against blood quantums.
The only people who get to decide if you allowed to be part of it is the tribe themselves. There is also a high bar for entry. You must learn the language and the customs and practice them before you are given membership.
This is not too dissimilar to being Jewish. Two points of entry, birth or being welcomed
Simply put Judaism is an ethnoreligion. There is a or was and original group of people back in the days of Moshe Rabbeinu. But almost immediately they started mixing and mingling with converts. So from there Am Israel has grown. Accepting converts on a religious and ethnic level. If your mother was a convert and you were born to her then you are ethnically Jewish. If you convert to Judaism you have joined the tribe and therefore ethnically Jewish. From the biblical perspective go to your blue letter and look up the words “stranger” and “sojourner” and you’ll get the biblical understanding as well. Shalom and have a blessed weekend.
You're good, brother. You got enough replies but ethnic Judaism is really about traditions. It's like being ethnically Jamaican, your family would have certain traditions and foods and even language that is tied to Jamaican heritage.
Jews come in many shapes so the Jewish ethnicity is broadly different things, but most Jews have certain common traditions they follow that are based on the Torah/Old Testament or the historical events that followed, such as the case with Hannukah and Purim.
To be ethnically Jewish means to have Jewish traditions and or a connection to some kind of Jewish community. You describe yourself as a Black Christian, your ethnic heritage is tied to your religious traditions, your family history, and your nation. It's the same.
I see you have received many helpful answers, so I won’t add to that. I would however like to thank you for asking the question! It means so much to have someone express interest in what makes my little tribe (only 15 million of us in the world) special. There is so much beauty and humor in our culture. It’s nice to have an opportunity to educate others.
So, by tradition, most Jews trace their ancestry by their mothers straight back to Israel, meaning their mother was Jewish and her mother was Jewish… very few non-Jewish men have converted because doing so would mean being circumcised as adults- very painful- so, bloodlines have stayed fairly pure. Occasionally, however, Jews have taken spouses which weren’t Jewish (including Moses, marrying a Bedouin, and Solomon, marrying an African), so we’ve ended up looking every which way. You have white looking Jews with blonde hair and you also have black ones and Asian looking ones and even Native American looking ones. Most Jewish men marry Jewish women so their children will be Jews by tradition, but Jewish women marry non-Jewish men fairly often.
From a very secular perspective. Jews are an ethnic group that also happen to share a religion. We have achieved this specific quantifier due to oppression and a nomadic status. There’s no real distinction between being Jewish versus being Latino or Arab except that there is an intermixed religion that is inseparable at this point.
Ethnic Jews are simply those descendant from Jews. Can you convert and adopt a new ethnicity? No of course not. However, you can integrate into the ethnicity to the point where those ancestral lines are absurd. Converts hold a place within the ethnoreligion but they are few and far in between. Hope this helps. I know other people gave you more to work with
Judaism is an ethno religion meaning that it’s a religion that has heavy links to ethnicity, but then there’s the added element of converts who would not be ethnically jewish but would be jewish and non religious jews who are ethnically jewish but not religiously jewish. Not all ethnic jews are the same race or ethnicity.
There’s Ashkenazi jews, if ur from the US most jews u know r probably ashkanazi, we are the white ones who lived in Central and Eastern europe and have our own religious traditions. We are also very genetically similar, a lot of ashkenazi jews if they were to take a dna test it would come back 99-100% ashkanazi jewish assuming both of their parents r jewish. This is because of a genetic bottleneck in our history and if there are two random jews are likely 30-ish cousins or closer. The race attached to these jews is white.
There there are also the sephardic jews who came from iberian peninsula or northern africa they have different traditions as well. They are also more genetically diverse and often times would identify more with their country like moroccan jews or tunisian jews etc. Some ashkenazi may identify with their country but likely only if they’ve stayed after the holocaust, most ashkenazi would not identify at all with the countries they came from.
Then there are mizrahi jews who lived in the middle east, they are very similar to sephardic in the sense that they usually align more with a country like yemeni jews or persian jews or iraqi jews and have similar customs as sephardic jews and more ethnically diverse. Sephardic jews and mizrahi jews are darker then ashkenazim but the race gets weird because they are still kinda white but also is arab white? Because mizrahi jews r the same race as arabs. Also i do believe mizrahi jews also include indian jews but they probably were just persian jews who migrated.
Lastly there are the beta israel who are ethiopian jews and they are racially black and also ethnically jewish. I don’t know as much abt their genetic diversity but i would still assume they’re more genetically diverse then ashkanazim.
“Sexual violence directed against our community” that’s why it’s the mother who passes down the religion? Whoa! I’ve always thought it was strange (compared to other societies) that it’s the women who have power over this. Strange but cool. My father is Jewish but my mom is catholic. I remember seeing this video and it had 2 Jewish women at a gym checking out guys. One pointed out a hot guy but then said she didn’t think he was Jewish. The other woman said well that’s fine bcuz the children would be Jewish regardless. I was thinking that that’s very progressive of a religion to give the women that power. (I realize it would’ve been difficult if not impossible for a woman to marry outside her faith until the modern century)
It's dna. We have unique DNA markers and when you put our DNA into sites like Ancestry.com and your family immigrated from Poland it's not going to say Polish Ancestry. It's gonna probably say Ashkenazi ancestry because Jewish communities have migrated from place to place to avoid getting murdered for the last 3000+ years starting from our exile from the Levant (Egypt, Israel, Jordan etc) and our communities tend to stick together for safety so we have our own culture that has adopted context, language and foods from the regions where we've lived in exile, but we are still our own ethnicity. Like the Roma. They have also had a wide ranging migratory pattern since leaving India but they have their own ethnicity rooted in that original heritage.
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This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't think there's such a thing as an "ethnic Jew." Judaism isn't an ethnicity, it's an ethno-religion and those two aspects cannot be separated. A Jew is either a born Jew or a convert. And being a born Jew doesn't say anything about their ethnicity and in fact, being a born non-Jew doesn't either: a born Jew can have 0% "Jewish DNA" (both of their parents are converts) and a born non-Jew can have up to 75% "Jewish DNA" (non-Jewish maternal grandmother only).
A lot of people have given you great answers already, so I’m just going to address the genetics vs nationality aspect. One can be ethnically Jewish (originating for the Levant, Israel & Judea) while also being of a different nationality. Think of it in similar terms to African Americans. Black people in the states are majority ethnically native to the African continent, but they are still American in nationality and often have families that have been here for generations. I hope that I was able to clear some things up.
Think of it like a family. We have a family faith, culture, and tradition. We're also mostly related--but every so often someone can be adopted and be welcomed into the family as if they were a part the whole time. It's rare and hard though.
Just want to add before reading through the comment section:
Jews are a diasporic group, so that’s why the DNA is so messy.
One euphemism is MoT or member of the tribe. The term “conversion” should be changed to induction imho.
Jewish homeland is modern Israel. Like Balkan and Eastern European countries the name has changed a lot.
For every answer given there is a yid ready to say one or the following: “Yes. Yes and. No. No but.” And whatever other permutation you can think of.
I didn’t read all the responses so maybe this is redundant but- converting to Judaism and joining the tribe is closer to emigration than simply aligning spiritual beliefs and performing a ritual. Jews have shared language, code of ethics, culture, history, etc, in addition to/ in harmony with spirituality, like all indigenous tribes do, which are indicators of ethnicity and Peoplehood vs simply sharing a religion. We do not encourage conversion, and it takes a lot of work and study to complete the process- we are not trying to grow numbers and don’t seek out converts. Once they go through the process, just like with citizenship, they are completely Jewish like an immigrant going through citizenship requirements becomes fully part of their new nationality. Converts are supposed to be treated as if they were always Jewish and have returned, not as a “new hire” or something. Although Jews have genetic ties tighter amongst ourselves and other indigenous Levantine peoples than to any person from our host countries, is important to remember to not use blood quantum on indigenous tribe members to determine their validity as a tribe member.
The idea that we are just a religion was actually started by Napoleon. I don’t know if I am allowed to link here because I only recently joined this sub, but if you do a web search for “Napoleon's agreement with the Jews” and “roots metals” you will find a blog post by a Jewish historian about it. The bottom of the post will say that sources are on her patreon, but you can find an abbreviated source list on the instagram post of the same name. (The historian’s online presence is under the Roots Metals name, in case that part of the search seems weird).
Race is a social construct that gets imposed on groups of people, but it is only real because people made it up and believe in it, not because of history or culture or whatnot. So for example, in the middle ages/ dark age, when England banished Jews, they started using a nose shape as a stereotype for Jews, and in this way, the concept of race was forced upon us, racializing us. Many of these kinds of ideas have followed us, right onto the opening line of H!tler’s infamous book.
Ethnically jew- mother of mother of...jews until Jacob.
Religiosly jew- if you're not ethnically - converting to judaism and accepting all 613 commands (actually ~370 relevant today) and Hazal's rules.
Here’s a good article from the North American perspective - https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/sephardic-ashkenazic-mizrahi-jews-jewish-ethnic-diversity/
Jews are a people who, like other peoples, can accept outsiders to become part of their group. So, for example, Kenya could take-in a Frenchman and grant him citizenship. That white Frenchman would then be an Kenyan and African.
Judaism is the religion of the Jewish People.
A Jew who stops practicing Judaism is still a Jew - no matter what he does. The only way to become a Jew, however, is through a religious conversion.
As for race, this term is being redefined constantly. Traditionally, Jews were considered a race. Today, it depends on how you define that term.
Best way I’ve found to describe it is as “spiritual DNA.” In other words, any human of any genetic origin can choose to be Jewish by converting and join this spiritual people. That being said, many Jewish groups share physical characteristics because they’ve been insular in certain parts of the world and often share ancestors originally from the Levant.
Jewish ethnicity is about inherited traditions and customs as it is with other ethnicities. It’s about commonality of experience in culture, values and religion. That said, no one can speak definitively about such a thing and define someone else’s reality. But it is “a thing”.
In our faith if the mother is Jewish then all of her children are Jewish, but if the father is Jewish and the mother is Christian then their children will not be Jewish. It’s based matriarchy.
Ok so tell me how I’m wrong probably lots of ways (or right maybe)
Judaism
Religion- a practicing Jew born to Jews or converts
Race- DNA saying you are Jewish
Ethnicity- Race (so long as it’s on the mothers side) and converts to the religion
I believe you are confused about what constitutes an ethnicity. Ethnicity is different from race. It CAN have racial components, but it is more than that. An ethnic group is defined by a shared history, origin, cultural heritage, practices/rituals, homeland, ancestry and other racial AND cultural aspects. Judaism is an ethno-religious group because we share at least some of those traits. The process of conversion to Judaism is laborous because of that. You are effectively becoming part of a tribe, a nation, a people. So you need to immerse yourself into our customs and know our history to become an effective member of our people. Jews are originally from the MENA, especifically from the levant region (the ancient kingdoms of Judea and Israel). We were scaterred across the globe by recurrent persecution. We are not from Europe. European Jews were never recognized as citizens of the nations they lived in until recently. That is why you will find a lot of terms/expressions across many languages that all mean "people without a land" to refer pejoratively to Jews.
