Hello friends. If this post is inappropriate, please tell me how to fix it or feel free to remove it. I am here because sometimes The Algorithm presents me new information, but especially when it's about Judaism in the current global climate, I want to make sure I'm not being told something inaccurate or harmful.
- When I was a kid, I thought Judaism was a religion
- As I got older, I learnt people also treated it as an ethnicity, it was both
- Now I am seeing some people (I am unsure of their intentions) say Judaism is not an ethnicity, it is a religion
For example, this guy: https://www.tiktok.com/@yuvalmann.s/video/7317661422694026529
Who is a Jew, from Israel, who is now an anti-Zionist. He says "a Jewish person from Morocco, a Jewish person from Ethiopia and a Jewish person from Germany or Hungary have absolutely nothing to do with each other but one thing, religion". And later explains that the idea of Judaism as an ethnicity itself was an idea of Zionists.
I'd be curious to hear what people here think about that take, whether it's accurate, if it's harmful/inaccurate, etc. Thanks very much!
Excellent question and I'll preface with the "two Jews, 3 opinions caveat."
I think the short answer is no, but perhaps the growth of zionism encouraged that definition of Jewishness as an ethnicity (I'll use Judaism for the religion).
I think Judaism has always existed to some extent as an ethnicity, with Jews throughout history calling themselves "a people," "a nation," or "a family." But that ethnicity was held together with a set of religious texts and practices, until Moses Mendelson (Before him you had Solomon Maimon and Benedict Spinoza, but both were excommunicated for heresy). But the enlightenment in Europe and the extension of national rights to Jews made Jewish citizens explore for definitions of Judaism that would allow them to participate in the civic society of those nations, and also to maintain some sort of Jewishness if they didn't believe in Judaism religiously.
The problem here is that the concept of ethnicitiy has existed fpr a much shorter time than Judaism has. When Moses says "let my people go!", "people" is not meant in the same way that somebody who has grown up with nation states and various racisms as culturally pervasive concepts understands the word "people". I'm not saying this to nitpick, i agree that there has always been an idea of Jews being a people, but that did not mean what it means today and we cannot fully understand modern antisemitisms and how Zionism developed as a political strategy against them without taking a look at how ideas like race, ethnicity and nation were framed in the last two centuries, and how that affected how Jews were seen by the socieites they lived in and by themselves. 19th century antisemitism saw in large parts a racialization of Jewishness that was previously imagined largely among religiously anchored narratives. And Zionism specifically took the core political project of 19th century liberalism, the nation state, and tried to turn that into a cornerstone of Jewish liberation. Which in turn meant that it came with a large part of the baggage of European national chauvinism when it was turned into praxis.