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!
No, there's a much longer history to that, which has to do with the theological concept of Jews as the chosen people and that among the early Jewish communities of the Diaspora, Judaism was more of a social/ethnic organisation with a religious basis.