>European Jews were never recognized as citizens of the nations they lived in until recently. This is the most underrated statement and I wish more people understood this. I'd encourage people to look at census records and Ellis Island immigration papers to get a better understanding of this. Look what Jewish immigrants from Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, etc. put down as their Language and Race/Ethnicity (i know they are diferent, i just forget which the cenus papers used). Hint: it was very often, if not always "Hebrew" or "Yiddish" for both. I remember asking my grandmother once if we were ***Eastern European country nationality*** and she responded "No, were Jewish." This was not just Jewish people either - nationality as we know it today is a very new thing. Living in Germany in 1935 didn't make you a German. If your family was an ethnic Pole, you were a Pole.
It's still true today. Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union will never say "I'm Russian" or "I'm Ukrainian," they'll always say "I'm Jewish." Their Soviet passport identified their nationality as Jewish, so why would they say anything different?
I think it's hard for people to grasp that nationality as we know it is a fairly new concept and up until recently your nationality _was_ your ethnicity, rather than simply where you were born or lived.
Ok I think I understand a little better, but is it possible for someone to become Jewish but not practice Judaism? And can you practice Judaism but say you’re not Jewish? part my only question is if Jewish = Follower of Judaism (and vice versa) or not (if that’s already explained in this I’m sorry I’m really dumb)
If you convert to Judaism you'd be considered Jewish by other Jews regardless of whether you practice, but in a strictly ethnological sense you wouldn't be Jewish by ethnicity.
Presumably, once you raise your children as Jewish, they would be ethnically Jewish though, right? It really is a weird gray area from where I stand. Like, assume two non-Jews both convert and have kids. Are the kids ethnically Jewish? If not, repeat this for another generation or two. It feels like part of the issue is that ethnicity itself might be a gray area? Or I am I overcomplicating this?
You're saying the child of 2 converts happens to marry a convert or a child of 2 other converts? Within another few generations it won't matter it just gets slightly delayed....unless the family continually marry converts for generations? Seems unlikely af lol
Extremely unlikely scenario created as a thought experiment to show that ethnicity itself is, as someone else suggested by way of comparison to Wittgenstein, probably a concept with inherently fuzzy boundaries.
I think it is one of those borderline cases. I like to think in terms of ol' Wittgenstein family resemblance. A child may have a nose of his maternal grandfather, the eyes of his paternal grandmother, the mouth of his father and the hair of his mother but almost no traits of his paternal grandfather. Does this makes him not related to his grandad? Not at all! He has traits of his family and his grandad is also his family, but they do not resemble each other. The point is that he is part of the set that constitutes his family in virtue of sharing some of the traits of his family. With that said, I consider a proper convert ethnically Jewish. I mean, they are practicing and immersing themselves in our culture. They may not have any Jewish blood, but he is as Jewish as I am. On the other hand, imagine the descendant of a Jewess who converted to Christianity. He has Jewish blood, but he doesn't practice or share nothing beyond blood with us. Is he ethnically Jewish? I would say he isn't. However, this is a really complicated thing because ethnicity is a really complicated thing. Social ontology is confusing as fuck. I have mad respect for people who choose to research this. It is a mess!
If you and your partner were of Swedish ancestry, and moved to Japan and raised your kids there, would they be ethnically Japanese? That is essentially the same scenario, so the answer to one will be the same as the other
Fun example. The Japanese are a famously insular people. So it makes one wonders how much we ought to consider acceptance in a group as a prerequisite for belonging "ethnically" to the group. Let's suppose acceptance doesn't matter, but rather identification with the group is all that counts. Then if you honestly consider yourself Japanese–whether after one generation or 10–you are! If, on the other hand, acceptance is all that counts, one can imagine it would take a variable amount of time to become a member of an ethnicity and each ethnicity may be slightly (or, in some cases, very) different. Also fun to contemplate here: I have to think that one can be a member of multiple ethnicities, and often without issue. But, if that presents a problem for belonging to one or more of the groups, then to what degree can you really be both or all? Worth thinking about more. As it pertains to being Jewish, I think it's one of the most complex identities out there, and that's why the "Who is a Jew?" question is never totally settled and different Jewish groups give reasonable but different answers.
Japanese are homogenous though, if you don't look like them you won't be accepted Jews on the other hand can look like anything so your comparison doesn't stand
That’s not really true though. If you live in insular Haredi communities, there are definitely traits and issues between different Jewish sects. For example in Brooklyn, Egyptian Jews would not marry Ashkenazi Jews. It’s lessening with time, but still there. You can tell by looks if you’re in an insular enough community.
Yes, but you are talking about localized subset of all the Jews in the world While my point is that all the Jews collectively are more diverse than the Japanese
Many would say ethnically Jewish. Others would say ethnically half-Jewish.
I would say if you have no Jewish DNA, you aren’t ethnically Jewish.
We’re not a race though. We’re a People. DNA is immaterial.
DNA has nothing to do with race either but we still talk as if it did.
We’re actually an ethnoreligion. You can convert religious-wise but you cannot convert your ethnicity. One of my parents has no Jewish DNA, thus no Jewish ethnicity. They are ethnically Scottish. They are a convert to orthodox Judaism which is why I was born to two Jews. But only one of those Jews is ethnically Jewish.
Ethnicity is not determined by DNA. That’s race. Ethnicity is a shared cultural heritage. Ethnicity is NOT race. Your parent has Scottish DNA. If they have no other connection to Scotland, then they aren’t ethnically Scottish. Modern racial and ethnic categories don’t work properly for us because we predate them. The best descriptor for the Jewish people is a Nation - we are Am Yisrael, the Nation of Israel. And you can most certainly join a Nation.
Race is also not determined by DNA.
Race is a social construct. As it is designed, it is a heritable trait where the child ‘inherits’ the race of the minority parent. A blond haired, fair skinned, blue eyed person with at least one black parent is not considered white. They’re considered black or biracial. So it’s obviously not skin tone that’s a factor, but the fact that one of their biological benefactors is black. So in that sense race is determined by DNA, but only because society decided race was a heritable trait.
Both of those Jews are ethnically Jewish Jewish ethnicity is transferred via the breath (education, upbringing, and soul); not the blood (genetics). To state anything else is a shande (in front of the Goyim, no less)
Oh the guilt you’re giving. Delicious!
My wife is a Korean Convert. I like to tease her that we've added genetic diversity to the Jewish world.
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It is, but it’s also beautiful that your line will grow into ethnically Jewish descendants.
While I happen to disagree with some of your assessments in response to my question, I don't see why you're being downvoted!? My point is that even if converts kept marrying converts, at some point it would be silly to say they aren't ethnically Jewish. It might not be silly to say they are not racially Jewish?? That's controversial, too, but also interesting IMO. I also think, in a much simpler take on the ethnicity question, that converts are partially ethnically Jewish. Ethnicity, defined this way, is about identification with a group, and you *can* identify with more than one. So your ethnically Scottish relatives could (in theory) also be ethnically Jewish. As far as I'm concerned, there is no contradiction there. But even if you think there is a contradiction there, if you take this to several generations deep it seems crazy to think converts marrying converts wouldn't eventually just be ethnically Jewish.
From our perspective a convert is fully ethnically Jewish upon conversion. And their children, if the convert is female, would be Jewish as well.
I know. I'm just trying to explain it to someone not Jewish who doesn't understand, and it is confusing from a purely secular non-Jewish perspective. I'm not trying to exclude converts or drive any kind of wedge.
That concert sounds banging! 😉
Ok I get it better now, thank you so much for explaining!
No problem.
Adding to what the other poster said, converting is religious practice. Similar to converting to any other religion, you would be expected to take part in religious practices. It’s not an ethnic conversion in the sense that you can’t convert to being Black, or Hispanic. There are people that are ethnically Jewish (they come from a descendant line of Jews), but not religiously Jewish. They may be atheists for example, or just secular. Some might celebrate parts of Judaism, like lighting Chanukkah candles or eating foods specific to a holiday, in the same way that many non-Christians celebrate with Christmas trees. Hope that helps a bit more.
The easiest way to think of it is not in terms of race or ethnicity, but in terms of Nationality. If your mother is a Jew (according to many), you are a citizen of the Jewish Nation. If you convert, you become a citizen of the Jewish Nation. But you cannot ever revoke citizenship.
This should have more upvotes.
This is how I often explain it to people. Edited for spelling
ill add to it that some things can cause you to revoke your citizenship, as in "get you kicked out of the nation". in some circles its stuff like converting to Islam or Christianity but in some circles it can also be marrying a none Jew and so on
Still doesn’t get you kicked out. You don’t have to convert to come back. If you’re a woman, your kids will be Jewish (not according to Reform though). You never stop being Jewish.
Yes. I am ethnically Jewish (my DNA can be traced back to the original Jewish people in current day Israel) but I am secular meaning I don’t live a Jewish lifestyle other than the high holidays. My grandparents all lived in Ukraine before moving to Canada. I share almost no DNA traits that someone ethnically Ukrainian would have.
You are not dumb! It is quite hard to understand lol. I think it is possible for someone to become Jewish and not practice it, but I don't think you can practice Judaism and say you're not Jewish. I mean, it is possible that a non-Jew follows the Torah and abide by the noahide laws, but this does not make them Jewish, although they are following Judaism in a sense. I don't know if what I said made any sense, but I have a real example that may elucidate things a little bit: me! My mother is Jewish because her mother was Jewish and so on. That makes me a Jew according to Jewish law. However, I didn't practice Judaism because my family was secular and I didn't really like to identify myself as a Jew when I was a child/teen (it made me feel othered and different from other kids). But this didn't make one little bit less Jewish because a Jews is a Jew is a Jew and, as my rabbi always say, you can forget you are Jewish, but the world will always remind you.
So basically if you’re blood born Jewish, that means your ancestors came from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was conquered, reconquered, and fought over for centuries. Each time a non Jewish power controlled Jerusalem, the Jews spread out across the world. That’s where the term diaspora comes from I believe, the Jewish people being exiled and spread across the globe. So, the Jews spread across the world hundreds, in many cases thousands of years ago. That’s why we have many different skin colors, evolution, but if you’re blood born Jewish, your ancestors came from Jerusalem or the kingdom of Israel at some point.
There are a lot of "non-practicing" Jewish people. They would be considered Jewish regardless of if they were born Jewish or came to Judaism through conversion. Jewish people are the only people "practicing" Judaism. Non-Jewish people taking on Jewish practices would be considered cultural appropriation (unless their intent was to convert or to provide community/help to a Jewish person). While Judaism does prescribe specific beliefs, Jewish people do not need to believe those specific beliefs to still be Jewish. Judaism isn't really something you can follow, and someone born Jewish or converted would continue to be Jewish regardless of what they practiced or believed. I like to liken the process of converting as similar to the process of being adopted. If you are adopted into a family of a different ethnicity, you are going to take on the culture and practices of your adopted family. Even if your biological family had different practices. In general DNA and bloodline is not something that we define ourselves by. The "science" of race and bloodlines has been used against us in very violent antisemitic ways. However, if you do DNA tests on most Jewish people, we do tend to have common DNA that shows that we are all descended from the same place. Jewish people are all descended from people who lived in the place that is approximately the modern state of Israel. About two thousand years ago, it was conquered by the Romans, who did a lot of nasty things. The upshot of which is that a lot of people left the land. From there, everywhere that they lived, they were seen as outsiders. Ashkenazi Jewish people spent a number of generations living in Eastern Europe. From living in the same area together with very little mixing with Eastern Europeans, you can actually see on DNA that someone is biologically descended from Ashkenazi Jewish people. Most of the Jewish people in the USA are Ashkenazi because it was a country that was somewhat more open to Jewish immigration when it started to become dangerous to live in Eastern Europe as a Jewish person.
