Jewish identity

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"Jewishness" redirects here. For other uses, see Jewish peoplehood.

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Jewish identity is the objective or subjective state of

halacha), all those born of a Jewish mother are considered Jewish, regardless of personal beliefs or level of observance of Jewish law. Progressive Judaism and Haymanot Judaism in general base Jewishness on having at least one Jewish parent, while Karaite Judaism bases Jewishness only on paternal lineage. These differences between the major Jewish movements are the source of the disagreement and debate about who is a Jew
.

gentiles of Jewish ancestry
may still have a sense of Jewish self-identity.

Components

Jewish identity can be described as consisting of three interconnected parts:

  1. Jewish peoplehood, an ethnic identity composed of several subdivisions that evolved in the Diaspora.[2]
  2. Jewish religion, observance of spiritual and ritual tenets of Judaism.
  3. Jewish culture, celebration of traditions, secular and religious alike.

History

Second Temple period

In

ethnic group in modern terminology.[3]
Those include:

  1. A common proper name that identifies and conveys the "essence" of its community. In antiquity, three proper names were used to refer to the Jewish ethnos, namely: "Hebrew", "Israel", and "Jews".
  2. A myth of common ancestry. In the Jewish case, of descent from eponymous ancestor Jacob/Israel; additionally, the putative descent from Abraham was used to expand definitions of Jewishness by the Hasmoneans and contested by others.
  3. Shared memories of the past, including historical events and heroes. Jewish sacred books' accounts of historical events serve as a basic collection of those. Stories and figures narrated in the Hebrew Bible and other writings were further ingrained in the collective Jewish identity by the community reading of these books in synagogues. That includes figures such as the Patriarchs, Moses and David, and events including the Exodus, the covenant at Mount Sinai, the heyday of the united monarchy, the Babylonian captivity, the Antiochene persecutions, and the Maccabean revolt.
  4. One or more aspects of common culture, which are not necessitated to be specified, but typically include religion, language, and customs. There were significant overlaps between the religion, languages, customs, and other cultural aspects shared by ancient Jews; moreover, religion cannot be separated from other cultural aspects, especially in ancient times. The worship of the God of Israel, the work of the cult at Jerusalem and other cultic sites, and the following of particular Jewish customs (dietary laws, Sabbath observance, etc.) were major aspects of Jewishness at the period. Despite the fact that not all Jews spoke the same language, because many of the sacred writings were written in Hebrew, it also served as a symbol for Jews who did not speak the language.
  5. A connection to a homeland, which need not be physically occupied by the ethnic group in order for it to have symbolic attachment to the place of origin, as is the case for diaspora populations. In the Jewish case, this is the Land of Israel, or Judaea/Palaestina. For both the local Jews and those residing abroad, the land held symbolic value. It endures, despite the Land's borders frequently shifting and occasionally disappearing throughout time.
  6. A sense of solidary on the part of at least some sections of the ethnic population. The strength of this sentiment varies. Josephus reports that when the First Jewish-Roman War broke out, the Jews of Scythopolis joined the city in fighting the Jewish rebels because they had weaker sense of solidarity for the Jewish ethnos.[3]

In his works from the late Second Temple period,

apoikiai), with Jerusalem serving as their "mother-city" (metropolis). According to Kasher, Alexandria in this circumstance could only be regarded as a homeland in the political sense because it was the site of the establishment of a Jewish "colony," structured as a distinct ethnic union with a recognized political and legal status (politeuma), with Jerusalem being the colony's mother-city.[5]

Late antiquity

Jewish identity underwent a significant shift in the centuries that followed the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The initial conception of the Jews as an ethnos, albeit one with a distinctive religious culture, gradually shifted to that of a religious community that also identified as a nation.[4]

In the aftermath of the

half-shekel tribute that Jews paid to the Temple in Jerusalem. It appears that the Romans chose to use Jewish religious behavior rather than Jewish ancestry to determine tax liability, and this Roman interference in Jewish tax-collection may had prompted this transformation in Jewish identity.[4]

In the following centuries, the Christianization in the Roman Empire sped up this transformation. Ethnic identity had no meaning in Christian thought. Additionally, Christians also believed that the Jews were important solely (or primarily) because their religious practices had served as a foundation for the development of the new covenant.[4]

A cultural/ancestral concept

Jewish identity can be

Jewish Diaspora
.

In contemporary sociology

See also: Sociology of Jewry

Jewish identity began to gain the attention of Jewish sociologists in the United States with the publication of Marshall Sklare's "Lakeville studies".[8] Among other topics explored in the studies was Sklare's notion of a "good Jew".[9] The "good Jew" was essentially an idealized form of Jewish identity as expressed by the Lakeville respondents. Today, sociological measurements of Jewish identity have become the concern of the Jewish Federations who have sponsored numerous community studies across the U.S.;[10] policy decisions (in areas such as funding, programming, etc.) have been shaped in part due to studies on Jewish identity.

Antisemitism and Jewish identity

According to the social-psychologist Simon Herman, antisemitism plays a part in shaping Jewish identity.

Jonathan Sacks who writes that modern Jewish communities and the modern Jewish identity are deeply influenced by antisemitism.[12]

Left-wing antisemitism, by contrast, frequently views Jews as members of the white race, an idea that is a precursor to the criticism of Zionism as a racist ideology, as well as the exclusion of Jews from goals of intersectionality.[13]

See also

References

  1. ^ Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity. Yale University Press, 1997.
  2. ^ Peoplehood Now, sponsored by the NADAV Foundation, editors: Shlomi Ravid, Shelley Kedar, Research: Ari Engelberg, Elana Sztokman, Varda Rafaeli, p.11
  3. ^ a b c Van Maaren, John (23 May 2022), "The Ethnic Boundary Making Model: Preliminary Marks", The Boundaries of Jewishness in the Southern Levant 200 BCE–132 CE, De Gruyter, p. 5
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-77248-8
    , retrieved 31 March 2023
  5. ISSN 2275-1785
    .
  6. ^ Lawrence Schiffman, Understanding Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. KTAV Publishing House, 2003. p. 3.
  7. ^ Galatians 6:11, Romans 16:22, Colossians 4:18, 2 Thessalonians 3:17
  8. ^ Sklare, Marshall, Joseph Greenblum, and Benjamin Bernard Ringer. The Lakeville Studies. Under the Dir. of Marshall Sklare. Basic books, 1967.
  9. ^ Sklare, Marshall. "The Image of the Good Jew in Lakeville." Observing America’s Jews. Brandeis University Press, 1993.
  10. ^ Sheskin, Ira M. "Comparisons between local Jewish community studies and the 2000–01 National Jewish Population Survey." Contemporary Jewry 25, no. 1 (2005): 158-192.
  11. ^ Herman, Simon N. Jewish identity: A social psychological perspective. Transaction Pub, (1989): 51.
  12. ^ Love, Hate, and Jewish Identity Archived 14 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine, by Jonathan Sacks. First Things, November 1997.
  13. ^ Arnold, Sina. “From Occupation to Occupy.” Indiana University Press, Sept. 2022, https://iupress.org/9780253063137/from-occupation-to-occupy/.

External links

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