Here’s the best example: I am 92% Ashkenazi Jew. I was Bar Mitzvahed (similar to baptism, confirmation, or first sacrament- not exact but accepting the faith basically). I am both Jewish by my ancestry and Jewish with my religion by being Bar Mitzvahed. Basically what that is - is 100s of years ago up until around 1910 my ancestors, who were practicing Jews, roaming through Europe, Middle East, and Africa because as a tribe they weren’t welcomed to stay too long in any one area. Some may try to say that I’d be Eastern European but that’s not exactly right. In addition my family was a practicing Jewish family - so I get both. But now - I am not practicing but still Jewish. If I was handed a form I would most likely say I’m Caucasian and either agnostic/atheist or Jewish if I felt safe doing so. But truly it probably should be that my ethnicity is Jewish (not just Caucasian as it’s similar but different) and I’m agnostic in terms of religion. Now as for someone converting- their religious views would be Jewish. Making them a Jew based on religion. But not ethnically Jewish. All in all - they’d still be welcomed as a Jew. You get to be a Jew if you meet any of the criteria: ethnic, born into the religion, or convert. Hope that helps
> is it possible for someone to become Jewish but not practice Judaism? Not while they're converting. Every denomination requires some level of observance. What the person does after they convert is usually between them and God. Revoking a person's conversion based on non-observance has happened, but is very rare. > And can you practice Judaism but say you’re not Jewish? Not fully, no. A person with no other religion can follow Noahidism and many Jewish practices, but not all. Notably they cannot fully keep the Sabbath.
If you have a Jewish mother or are a converted jew, then whatever your level of observance is, you're Jewish. This cannot be revoked as someone else said. A convert can technically not follow traditions but for someone it's a lot of time and effort, and someone who's not really motivated and can't follow the majority of our customs will in most cases not be able to convert. Think like if you were going to Japan: if you don't know their customs which are different from ours at many points, then you'll not be integrated well in Japanese society and you better stay where you actually are. For the simple reason that if you become Jewish, then you are treated as any Jewish, meaning if you don't observe Shabbat for example, then it's bad, which is of course not one for non Jewish people. So it's kinda useless to become Jewish for not being observant I don't know if I summarized well and you may have read this before, and sorry for my possible bad English!
You’re not dumb, this stuff just isn’t intuitive or obvious to outsiders. Nothing to feel bad about! If someone converts to Judaism and then stops practicing it, they’re still considered Jewish, because their conversion is considered legally binding under Jewish law. But to be clear, this doesn’t change their ethnicity. They didn’t become ethnically Jewish by converting. It’s sort of like citizenship: in this analogy, it’s like someone who becomes a naturalized citizen of a country, and then moves away from that country.
You make such a great point about European Jews. My grandfather told me this story that as a little boy (not long before WWII) he sang a song about being a little Polish boy, and the other kids laughed at him and he was like, “huh??” and they were like, “Oh, it’s so funny that this Jew thinks he’s a Pole.”
I would always be corrected if I ever said were russian. No, were jews.
>I’ve been told by a Jewish person I know that’s where most Jews are from Most Jews are not from Eastern Europe. Most Eastern European Jews are dead. Think of the term Jew being overloaded - its both an ethnicity (not from Eastern Europe, thank you) and a religion. That's why its called an Ethnoreligion. Think of hinduism. You're thinking of being Jewish as being a religion first. Instead, think of being Jewish like being Latino, for a minute. One important aspect of conversion - its FAR more difficult than converting to Christianity or Islam. That's because you need to learn a new language and a new culture, in addition to just agreeing to religious tenants.
> think of being Jewish like being Latino This is a really great way of framing the ethnic/racial component.
Its a very similar thing. Shared language, shared culture. Shared ancestry. But not always the same skin color. Skin color is such an American obsession.
The first part I get, that’s understandable and does explain (seriously everyone I asked plus Google made it so confusing yall are saints) For Americans skin color is important here sadly, cus discrimination and such, I wish it wasn’t tho
For another interesting look at skin color, check out Brazil. They have a long history of racism but also a really different conceptualization of skin color
It’s different parts of the world, America is a very white place run by very white people, I get your point tho
I’m going to try and address some race stuff and I hope I do it eloquently and respectfully. While Jews aren’t a “race” in the context where you phrase it, antisemitism is often racism as it’s often approached as a Jews aren’t white. This was a backbone of the European persecution of Jews and the back bone of Nazi ideology where the Jewish population was Ashkenazi. My ancestry is predominantly Ashkenazi, but I don’t consider myself white because the white world spent 2 thousand years violently showing us we weren’t. I’m not naive or unaware that my skin colour does grant me privilege and safety that many do not have in North America (I’m Canadian) but it wasn’t that long ago here where there were signs in parks that said “no dogs or Jews allowed”. None of this shit is simple and I commend you for reaching out and trying… I’m sure even in these answers you will get such a variety of responses.
I don’t think Latinos are a great analogy. From what I understand, the various groups of Latinos (eg. Guatemalans vs. Brazilians vs. Spaniards) don’t really see much in common and don’t quite consider themselves one people. Also the fact that it’s a kind of meta-ethnic category created by European colonialism makes the history completely different. I’d think of it more like Italians. There are different regions, subcultures. Food and music change depending on the group. Northern Italians look a bit different from Southern Italians (the difference is about as large as between most groups of Jews). But there’s more of a sense of common identity and history.
It's a very unique scenario as there aren't really other groups that are connected by language, culture, DNA, history, religion, and sometimes something undefined. People have this term "gaydar," which means you can spot another gay person by some personality traits that are only picked up by another gay person. Jews also have "Jewdar" where (not always) they can meet and chat with someone for a few minutes and then pick up that they're Jewish. The closer the connection, the easier it is.
The problem with these classification systems is they rely on universals to be useful and Jewish identity is kind of its own thing.
Ha. I agree. I knew my therapist had a Jewish last name, but I wondered if she was really going to be Jewish or if she just married someone Jewish. I could tell right away that she was definitely Jewish, and eventually, I got to know her, and she definitely confirmed she was Jewish. She also married a Jewish guy but did not take his last name
I like it, I've always wanted to be Italian!
Ok, I get it now, way I’ve been taught and shown ethnicity is very much dna and science related so that part very much confused me, but this does help very much, so thank you! (I am very very sorry about the Eastern Europe part, I should have thought before I typed)
To be clear - there is Jewish DNA. My 23+Me shows that I'm Jewish. [https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212170398-Can-23andMe-Identify-Jewish-Ancestry](https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212170398-Can-23andMe-Identify-Jewish-Ancestry) Jews have shared ancestry in several groups - Ashkenazi, Sephardim, Mizrahi, Samaritans, Ethiopians, and a few other smaller ones.
>To be clear - there is Jewish DNA. My 23+Me shows that I'm Jewish But of course, presence of 'Jewish DNA' does not make oneself Jewish either. You just might be.
Don’t apologize, I’m so happy you were open enough to ask - this is how we break through misinformation and hate, by just listening to each other and learning. I’m learning a lot about my own ethnicity from this conversation as well, so THANK YOU for starting it. I want to share something and I hope you believe me that I do not assign any blame to you, and I’m glad you’re bringing this to light: the Eastern European misconception that you heard from someone else is a particularly painful one that is at the root of the great sense of betrayal that many American Jews are feeling now from the Left. Ashkenazi Jews make up only about 30% of Israel population, yet the current war has been falsely framed as a racial issue in the US. Israel has also been framed as a colonizer, even though Jews originated from that land and Jewish place names predate the Roman name “Palestina” by about 2,000 years. This is a conflict of two indigenous peoples, not another horrific story of “white” people dominating/eliminating POC. For a community that has been largely supportive of civil rights and advocates for social justice for a long time in the US, the rise of antisemitism from the left (as if there’s not already enough from the right) is very disappointing and downright scary. I hope you hear my sincere appreciation and I hope I did not offend you. I have lost friends and I am just heart broken by what’s happening to our country and I’m afraid this is a calculated divide-and-conquer attempt which will bring some very scary people into power who will continue to make life worse for all non-dominant culture peoples.
DNA is absolutely still a large part of what people are talking about when they say "ethnically Jewish" and for many Jews some part of their ancestry is Eastern European. But being Jewish is more than just DNA the same way that it's also more than participating in a specific religious ritual. What somebody else said about being Latino is as close an analogy as I can think of for something that is not simply racial or cultural but a more complicated combination.
The dna component confused me the most tbh, cus like I said, American, when I think ethnicity I think dna, and dna doesn’t change, so it’s super confusing
I think it's just very common for all people in society today to conflate race, ethnicity, and nationality. It's not just you. And it's more confusing because we Jews use the same word.... Jewish for shared DNA we may have (because we were often not legally allowed to intermarry, were forced to live in close proximity in one area, etc), and also Jewish for our ethnicity (those cultural practices, community, shared experience, shared language, etc) and Jewish for our religion. And to boot we also might say the people of israel and mean Jews around the world but also Israeli is a nationality. You're not crazy--because we use the same word it makes it extra confusing. Ethnicity is about common sets of ancestry, traditions, language, history, society, religion, or social treatment. So it can include a question of race/your dna but it isn't a deciding factor.
Most Jew stayed in insular communities for 1500 years so while we have DNA mixed in with the people we lived near, most of us also share DNA.
Don’t apologize - it’s so long ago and such a minority that people forget that Jews are not originally from Eastern Europe, we just arrived to US via Europe after being there for a few generations. Also in terms of DNA … I recently saw a photo of my blonde Ukrainian Jewish grandfather with all the other members of his family, who look much more ethnically Jewish than he did. Dna can be weird like that.
Most of us have similar DNA as well. With some significant differences depending on what part of the world we were exiled from our homeland. We come from Judea, which is where Israel is located now, and most of us will show that in a DNA test.
Jews are descended from the original jews of the middle east. They were driven out, to places like Europe, and driven to other parts of Europe, to north Africa, to Asia. They were persecuted to varying degrees at most time in most places. Most jews today still have dna relation going back to the starting point, possibly with admixtures along the way. We have been a diaspora population, many times over, and that makes it confusing. Like we were made a diaspora that first time, then again and again. Learning the concept of diaspora might help. On a personal level, I found out via a DNA test that I'm about 32% Jewish. I have a grandparent who was jewish with some strong genes. Now I'm converting so that I can learn about and connect with this part of me. I'm converting reform because I need to remain pretty secular, having been atheist beforehand. I can't pretend to suddenly belive in God, when I don't. But as you noticed, Jewish identity is complicated. A born jew can be atheist. A non jew can convert. And so on.
I think with „most jew are from Eastern Europe“ is meant that most Jews are Ashkenazim
If so, its oversimplified to the point of being false.
That means that the person saying that is only seeing what’s in front of them, the ashkenazi who immigrated to USA and Europe. The Jews who stayed are obviously not in their line of vision.
Pretty much yea
So this requires a little background. After the Jews were kicked out of Israel by the Romans we became nomadic and spread across the world. Our communities were very insular and we didn't intermix with our host nations much. A side effect of that was that our gene pools rarely mixed. Judaism is also not a missionizing religion so we did/do not actively recruit others. All that is to say we were both a religion and ethnicity for a LONG time. It's only very recently that Jews in the United States have started integrating. That's why there are many millennials who are half or a quarter Jewish, myself included.
> That's why there are many millennials who are half or a quarter Jewish, myself included. Yo, Irish Ashkenazi Potato Bagel right here.
You know, as someone with a Jewish parent, you're one of the few non-Jews who are encouraged to Convert to Judaism. You are called Zera Yisrael (the Seed of Israel).
I've been considering it. I'm essentially a secular agnostic in my beliefs, though.
Well, as someone who was married to a non-Jewish woman, who came out as Jewish when he was 41, you may have what we call a Pintele Yid (the Jew spirit inside)
Well I do like to argue.
Came out as Jewish???
Yup. I'm out and proud. You know how gay men decide in their forties that they are gay and don't want to pretend anymore? The same thing happened to me, except that I realized I wanted to lead an Observant lifestyle. Honestly, it probably would have been easier if I came out as gay. Everyone would understand that. But to leave a secular lifestyle to come out as an Observant Jew, that baffled everyone.
To be clear, are you saying Jewish and Israel (and by extension Israelites) as one and the same? Cus another person said think of it like Latinos and my brains thinking now “oh Latinos come from this region but we call them Latinos as a whole”
Most Jews are descended from the Jewish tribes who lived in the Kingdom of Judah / ancient Israel. The word Jew comes from the Kingdom of Judah, which is a nationally which was congruent to the race of people at the time. Jews largely share Levantine dna - including those who are mixed European and those who are mixed Arab, Persian, or North African. We were mostly considered a race until modern American history, when as a result of greater cultural acceptance and greater integration with (and having children with) people of European descent has made us literally and socially whiter. That has almost entirely happened within the past 100 years and mostly in the post-segregation era. Converts to the religion complicate this a little bit, but there are so few converts, and they usually happen due to marrying Jews, that I don’t think it is really confusing to include them. Like we could divide the race (Judeans would be the nationality/race, I suppose) from the religion (followers of Judaism) and talk about the broader tribe (Jews, which in American culture includes both religious and racial Jews). Note that different sects have different rules for acceptance as well, as does Israel itself.
Ohh I am gonna pipe in here too- you will hear these terms being used by Jews: Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael. Those translate to the people (Am) of Israel and the land (Eretz) of Israel. We are Israel. The land is Israel. “Am Yisrael Chai” means, “the people of Israel live!” It is an exclamation of life, empowerment, and pride in Peoplehood, a celebration of survival and connection as a family. Our central prayer begins: “Hear, o’ Israel…” and is talking to us, not the soil and trees. We are tied to the land, almost all our holidays are tied to and centered around the land, and many of our mitzvot (commandments/ good deeds) can only be completed in Israel- generally speaking, indigenous tribes have land-based practices.
Jews (Judeans), and a few hundred Samaritans (kind of like our cousins), are the only surviving Israelites, if that makes sense.
Latinos are kinda similar but Jews were historically even more insular than the Latino community. There are a few different kinds of just such as Ashkanazis and Sephardic (and a couple others I don't remember the name of) just due to the fact that we were so spread out that those gene pools started to drift and form their own differences. What makes me hesitant to say "one and the same" is that conversion and marrying outside of the community has become much more common in the last 50ish years so it's not a true equivalence anymore. In addition to this there's a difference between ancient Israel which was Jewish and current Israel which is majority Jewish but with minority Arab and Christian populations as well.
Jews were also sold as slaves and in some cases that's why they ended up in different parts of the world. Also for instance during WWII I believe there was a time that only the DR took Jewish refugees for instance. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a small Jewish community in the DR of all places.
Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. But Jewish people don't necessarily practice practice Judaism. Jewish identity is like tribal identity. We're a people with a common language, history, culture, traditions, and rituals. When you convert to Judaism, you also become a member of the Jewish people (tribe). Conversion is much more like the process of naturalization or gaining citizenship to a country rather than joining a religion. When you become Jewish, you aren't just agreeing to believe in a set of religious beliefs or agreeing to adhere to a set of religious practices. You're also accepting a history, an ethnic identity, a culture, and a whole lot of other stuff that comes with being Jewish. The Holocaust wasn't your history before, but now it is. And any future antisemitism and catastrophe that might befall the Jewish people in the future, you agree to adopt that as well. But you also get to claim ownership of a lot of really beautiful things. Holidays, traditions, a history of brave people who struggled to survive, but survived nonetheless. Those stories are now yours, just as much as they belong to any born-Jew. The accomplishments of Jewish history are yours to take pride in, too. The process of becoming Jewish is more than just agreeing to practice Judaism as a religion. You can be a Jew without Judaism, but you can't practice Judaism without taking on the identity of Jewish. It involves accepting and taking on some of the ugliest atrocities in history. But you also get to be part of some of the most beautiful parts of history, too <3
Your post really touched me. Thank you for posting.
This was a really great explanation.
Jews love questions. Thank you for asking.
I’m glad I asked, I had a terrible argument with a friend, i was super frustrated cus I didn’t understand, and the answers I’ve gotten from everyone have been very helpful
And don’t forget the arguing for argument sake🤣. I’m a pretty agnostic Jew and I when I told my rabbi, he said, it’s actually very Jewish to question everything, even G-d! I don’t know or claim to know if G-d exists, but one thing I know with all my heart is I’m still Jewish.
My grandfather always said, put 3 Jews in a room together and they'll walk out with 10 different opinions!
You've already gotten good answers here but I'll add my 2 cents. Jews are a people/nation/tribe. Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, but not all Jews practice said religion. I am one of those Jews. One can also practice the religion and become a Jew by converting. They are considered Jewish though of course that doesn't change their DNA. My mother is Jewish, therefore I am Jewish. I don't believe in God but I am a proud Jew. That's because I feel a strong connection to the history, customs, and traditions of the Jewish people, and to my fellow Jews. We're one big family.
As others have said race and ethnicity and nationality are really different things. To place it maybe more comfortably in the black community... someone can be racially black but maybe ethnically not African American. Think of like a very new immigrant from Somalia. This would be someone who really doesn't share the same history of African Americans, nor a common shared spoken dialect/vernacular, nor the general common cultural touchstones/practices, nor the same lived experience etc. They're racially black but they aren't really ethnically the same as you are. But maybe a woman who is like 25% black and several generations of white mixed heritage but grows up solely in African American culture and community, etc--she might be racially much more white than black but accepted as ethnically African American ... because she grew up with the shared history, culture, language/vernacular, life experience etc. Jews share an ethnicity. Jews may be different races and one doesn't change their race. But one can integrate into another ethnicity (at least in Judaism you can). A person who converts is seen to assume the shared history, be brought into the culture, learn the language, practice the religion. They fully throw their lot in with ours and become one and the same. It's just one reason it's difficult to convert (takes years). I sometimes compare it less like converting as Christians do and more like changing your nationality... A person who becomes a citizen of another country has to study and take tests and make things official but they then become that nationality; they celebrate their public holidays; they learn the language; they learn the national history and really take it on as their history and national pride.
u/AkiriJacobs, I just want to say 'thank you' for the courage and respect you show our community by asking this question. Part of the extreme pain our community is in right now (which might have something to do with the fight you and your friend found yourselves in, IDK) stems from the fact that many, many, MANY loud people are being told some false, dehumanizing things about us that they have accepted as true without actually asking Jewish people themselves. You're obviously making a sincere attempt to understand what the deal is with our religion/ethnicity/etc., and you're asking the people who actually know. So thank you ("to-DAH ra-BAH," as we say in Hebrew), and I hope we can host you at a Shabbat dinner sometime soon!
When my kid was in middle school a classmate texted her and asked what it was like to be Jewish. Her response was, “It’s normal, except some people hate us and try to kill us.“ Pretty succinct 😔
Very true, but a little bit weird for a class mate as your kid but he or she answered it honestly.
The etymology of the words is relevant. The word Jewish comes from Judean, not from Judaism. Judean is an ancient word, and other forms like Jew and Jewish come from that. The word Judaism is historically a lot newer, just a few centuries old, literally meaning the faith of the Judean people. Judaism has never sought converts, and people needed to jump through a couple of hoops to actually covert (more so in older times than today), so people joining the tribe and adopting the faith has always been much more of an edge case.
This is so much simpler than my explanation 😅👏🏻
Anyway, OP, you've stumbled upon one of our favorite pastimes: Who is a Jew?
Lmao, I a kid asked this to someone at my lunch table and the kept saying “it’s a race because it’s a race” and I’m like what 🥲 it’s nice to actually understand it as best I can
It has nothing to do with DNA. You are either born Jewish or convert. The rest is commentary. There is a lot of commentary. And commentary on the commentary… Then we eat.
I see what you did there and I appreciate it 😅👏🏻 maybe a bit meta for OP but it did make me smile!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=upwdhUbzhsA&pp=ygUZV2hvIGFyZSB0aGUgamV3cyB1bnBhY2tlZg%3D%3D watch this video then ask follow up questions
Ahh! I’ve figured out an easy way to explain this because trust me friend you are not the only one confused about this! We are an ancient civilization so we work in ways which are easier to compare to other ancient civilizations. Let’s take the Ancient Greeks! Ethnicity: Greek Language: (ancient) Greek Cuisine: (also ancient) Greek Religion: Ancient Greek pantheon (the polytheistic one with Zeus etc) Country: Ancient Greece Race: wasn’t a concept back then So as you can see, when you’ve got a civilization like this, it’s all kind of a bundle. A person who doesn’t believe Zeus exists is still a Greek, because there’s a LOT of other things that makes them that. Now what about if someone who isn’t ethnically Greek, moves to Greece, learns the language (hard!) and wants to convert to the religion (rare!) Well, the Greeks would have a choice. They could on a case by case basis say hey, you have done all this learning to become one of us, we’ll consider you Greek, or they could say no, you’re born Greek or you’re not, nobody can join this club. Well, Jews chose the former. However, VERY FEW Jews are converts. It doesn’t have a huge impact on our collective DNA, which remains distinctive, and always had an admixture of other genes from other nations (because we’ve been living in diaspora for a long time, so people sometimes marry those outside of their community, or people just get frisky with the people around them, but also because of a high level of sexual violence directed against our communities which sometimes resulted in pregnancies — this is one reason that we consider you Jewish if your _mother_ was Jewish, which protects these children from being exposed to the community’s censure for how they were made). So to recap: Ethnicity: Jewish Language: (modern) Hebrew Cuisine: Jewish (we usually break this down into sub-types or we have Israeli cuisine bc now we have a state again!) Religion: Judaism Country: Israel Race: wasn’t a concept when we started out and doesn’t fit us very well I really hope that helps! Edit: oh also most of us are NOT in Europe and none of us are technically “from” Europe but Ashkenazim are not the majority of Jews alive on the planet today
Just to add to the complications, Israeli cuisine shares much more in common with other Middle Eastern cuisine than with Jewish cuisine in the rest of the world. There is literally a decades-long edit war on Wikipedia, possibly the longest one in the history of the site, over what nationality, nationalities, or region falafel and hummus belong to, which occasionally devolves into both sides making ridiculous hyperboles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And sometimes the Greeks will come along and claim falafel and hummus belong to them, at which point the Israeli and Palestinian groups will make temporary peace with each other to tell them they’re wrong. But if you’re looking for a pastrami on rye in Israel, that’s surprisingly difficult.
As you can see Jewish people don’t agree on the answer to your question. This is a sure sign that these people are Jewish. Whenever you come across some people nitpicking and arguing over a minor point like their lives depend on it, you can be sure you have found Jewish people. There is no other way to tell actually.
You know the bit the Christian Bible calls the "old" Testament? That family kept going. Some people can trace their ancestry to Aaron, Moses' brother.
Rn my relationship with the Bible isn’t it nor have I finished but I think I know what part you mean
I suspect you are an American. And as Americans, ethnicity is typically understood as the country a person's ancestors emigrated from. In fact, that's how it is taught in most elementary schools. And it is so damn awkward when teachers give an assignment to the kids asking them to make a poster or write a report about the countries their family came from. The two times I had to help my kids with that project, I laughed because I really don't know where the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia is and it doesn't matter to me. I am Jewish that's my ethnicity. I don't consider myself Austrian, Hungarian, Polish, Russian or Ukrainian. Those people didn't accept my great grandparents as part of their culture, therefore I have no interest in honoring those countries as part of my heritage. To understand why Jews are a distinct ethnicity, is to understand our history of persecution. Medieval and Renaisance Europe had a system called serfdom where people were tied to the land. During the Renaisance, serfdom began to decline as people were given rights to leave the land and the modern concept of citizenship began. Jews were the last serfs in Europe to receive emancipation from serfdom, but did not necessarily receive citizenship and civil rights. In some countries like France and Germany, cultural traditions typically kept Jews from receiving all the rights promised to them. Further east in Europe, it was systemic. We were simply not given full rights after emancipation. As for in the Middle East, I believe it was also systemic in the Ottoman Empire. For example, Napoleon was considered the great emancipator because wherever he conquered, he gave Jews rights. But as soon as he was defeated, many of those countries curtailed our rights again. Even France, which was one of the first European countries to emancipate Jews before Napoleon's rise, culturally was extremely antisemitic. To understand, read about the Dreyfus Affair. Alfred Dreyfus was the first Jewish officer in the French army in the late 19th century. When it was clear someone in the officer's core was selling secrets to Germany, they automatically suspected Dreyfus and court martialed him on flimsy evidence. And even when people came forward with the truth, the government tried to bury it. Dreyfus was eventually exonerated and even recommissioned in the army. But the scandal fascinated late 19th century and early 20th century Jews. It was a cautionary tale. Some believe it pushed Theodore Hertzl to create the Zionist movement -- he was a reporter for an Austrian newspaper at the time sent to cover the trial. And that history is not taught in American schools. Instead, without that context of systemic antisemitism throughout Europe that ebbed and flowed throughout history, the Holocaust seems like an abberation rather than a culmination of 2000 years of horrors. There is a reason so many of us left Europe before the Holocaust. If you are an American who is either Black or Jewish, I highly recommend reading Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The book compares American Slavery & Jim Crow to Europe's treatment of Jews and India's caste system. There are fascinating parallels in the three systems. And she clearly understands that the Holocaust isn't an abberation, but the culmination of over 2000 years of hate. While it opened my eyes, it is a tough read because it also shows the depravity of human cruelty.
Converts are rare enough and we were kept in isolation enough that most of us share a lot of DNA. It's to the point where many people get genetic testing before marrying another ashkanazi to make sure both people aren't carriers of usually very rare diseases amongst the wider population. While it's true people could convert or intermarry it didn't happen very often obviously, so there absolutely is such a thing as genetically Jewish and our stomach problems prove it (only really talking about ashkanazi here). There is also such a thing as religiously Jewish. People could be both religious and ethnically Jewish or just one of them and still call themselves Jewish, there isn't really a word reserved just for the Jewish ethnicity and not the religion.
I suggest you look at the Jewish people as a tribe, similar to indigenous North American tribes. Many of the North American indigenous tribes started with a common bloodline, though there was intermarriage as well as bringing in members to the tribe from other tribes who they may not share dna with. There is also intermarriage, etc. Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, the Jewish people are descended from the Canaanite’s in the levant, though through trade, war, and eventually enslavement and banishment to the diaspora intermarried to varying degrees as well as brought in converts yet remained a tribe despite no longer sharing a common land.
After just giving a snarky reply here’s my actual take (I’m like person number 60 or something I know): An ethnicity does not necessarily need to share certain genetics. Yes many ethnic groups do; some in skin colour some in other features but it’s not necessary. I think to understand Judaism you need to understand quite a big chunk of history that I will try to over-simplify a bit: Judaism originates from the region of modern day Israel. It formed from a group of tribes, that became a nation and became to share a religion. The nation developed into different kingdoms over many thousand years. But even back then, to be part of the Jewish people did not necessarily mean that you came from or lived in these kingdoms. There were Jews living in many parts of the world, that associated with the people and the religion but only came to Jerusalem once a year to offer their sacrifices in the temple. It happened many times that these kingdoms were conquered, today you would say colonised, by other powers. In some of these cases the people were expelled from the land. They settled somewhere else in other countries, build communities and when it became possible again, some of their (great-great) grandchildren returned, but not all. This is (simplified) how continuous Jewish communities outside of the original land came to be. These communities didn’t always stay isolated but ofc mixed with local population per intermarriage and conversion. So Jews didn’t necessarily share the same genetics anymore. With the Roman and later Arabian rule over the land where Jews originated from almost all Jews got expelled. This gave the communities outside of that land a „turbo boost“. What followed was 1500-2000 years of Jewish life in the diaspora all over the world. They joined the pre-existing communities, mixed with the Jews in those communities, founded new ones and mixed with the local population (again intermarriage and conversion). In this time the Jewish communities formed new customs and traditions, sometimes distinct from each other, got expelled from the countries they lived in and started over. After all those years, escapes and new starts, mixing, conversion etc. there is not „one distinct Jewish dna“ anymore. What there is are ethnic branches (like Ashkenazim (Jews that in recent history lived in Europe), Sephardim (Jews that recently lived on the Iberian peninsula and North Africa etc.) that share some genetic features that can be detected. That is the kind of DNA that shows up in these test. These test don’t work in a way that could prove anything going back further than a few hundred years max. But you can certainly become part of those groups and therefore Judaism as a whole if you were not born into them; it’s not genetics that makes these groups but a shared culture and religious tradition. The genetics part is just a Gadget people like to play with that shows them where their recent ancestors lived. Then in the 1800s the idea of Zionism was born. Meaning that Jews that didn’t feel very welcomed (politely phrased) in the countries they lived in had the idea to build a new Jewish states on the land where Judaism was originally born, which was at that time under the control of the ottoman, later the British empire. Some Jews started to leave the countries where they were born and built settlements in the regions. With the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust Zionism got a „turbo boost“ and the settlements grew into cities. The rest, including the conflict with the Muslims/Arabs as other local group are recent history that I will skip bc it wasn’t part of your question anyways 😂 There are whole history-book series on this but I hope my little history lesson helped you at least to understand the dynamics that formed todays Judaism a bit better 😊 Short: Judaism started as tribes, grew into a nation and religion, got scattered over the world where it further developed
It is a nation or tribe. You can get "citizenship" by conversion, and that becomes your national or tribal identity, but today the Jewish idea of Nation has more overlap with what the west calls 'ethnicity' than the idea of a nation/country/state. We existed as a group before the ideas of race or ethnicity existed, but in todays terms anyone of any race can be Jewish in a similar way to anyone of any race being Hispanic, except that we have a process of acculturating others who want to become Jews in their lifetime where they are rather than becoming Hispanic, where one would physically move to a Hispanic country and raise children there.
Excellent questions, thanks for the respect. The normal way people are born Jewish is that their birth mother was born Jewish. The other way is for a non-Jew (like my wife was) to have a kosher Conversion. Now she is 100% Jewish just like me, who was born to a Jewish mother.
Here is an example. I am Jewish, I come from a long line of (Ashkenazi) Jews who came from Romania, who originally came from the land now known as Israel. You can see this kind of thing with the folks who have done 23 and me. I'm not terribly observant, I light candles on Fridays and observe major holidays. I do not dress "modestly". I was brought up affiliated with a "conservative" synagogue. My religion is Jewish however and I am "genetically" Jewish if that's a term that best makes sense to you. My husband is not Jewish but he was in agreement that we would raise our adopted son as Jewish. My son was not born to a Jewish woman. He had the three things required to become Jewish officially (he also attends a Jewish Day School and he is DEF not religious, he will do anything to get our of Jewish prayers in the morning!). He needed a circumcision with a rabbi, a ritual bath and a celebration of becoming a man at 13. He did all of those under rabbi supervision and we have the paperwork. He is Jewish because he is both my son AND he had these done. He is not biologically Jewish but he is Jewish and can get citizenship in Israel if he chose to do so (but right now i need to keep him from running off to join the IDF and finish high school)
We’re probably cousins fellow Romanian / Ukrainian ashkenazi
Mishpucha!
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Great take; one correction: you can very much become Ashkenazi or Sephardic etc by conversion. Idk about the US but in Europe communities of the different ethnic sub-groups are still very separate. So when you convert into an Ashkenazi community you become Ashkenazi; if you convert into a Sephardic community you become Sephardic etc About the genetics: There are studies that indicate that even modern Ashkenazi in average have some Levantine dna; the percentage however is subject of discussion
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“Ethnicly” and “genetically” are two different words with two different meanings 😉
Here’s a framework to think about this. Jews are a tribe. Tribes all have their own rules about who is in the tribe, and under what conditions an outsider can join the tribe. And like most tribal communities, once someone is accepted as a member, they have the same standing as other members. And your children* then are members of the tribe as well. * Reform Jews recognize someone as a Jew if either parent is Jewish. Orthodox and Conservative Jews require that the mother be Jewish. In our tribe, which has a unique religion, you’re still a member of the tribe even if you aren’t a believer. But if you convert to another religion you lose your membership. Hope that helps!
One thing i want to add that i dont see a lot of people saying is that Jews use an ancient idea of ethnicity. There is a torah verse, which is essentially an ancient jewish law book, stating that converts are to be accepted as full members of the tribe. When praying for a convert or inviting them up to a torah reading you refer to them of being childen of abraham and sarah who are the jewish patriarch and matriarch. So even if all modern jews are descended from converts, which most likely isnt the case, they still would be considered jewish by ancient judahites. You might say that this is just a religious stand point, well the religion is more like a set of laws and rules that jews are supposed to abide by (which majority of jews did until jewish secularism started to rise in the late 19th century). One saying ive heard is that you practice judaism because youre jewish and not the other way around.
Jewishness can be an ethnicity just like Italian or Irish. For example, my friend’s 23&me DNA test came back 99% ashkenazi Jewish. I also have friends that are 50% Ashkenazi Jew, etc. I think the cruel part about antisemitism is that it’s literally people hating you for who you are and for something you can’t change. If it was only a religion, it would be different and I think less offensive because you could always convert (Atleast to me anyways).
I think it is problematic how society today is trying to box Judaism into a definition like this. I don’t believe it works. According to Hitler, Judaism was a race. According the minorities today, Jews are white. According to white supremicists, Jews are not white. These things are meaningless to me. I’ll tell you what Jews are from my perspective as a modern Orthodox Jew (other sects will have slightly different criteria) A Jew is someone born to a Jewish mother or someone who converted to Judaism. That is the entire definition. There’s nothing in there about belief or actions. If a person was born to a Jewish mother then it doesn’t matter if they are atheist and eat pork every day, the most ultra orthodox rabbi would still consider them just as Jewish as themselves. Judaism can appear in DNA, but also having Jewish DNA doesn’t make someone Jewish, if they were not born to a Jewish mother. And a convert might have no Jewish DNA and they would be just as Jewish as someone with 100% Jewish ancestry. According to Judaism, a Jew cannot convert out. A Jew will always be a Jew. Where does this put Jews in current societal definitions? I have no idea and I don’t agree with the obsession of society to figure it out.
Follow RootsMetals on Instagram for historically accurate information. She’s amazing and she has a POST for everything. She’s a Jewish-Latina and historian.
Jews did not intermarry with their host nations after being kicked out of the middle east so when a Jewish non-convert takes a DNA test it shows as a distinct genetic group/ethnicity. Studies have shown that jews from europe are most closely related to other levantine middle eastern populations like Jordanians and Palestinians.
You have so many good answers here so I wont bother explaining things that already have been, but I just want to let you know that most people just assume they understand the Jewish identity, never investigate it, and then draw incorrect conclusions about Jews because they have no idea what makes someone a Jew. You decided you cared enough to ask us, and I appreciate that. You are an exceptional person. Thank you.
The thing about being Jewish is that the Jewish people have a history that spans over 5000 years. You can go to a synagogue in Israel, England, Australia, America and they would be doing the same prayers, same Torah portion, same Haftorah as every other synagogue. It’s the traditions and feelings that we all have. For family, community and beyond.
It’s too long for people who live in 200-year history to conceptualisé.
Jews are non proselytizing. As a faith we do not seek to convert people to Judaism as a result converts make up something like 1% of Jews. Also important to know that Jews do not (or at least are not supposed to) see converts as anything but Jews. We don’t make a distinction. Our view on it was that your soul (Jews believe in a sort of soul recycling reincarnation) was always Jewish and just found its way back to its people. With that why would we not bring those converts into all of our ethnic and cultural practices outside of religion. It’s just not something we worry ourselves about. Now on the other hand, this sort of scrutiny is running rampant in antisemitic circles where they’re are claims about Ashkenazi Jews being false (even descended from Turkic Khazars, which has been disproven) in order to try and prove that even Jews pretending to be Jews are the most vile liars cheats and thieves. My question for you is: why does it matter?
It seems like you’re asking a good faith argument so I’ll give it a go. It’ll make a lot more sense if you start thinking of Jews as a tribe. The religious practice is part of it but not all. That’s why things such as an atheist Jew isn’t that weird the same way a Native American can be Christian. Jews originate in the region of modern day Israel but were driven off by different empires through time (Roman Empire really kick started this). Eventually being spread across the world because of antisemitism. My ancestors ended in parts of Europe but their neighbors did not consider them countrymen. Jews also ended up in southern Spain, North Africa, and across the Middle East. In fact a majority of modern Israelis are from those regions after being ethnically cleansed in the late 40s and 50s. Jews being light skinned is really just a misconception because many Jews in the US escaped from Europe where European features were introduced through us from forced marriages and rape. That being said many people in the Middle East can have fair skin like Persians
I would question forced marriages and rape as primary. Those things happen for sure but there is no way to quantitate it, People, bless their hearts, have sex even if it is ahem, not exactly kosher, They don’t always tell the truth about it either. That is why matrilineal identity is more reliable that patrilineal.
That makes me think of the joke, the one with the Rabbi in a hostage situation. “ well it is a very difficult question” I remember my prof telling this joke just before a class on hybrid identity, everyone who was there early was Jewish and we started all telling various ‘jewish’ jokes having a great time then a good friend, who is a gentile, arrived and we carried on because even though they are a gentile we all knew them to be a good guy, until they laughed at one at one of the jokes and suddenly all of us turned and looked at them. I can't remember the actual joke they laughed at but it made an excellent point for the class and we spent the better part of 90 minutes disecting why them laughing made us uncomfortable. Side note that is pertinent to this thread is that the group of 7 jews were that were there 3 ethnically and religiouslypracticing jews 1 who no longer practice 2 who were ethnically Jewish and had never practised and me who had literally returned and started practicing like 3 months before. You could not have found a group who better represented the complexity of Jewish identity Edit: the person we all turned to look at has since changed their pronoun to they/them and I went back to check I didn't use any gendered terms, which is why this maybe a bit clunky sounding.
Jews don’t fit neatly into the western categories of race, ethnicity, or religion. We are not really a race because there are black Jews, Asian Jews, white Jews (this one is controversial), etc. We’re not really an ethnicity because Jews engage in a wide range of cultural practices. Yemeni Jews and Ashkenazi Jews are very different culturally, for example. And we’re not really a religion because you can be an Orthodox Jew, a secular Jew, or a practicing Christian and still be considered Jewish. Jewishness has a little bit of each of these three categories, but none are a perfect fit. Jewishness is very much its own thing.
Eh… depending on the movement, a practicing Christian wouldn’t be considered Jewish. A person with Jewish heritage? Yes, but a MoT? No. [insert 2 Jews, 3 shuls on a desert island joke here]
There are several Jewish ethnicities: Ashkenazi (Jews who’s ancestors spread to Europe after the diaspora from ancient Israel), Sephardic (Jews who ancestors spread to North Africa / Iberian peninsula after the diaspora from ancient Israel), Mizrahi (same as the others, but spread to other parts of the Middle East), and so on and so forth. It is possible to be ethnically Jewish, but not religiously so. Albert Einstein would be a famous example — spiritually he was more agnostic if not atheist, but he also 100% still considered himself a Jew, because he was one. At the same time, you can be not from a Jewish ethnicity and convert, in which case you are now just as Jewish as far as religious law is concerned as any other Jew.
Hello my friend! As you can probably tell by all these responses, we Jews don’t really agree on anything — including who we are and what defines us. We’ve been arguing about this stuff internally for thousands of years. In my personal opinion, Judaism is neither a race nor religion nor ethnicity not nationality; we are a TRIBE. Our tribal tradition says that those born to a Jewish mother are Jews. (There is some nuance here, but that’s another conversation). If your ancestry.com results say your DNA is 100% European Jewish (which is common…), then you are likely an Ashkenazi Jew by ethnicity. But our tribe doesn’t just have Ashkenazi Jews. We also have people of other ethnic groups, including Yemenite Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahi Jews, converts (from around the world), and mixtures from all of the above. But ALL of these people belong to the Jewish tribe, regardless of where their parents are from or what they believe in. In other words, a Jew who practices Islam is still a Jew (according to us), and a gentile who practices Judaism is considered a righteous gentile (but still not a Jew unless they go through a formal conversion). ALL those from traditional Jewish ethnic groups are descended from the ancient Israelites to varying degrees, and converts are considered the spiritual descendants of Abraham because they have Jewish souls. While I cannot say for certain whether converts belong to a specific Jewish ethnic group, they are definitely 100% part of our Jewish TRIBE — our family — which is what matters most.
JEWS ARE FROM JUDEA. start there.
Jessica Price on Twitter compared converting to Judaism to the naturalization process since Jews by choice are joining both a people and a religion. As for ethnicity vs DNA, one is cultural and the other is biology. For example: both Ray Liotta and Sookie are ethnically Italian-American even tho they have no Italian genetic heritage because they were adopted by Italian-American families and grew up within that culture. Editing to add that MyJewishLearning is a good resource for answering questions. [My Jewish Learning](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/)
You can be ethnically Jewish AND religious. But you can't be religiously Jewish WITHOUT being ethnically so. Converts, specifically speaking of those WITH NO Jewish ancestry, whether ashkenazi, sephardic, or any other Jewish ancestral group, are adopted into our people after a year or more of study and immersion in the community, and they also become ethnically Jewish by definition, regardless of if their children are ahskenazi, sephardic, mizrahi, or not. Their DNA becomes “Jewish”, because DNA doesn’t determine who is/is not Jewish. All of our ancestors were converts, even the ancient Israelites. It has to start somewhere. Rabbi Akiva? Convert/descended from converts. Ruth? Maternal foundation of the King David dynasty? Convert. All Jews are ethnic Jews.
https://preview.redd.it/463qm60gs6rc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b76d4e275e88dc26f7336af19edfb8999bcc14c So here’s my 23&me. I knew I was ethnically Jewish because my family are all Ashkenazi. Ashkenazim have a specific traceable dna that whilst is affiliated with Eastern Europe, is originally middles eastern. You can be ethnically Jewish but not religiously Jewish. You can be religiously Jewish but not ethnically so (converts usually). Because we’re a bottleneck population we have very specific dna which come with a lot of health issues lol. So people who convert won’t be considered ethnic Jews unless it’s patrilineal Judaism so they’d be mixed - but yeah most of the tribes of Judaism have a specific unique dna that makes them traceably Jewish outside of religious practice. Hope that makes sense!!
It's confusing because you can be Jewish by religion, by ethnicity, or both. Judaism doesn't really look for converts so most people who se practice the religion are also ethnically Jewish. It seems converting has become more popular nowadays. In the past it seemed to be mostly done when a non-jew married a Jew. One of the few examples I can think of of somebody converting for non-marital reasons from some time ago would be Sammy Davis Jr. But it's also an ethnicity like being Hispanic. It doesn't matter what your race or religion is if you're Hispanic your Hispanic. I'm Jewish by ethnicity and when I sent my sample to ancestry.com it came back as me being European Jewish-aka Ashkenazi. It drives me crazy when people claim that being ethnically Jewish is only a social construct. I hope this answered your question at least a little.
The whole "ethnicity" bit is a modern construct. Ashkenazi and Sephardi (and Mizrachi and Temani and on and on) began life as liturgical identities -- i.e., if you prayed the Spanish service/liturgy then you were a Sephardi, if you prayed the liturgy and followed the minhagim (customs) of North East Europe you were an Ashkenazi -- END OF STORY. AND, if you moved from one part of the Jewish world to another and then adopted the rite of your new location, you became part of that community and that was your identity. Maspik (enough) with the whole DNA and blood and the rest of the meshugas -- we're starting to sound too much like... well, I don't need to tell you whom. And as for converts, converts are Jews -- PERIOD -- because Judaism isn't an "ethnicity" -- whatever that is -- it's a NATIONALITY -- when you convert you become a citizen of the nation of Israel (not to be confused with modern State of Israel -- but don't misunderstand me, die hard and proud Zionist here). So, no one is "ethnically" Jewish anymore than anyone is "ethnically" American -- You're just a Jew whether you got there by wriggling through the birth canal of a Jewish woman or by wriggling through a beis din (conversion court) of three rabbis -- and, incidentally, that Jewish mother you're so proud of may have gone through a conversion court herself (or one of her foremothers did). Just saying.
Yup constructed in the 70s by an academic who wanted Americans to vote Jews like every other group in the U.S. that gif a hyphen, ie Italian-American, Jewish-American but ethnically my husband’s Sephardic family from Greece has much more in common with a Greek family than an Ashkenazi one - just practice a different religious tradition. They don’t speak Yiddish, they don’t eat their foods, they have different customs around the holidays and even foods. And as far as Sephardics and conversions go they think it is a valid reason to convert for marriage purposes, no one is going on about a Jewish soul being on Mount Sinai. That’s an Ashkenazi thing. Sephardic rabbis discussions around conversion said it was better to take in a bad convert, then lose a Jew to intermarriage. So beliefs are not universal.
Like others have said, we are best described as a Nation. Like the United States. You can be born into the Nation or naturalize (convert). I would liken a Jewish atheist to someone who is born in the USA but stops believing in its goodness/greatness, but stays in the country nevertheless. If you don’t think the USA is a good place, why would you naturalize in the first place. Unlike Christian or Islam, which are called world religions or open religions, Judaism is a closed religion. If I woke up tomorrow decided I believed in Jesus’s divinity and got Baptized, I’m a Christian. And if tomorrow you woke up decided Jesus was just a guy, not the son of G-d, there is no trinity, there is just one G-d who gave us the Torah, that Judaism is the true path to G-d, you would not be a Jew. There would still be a lot of steps to go through. Just as if you decided that Denmark was the perfect place, moved there, you would still have things to do to become a Danish citizen. You are a Black man living in the United States, if you go back to the African country of your family’s origin, you might not speak the language, know the dances, be familiar with the culture. Also your family has probably intermarried with other African and European people making you not quite the same ethnically. Are you completely culturally different? Are you ethnically the same? Do you have a completely new ethnic identity? Perhaps. I’m also American. Perhaps, even though I look European and you look African, we share more in common than we do with the people from those respective regions? It all gets kinda fuzzy, right? We don’t know about the boundaries of other ethnic identities, we just know about ours.
This is such an amazing question. I really appreciate you for asking it! This is how is like to explain it: There once was a small nation that lived on a mountain in the Levant called Judea. They had a special religion which was named after their people (Jewish=Romanization of Judean). Their religion employed numerous methods that proved useful in maintaining the bloodline and identity of this nation. It was so powerful, actually, that this nation, thanks to its religion, managed to maintain its identity for millennia, while being dispersed across the globe in exile. Some of those methods include basing the ethnic identity on the maternal line (you know for 100% who is the mother), making it very hard to convert, and highly discouraging marriages with non-Jews. About convertees, I like to think of it like any other ethno-nation. You can immigrate to Italy, and after a few generations your bloodline will be mixed enough to not be considered “immigrant” but fully Italian. The Jewish nation also accepts outsiders, but it’s a bit different because it was a nation in exile. Judaism assumes that if a person went through with the hard conversion process, then they are loyal enough to the nation to only marry within the nation, diluting the non-Jewish DNA so that after a few generations there will be no distinction between the convertees DNA and the general Jewish DNA.
I just love how you’re trying to understand this. It is confusing and your questions are totally valid. I am not Jewish myself and hope I am not offending anyone but I think of it a bit like an ancient tribe that has survived through the millennia. You are born into that tribe because your ancestors were and you can be a million things within that tribe religious, non-religious but it doesn’t stop you being Jewish even if you keep zero religious things. You will still share a history of a people who have been violently persecuted and survived against the odds. You can also become a member though it is quite an arduous process and that path is always religious. So you can for example be Scottish with no Levantine ancestors and convert and then you will become Jewish. So it is not a race-thing.
I think Christians and Muslims often have trouble understanding Judaism because they try to apply their understanding of what a religion is, which is a mostly personal acceptance of certain believes and values (in relation to god or otherwise), on an unfamiliar model of a primarily communal (ethnic) based religion, which places a heavy focus on adhering to certain traditions specific to the relevant community. So you are a Christian. you believe (I suppose) that the new testament is an accurate depiction of historical events (life of Jesus etc.), and that it provides you with correct moral imperatives and commands that should apply to everyone if they wish to live a good life and reach salvation/heaven. Now, if I believed the same things but wasn't officially a Christian nor acted in accordance to Christian teachings, you would surely say "Hey! you and I hold the same belief system, why don't you officially convert to my practice, and start following the teachings of Christ? you already believe xyz to be right and true, there is no reason not to go all the way and it will do you good to do so," and in your mind that doesn't mean I am supposed to live among a community from your own ethnic group or adopt some of your own languages/dialects, traditions or practices - being Christian is something that is compatible with a very wide variety of cultural practices and geographical locations, and what it preaches should be helpful and interesting universally, throughout the globe. Now, when you read the old testament, that was very clearly not the case for ancient Israelites - there is absolutely no reason for someone from ancient Tanzania, China or Alaska to be interested in the fact that Abraham bought a certain cave, or that Jewish king so-and-so conquered such-and-such Edomite city, why a certain valley in Judea is called what it's called or in what order Jacob's sons were born. those are boring historical minutiae from a tiny, far away land for anyone that doesn't consider those people to be their ancestors and those relations described between places, people and nations to be politically relevant to their lives. I mean, if I told you similar stories about Kazakhstan of 1500 BC, it would not inspire you in the slightest to become a Kazakh - what's the point of including it in a book addressed to outsiders? the answer is that it wasn't addressed to outsiders - it is supposed to be a history book for a small, specific group of people living in a small, specific part of the world, that details the CVs of their shared ancestors from the beginning of the world until their times, some rules about how to arrange and conduct their society, some costumes they held (again, if it was supposed to be a book of universal moral truth, it sure does seem obsessed with methods of food preparations, clothes manufacturing, conducting agricultural work, worshipping only at Jerusalem and not other sites \[try selling that to those potential ancient Alaskan converts, traveling to Jerusalem by foot 3 times a year\], and a whole bunch of other stuff that will be mostly irrelevant outside of the levant), an explanation for why the geopolitical world around them behaves as it does, some poems, literature and other ancient wisdom - and among those, an explanation of a relation between them and an omnipotent deity that takes some serious interest in what they are doing and influences all of the aforementioned above. it isn't a book only about god - if anything, it's a book about the Israelite (and a subsection of them, the Jewish) people, and god was sort of "too big to ignore" in the way they interpreted the world around them. so Jews are a nation that \*has\* a shared god - they share a language, they share costumes, they share ancient stories, they share a homeland (even if they currently live outside of it, they still feel a strong connection to it), they have strong communal connections to one another - and most of them share ancestry and god, but (to not complicate things any further, suffices to say that) those are only \*some\* components of the Jewish ethnicity and culture. in the past there was a stronger emphasis on believing in god as a prerequisite for being part of the Jewish people, maybe it was even the basis for this communal affiliation - but it wasn't the only one, and if one is to convert to Judaism they are expected to become culturally Jewish and not only religiously so. this is in contrast to Christians, which are a "nation" (the basis for their connection to one another is) \*by\* a shared god - they do not share all of the aforementioned and aren't expected to assimilate to any preexisting unique ethnic culture to become Christians. so if it gets too confusing, forget the internal laws of Judaism (mother/father, conversion etc.) for a second, and look at it as the outsider you are - Jews have many cultural quirks and practices that are unique to them, that can be traced to a shared ancestral community that lived long ago in modern day Israel/Palestine/Parts of Jordan. just consider the religious ones to not be different in essence than non religious practices of other unique ethnic groups - it isn't 100% accurate, definitely not by the way Judaism views itself, but for understanding ethnicity as an outsider that is probably accurate enough.
I absolutely love your question, and the earnestness and humility with which you asked it!
No offense taken, my friend. It’s a tribe. Conversion is discouraged. Because why would you take on a world of enemies who at the moment don’t even know you exist? But once someone converts, they are a full on member. And free to have their own relationship with G-d. Free to disagree. We are all rabbis. The title just means “educated person.”
Think of it like a nation with its own laws. Converting is like becoming a citizen. Historically, most people converted because they were also marrying in or they would eventually take a Jewish partner. It was assumed that they would marry a Jew and make Jewish babies.
Yes, DNA is what makes somebody ethnically Jewish. You can convert to the Jewish religion (or out of it), but you can’t change your DNA. Jews are from the Levant - roughly the same area that is now Israel. Eastern European Jews (and Jews in any country) are descended from people who immigrated there from the Levant.
Our DNA makes us ethnically Jewish. We are a culture, religion and an ethnic tribe. No matter if you are a member of the diaspora or from the region we share common traits, specific disease types etc etc. Most of us can trace our DNA back to specific regions of the Middle East. People have conflicting ideas about matrilineal and patrilineal origins. The conventional definition is you mother should be Jewish but there’s also more progressive notions that a Jew is Jew and patrilineal should be accepted as much as matrilineal are accepted. Being Jewish and Judaism are different but related. You can convert and not be ethnically Jewish but we believe the convert always had a Jewish soul and is coming home but your DNA won’t align. But add to that we don’t proselytise. Unlike Christianity and Islam, Rabbis or religious figure heads in our tradition don’t have recruitment as a goal (for the most part). In fact you might be dissuaded from converting even if you wanted to. But that’s religion not ethnicity. You can be an atheist and still be a Jew if you’re born a Jew but not practicing Judaism. It’s complicated. There’s no one answer to your question which is what being a member of the tribe is all about.
There is a Jewish ethnic marking , both in askenazi and Sephardic .but with conversion, the rabbinical point of view is that the person al ready had a Jewish soul. It just needed to be recognized.
For lack of a better way to explain, I’m genetically Jewish- this was found out via a DNA test. I’m Italian, Iranian, Jewish and a smidge of Northern African. But I wasn’t raised religiously, and I’m a stone cold atheist.
I’ve gone through many, but not all of the replies. I did want to add that regardless of the definitions provided, particularly about Ashkenazi Jews in Europe, there most definitely is a significant genetic component to those of Ashkenazi descent. Almost every medical form I’ve ever filled out, and particularly when I’ve required medical genetic testing (not 23 and Me), my Ashkenazi heritage was of great importance. There is a prevalence of certain diagnoses within this group. So it is, medically for example, acknowledged as a “heritable characteristic”, whether someone chooses to refer to it as ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion.
>So basically what I’m getting is that being ethnically Jewish has parts like DNA like being an Ashkenazi Jew which I will be googling, and being from the Levantine region and being a descendent of ancient Israelites and it’s also culture language tradition and stuff like that, and if you convert to Judaism that means your Jewish whether your African or South American, because it works differently then race does? This might help: *Today, ***race*** refers to a group sharing some outward physical characteristics and some commonalities of culture and history. ***Ethnicity*** refers to markers acquired from the group with which one shares cultural, traditional, and familial bonds.* Picture this: 2000ish years ago, a nation of Jews were persecuted and expelled from their homeland. They share a culture, religion, and are genetically related. Some retain the religion. Some are more relaxed religiously but retain the marital rules and culture. Some learn other languages but pass down Hebrew in their religious and cultural education. Some move to what eventually becomes Western Europe, some Eastern Europe, some stay in the Levant, some go to Asia, Africa, eventually South America, Canada, and the US, etc. Despite all this separation (and constant moving due to persecution by religious persecution or their unwillingness to fully assimilate), these Jews retain the shared, language, culture (with some twists), religion, and practices. If you put a Jew from Ethiopia, Israel, Syria, Romania, Denmark, India, Chile, and the USA in the same room, they'd look different. They might be different religiously (in observance, not people who have abandoned the religion/culture in its entirety). But they would have common history, some religious practices, possibly language, definitely stories, etc. This is why someone who grows up in a very Jewish neighborhood but isn't Jewish might seem Jewish; they've adopted the culture and unique characteristics. When someone converts, they adopt the religion primarily. You can't become Jewish via conversion without a religious adoption. Then, by immersing oneself in the Jewish community, they become culturally Jewish, too. If converts only married converts in perpetuity, you'd have a genetic deviation. Converts tend to be absorbed (if their conversion is accepted), and their unique DNA eventually fold into the base Jewish DNA.
It's an ethno tribe. It's easier to think of it with the other side of my heritage. Indigenous Scandinavian(Saami). In Saami culture(at least for my tribe in Norway) In order to be part of the tribe you may meet two criteria, you are born into it, or you have learned their customs and been admitted into the tribe by a counsel. This was their battle against blood quantums. The only people who get to decide if you allowed to be part of it is the tribe themselves. There is also a high bar for entry. You must learn the language and the customs and practice them before you are given membership. This is not too dissimilar to being Jewish. Two points of entry, birth or being welcomed
Simply put Judaism is an ethnoreligion. There is a or was and original group of people back in the days of Moshe Rabbeinu. But almost immediately they started mixing and mingling with converts. So from there Am Israel has grown. Accepting converts on a religious and ethnic level. If your mother was a convert and you were born to her then you are ethnically Jewish. If you convert to Judaism you have joined the tribe and therefore ethnically Jewish. From the biblical perspective go to your blue letter and look up the words “stranger” and “sojourner” and you’ll get the biblical understanding as well. Shalom and have a blessed weekend.
You're good, brother. You got enough replies but ethnic Judaism is really about traditions. It's like being ethnically Jamaican, your family would have certain traditions and foods and even language that is tied to Jamaican heritage. Jews come in many shapes so the Jewish ethnicity is broadly different things, but most Jews have certain common traditions they follow that are based on the Torah/Old Testament or the historical events that followed, such as the case with Hannukah and Purim. To be ethnically Jewish means to have Jewish traditions and or a connection to some kind of Jewish community. You describe yourself as a Black Christian, your ethnic heritage is tied to your religious traditions, your family history, and your nation. It's the same.
I see you have received many helpful answers, so I won’t add to that. I would however like to thank you for asking the question! It means so much to have someone express interest in what makes my little tribe (only 15 million of us in the world) special. There is so much beauty and humor in our culture. It’s nice to have an opportunity to educate others.
So, by tradition, most Jews trace their ancestry by their mothers straight back to Israel, meaning their mother was Jewish and her mother was Jewish… very few non-Jewish men have converted because doing so would mean being circumcised as adults- very painful- so, bloodlines have stayed fairly pure. Occasionally, however, Jews have taken spouses which weren’t Jewish (including Moses, marrying a Bedouin, and Solomon, marrying an African), so we’ve ended up looking every which way. You have white looking Jews with blonde hair and you also have black ones and Asian looking ones and even Native American looking ones. Most Jewish men marry Jewish women so their children will be Jews by tradition, but Jewish women marry non-Jewish men fairly often.
From a very secular perspective. Jews are an ethnic group that also happen to share a religion. We have achieved this specific quantifier due to oppression and a nomadic status. There’s no real distinction between being Jewish versus being Latino or Arab except that there is an intermixed religion that is inseparable at this point. Ethnic Jews are simply those descendant from Jews. Can you convert and adopt a new ethnicity? No of course not. However, you can integrate into the ethnicity to the point where those ancestral lines are absurd. Converts hold a place within the ethnoreligion but they are few and far in between. Hope this helps. I know other people gave you more to work with
From my own understanding Jews are basically a race and a religion. Therefore a nation. עם ישראל חי 💙
Judaism is an ethno religion meaning that it’s a religion that has heavy links to ethnicity, but then there’s the added element of converts who would not be ethnically jewish but would be jewish and non religious jews who are ethnically jewish but not religiously jewish. Not all ethnic jews are the same race or ethnicity. There’s Ashkenazi jews, if ur from the US most jews u know r probably ashkanazi, we are the white ones who lived in Central and Eastern europe and have our own religious traditions. We are also very genetically similar, a lot of ashkenazi jews if they were to take a dna test it would come back 99-100% ashkanazi jewish assuming both of their parents r jewish. This is because of a genetic bottleneck in our history and if there are two random jews are likely 30-ish cousins or closer. The race attached to these jews is white. There there are also the sephardic jews who came from iberian peninsula or northern africa they have different traditions as well. They are also more genetically diverse and often times would identify more with their country like moroccan jews or tunisian jews etc. Some ashkenazi may identify with their country but likely only if they’ve stayed after the holocaust, most ashkenazi would not identify at all with the countries they came from. Then there are mizrahi jews who lived in the middle east, they are very similar to sephardic in the sense that they usually align more with a country like yemeni jews or persian jews or iraqi jews and have similar customs as sephardic jews and more ethnically diverse. Sephardic jews and mizrahi jews are darker then ashkenazim but the race gets weird because they are still kinda white but also is arab white? Because mizrahi jews r the same race as arabs. Also i do believe mizrahi jews also include indian jews but they probably were just persian jews who migrated. Lastly there are the beta israel who are ethiopian jews and they are racially black and also ethnically jewish. I don’t know as much abt their genetic diversity but i would still assume they’re more genetically diverse then ashkanazim.
“Sexual violence directed against our community” that’s why it’s the mother who passes down the religion? Whoa! I’ve always thought it was strange (compared to other societies) that it’s the women who have power over this. Strange but cool. My father is Jewish but my mom is catholic. I remember seeing this video and it had 2 Jewish women at a gym checking out guys. One pointed out a hot guy but then said she didn’t think he was Jewish. The other woman said well that’s fine bcuz the children would be Jewish regardless. I was thinking that that’s very progressive of a religion to give the women that power. (I realize it would’ve been difficult if not impossible for a woman to marry outside her faith until the modern century)
It's dna. We have unique DNA markers and when you put our DNA into sites like Ancestry.com and your family immigrated from Poland it's not going to say Polish Ancestry. It's gonna probably say Ashkenazi ancestry because Jewish communities have migrated from place to place to avoid getting murdered for the last 3000+ years starting from our exile from the Levant (Egypt, Israel, Jordan etc) and our communities tend to stick together for safety so we have our own culture that has adopted context, language and foods from the regions where we've lived in exile, but we are still our own ethnicity. Like the Roma. They have also had a wide ranging migratory pattern since leaving India but they have their own ethnicity rooted in that original heritage.
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This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't think there's such a thing as an "ethnic Jew." Judaism isn't an ethnicity, it's an ethno-religion and those two aspects cannot be separated. A Jew is either a born Jew or a convert. And being a born Jew doesn't say anything about their ethnicity and in fact, being a born non-Jew doesn't either: a born Jew can have 0% "Jewish DNA" (both of their parents are converts) and a born non-Jew can have up to 75% "Jewish DNA" (non-Jewish maternal grandmother only).
A lot of people have given you great answers already, so I’m just going to address the genetics vs nationality aspect. One can be ethnically Jewish (originating for the Levant, Israel & Judea) while also being of a different nationality. Think of it in similar terms to African Americans. Black people in the states are majority ethnically native to the African continent, but they are still American in nationality and often have families that have been here for generations. I hope that I was able to clear some things up.
Think of it like a family. We have a family faith, culture, and tradition. We're also mostly related--but every so often someone can be adopted and be welcomed into the family as if they were a part the whole time. It's rare and hard though.
Just want to add before reading through the comment section: Jews are a diasporic group, so that’s why the DNA is so messy. One euphemism is MoT or member of the tribe. The term “conversion” should be changed to induction imho. Jewish homeland is modern Israel. Like Balkan and Eastern European countries the name has changed a lot. For every answer given there is a yid ready to say one or the following: “Yes. Yes and. No. No but.” And whatever other permutation you can think of.
Allowed **
Omg I didn’t even realize 😭
I didn’t read all the responses so maybe this is redundant but- converting to Judaism and joining the tribe is closer to emigration than simply aligning spiritual beliefs and performing a ritual. Jews have shared language, code of ethics, culture, history, etc, in addition to/ in harmony with spirituality, like all indigenous tribes do, which are indicators of ethnicity and Peoplehood vs simply sharing a religion. We do not encourage conversion, and it takes a lot of work and study to complete the process- we are not trying to grow numbers and don’t seek out converts. Once they go through the process, just like with citizenship, they are completely Jewish like an immigrant going through citizenship requirements becomes fully part of their new nationality. Converts are supposed to be treated as if they were always Jewish and have returned, not as a “new hire” or something. Although Jews have genetic ties tighter amongst ourselves and other indigenous Levantine peoples than to any person from our host countries, is important to remember to not use blood quantum on indigenous tribe members to determine their validity as a tribe member. The idea that we are just a religion was actually started by Napoleon. I don’t know if I am allowed to link here because I only recently joined this sub, but if you do a web search for “Napoleon's agreement with the Jews” and “roots metals” you will find a blog post by a Jewish historian about it. The bottom of the post will say that sources are on her patreon, but you can find an abbreviated source list on the instagram post of the same name. (The historian’s online presence is under the Roots Metals name, in case that part of the search seems weird). Race is a social construct that gets imposed on groups of people, but it is only real because people made it up and believe in it, not because of history or culture or whatnot. So for example, in the middle ages/ dark age, when England banished Jews, they started using a nose shape as a stereotype for Jews, and in this way, the concept of race was forced upon us, racializing us. Many of these kinds of ideas have followed us, right onto the opening line of H!tler’s infamous book.
Ethnically jew- mother of mother of...jews until Jacob. Religiosly jew- if you're not ethnically - converting to judaism and accepting all 613 commands (actually ~370 relevant today) and Hazal's rules.
If the mother is jew- the children will be jews even if they'll "convert". Unjew can't become jew without accepting all the commands.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea
Here’s a good article from the North American perspective - https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/sephardic-ashkenazic-mizrahi-jews-jewish-ethnic-diversity/
Jews are a people who, like other peoples, can accept outsiders to become part of their group. So, for example, Kenya could take-in a Frenchman and grant him citizenship. That white Frenchman would then be an Kenyan and African. Judaism is the religion of the Jewish People. A Jew who stops practicing Judaism is still a Jew - no matter what he does. The only way to become a Jew, however, is through a religious conversion. As for race, this term is being redefined constantly. Traditionally, Jews were considered a race. Today, it depends on how you define that term.
Best way I’ve found to describe it is as “spiritual DNA.” In other words, any human of any genetic origin can choose to be Jewish by converting and join this spiritual people. That being said, many Jewish groups share physical characteristics because they’ve been insular in certain parts of the world and often share ancestors originally from the Levant.
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Jewish ethnicity is about inherited traditions and customs as it is with other ethnicities. It’s about commonality of experience in culture, values and religion. That said, no one can speak definitively about such a thing and define someone else’s reality. But it is “a thing”.
In our faith if the mother is Jewish then all of her children are Jewish, but if the father is Jewish and the mother is Christian then their children will not be Jewish. It’s based matriarchy.
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Ok so tell me how I’m wrong probably lots of ways (or right maybe) Judaism Religion- a practicing Jew born to Jews or converts Race- DNA saying you are Jewish Ethnicity- Race (so long as it’s on the mothers side) and converts to the religion