A YEAR AGO, I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT A JEW IS

NOT UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES OF A GROUP’S IDENTITY DOES NOT GIVE US THE RIGHT TO REDUCE THEIR IDENTITIES TO SUIT OUR OWN AGENDAS. AND THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT IS HAPPENING.

Are we still in Crown Heights?

I was working on an important project a year ago when I realized I didn’t know what a Jew is.

This is a bit embarrassing because, although I’m not Jewish, I’ve been writing for a Jewish newspaper for half my life and, as a writer and consultant, I’ve worked for more Jewish organizations than I can count.

Not knowing what a Jew is is a bad thing for someone who writes about Jews, Israel, antisemitism and other Jewishy stuff pretty much every single day. In my defense, as I have pursued this question, I found a lot of Jews can’t succinctly answer this question either.

Obviously, I’m being a bit disingenuous. I knew, sort of, kind of, intuitively, basically, what a Jew is. But when I was called upon for this project to include an agreed-upon definition of a Jew, I couldn’t come up with it.

This might seem like a pedantic pursuit. 

But it does matter. It matters a lot.

Because, as it turns out, the failure to understand what a Jew is plays a big part in why we are seeing a huge spike in antisemitism right now and why we don’t seem to be able to stop it.

If we can’t name a problem, we can’t resolve it. Antisemitism is a problem with people’s attitudes and actions toward Jews. So if we don’t know how to define “Jew,” we can’t accurately define antisemitism. And if we can’t define antisemitism, we can’t get a handle on the problem.

I contacted rabbis and professors I know and came up with a definition that I used in the project. It’s still not as short as I was hoping for — but that, ultimately, turned out to be the point.

Defining Jews is a problem. And the fact that they are hard to define is a different problem. In a short-attention-span world, and in a world where identity is, for better or worse, a defining factor in contextualizing a person in the world, the case of the Jews and their definitions is particularly problematic.

Here’s yet another problem: I’m a non-Jew taking on the task of defining “Jew.” This is an almost textbook case of what not to do if you subscribe (as I do) to a progressive worldview on race, self-definition and respect for difference. But this, too, will ultimately help make my point.

A lot of identities are easy to define. Although cultural meanings absolutely imbue every identity, thereby adding complexity to the goal of defining people, the surface definitions are usually pretty plain. At the risk of opening a can of cross-cultural worms, I’ll let you do this exercise yourself. Think of a group identity and you can probably come up with a one-sentence definition of what it means to be a member of that group.

The problem with defining Jews is that their identity is a little more complex than most. It’s not simply about skin color, not simply about birthplace, not even necessarily about who one’s parents are. It’s not only about what you believe. It’s not just about one thing or another.

In fact, Jews simply do not fit in the boxes we insist on putting groups of people. And for people who like to put people in boxes — and that is pretty much all of us, especially now that race theory is premised almost exclusively on putting people in boxes — that’s a real stone in our shoe.

Then, instead of recognizing that the fact this group of people don’t fit in the boxes is our problem, not theirs, we get kind of irritated at them for not getting in the box.

But back to the main issue: What is a Jew?

Maybe you have already tired of my seemingly overcomplicating things because, you say, “A Jew is a person who follows the Jewish religion”

To which I reply: Gotcha!

That was kind of where I started out a year ago, but that’s not it. Or, at least, that’s not all of it.

Judaism, the religion, is at the root of what a Jew is, but “Jewishness” is something broader.

But first, yet another caveat: Who the hell am I to define Jews?! I’ll come back to that question in a bit. You’ll really want to stick around for that because that question, not the definition itself, is, in the end, what this weirdly rambling rant is actually about.

Based on what the rabbis and professors I spoke to suggested, here is what I came up with …

• Jews are a cultural and ethnoreligious group

• Jews are part of a peoplehood with a religious tradition at the core

• Jews are a community with a shared historical narrative, cultural expression, practices and traditions

This is still a bit of a mouthful. But that is another lesson I took from this little exercise. The definition of “Jew” is not as simple as the definitions of some other groups. Even this definition is an extreme simplification of the complex Jewish identity.

But here is the first main point I am trying to make: Not understanding the complexities of a group’s identity does not give us the right to reduce their identities to suit our own agendas. And that is precisely what is happening.

Where this plays out most visibly is in a constellation of ideas that are stated with surprisingly strong conviction but based on a significant or total ignorance of what a Jew is.

Among just a few observations I have heard — some intentionally hostile, some simply naïve or ignorant — are the following:

• Antisemitism is not racism because Jews are not a race.

• Jews don’t deserve to have a state because they are a religion, not a nation.

• We oppose Israel because it’s based on religion and that makes it a theocracy.

Each of these is problematic in its own way. I could (and maybe I will) do a separate post on each topic. But to sum up …

You don’t get to dismiss a group’s experience with racism by redefining them as “not a race” thereby deeming them incapable of experiencing racism. 

Almost everyone today rejects the 19th-century ideas of “race science.” We know that race is a social construct, not a scientific one, so the classifications of Jews as not falling into the category of people who can experience racism is a weirdly inverted form of Victorian racial pseudoscience we should probably not be engaged in.

The idea that Jews don’t deserve a state because they are a religion, not a nation, is creepy in different ways. First of all, Jews are not “just” a religion. They are also a “peoplehood,” a “nation,” an “ethnocultural group.” If you can’t wrap your head around this, that’s your problem, not theirs.

The other question this should raise is why a Jewish state seems to irk people so much. There are about 50 Muslim-majority countries. Of these, 26 have Islam as the official state religion. Four are explicitly “Islamic republics,” meaning the religion is central to the governance in, let’s say, more than a passing way. (Israel, FYI, has no state religion. Surprised? Go and learn.)

The third argument really deserves a smackdown. The idea that a Jewish state is a “theocracy” is just stupid. Sorry, but. Even if Jewishness were “just” a religion, Israel would still not be a theocracy. It is a secular state with a Jewish majority. On paper, England is more of a theocracy than Israel is. England has a state religion — Anglicanism — and the head of the church is the head of state. That is far closer to a theocracy than Israel has. And surely you hear how stupid that sounds.

But, as I alluded to earlier: Who the hell am I to tell you or anyone else, especially Jews, what the definition of a Jew is?

Exactly! It is nobody’s business but the Jews’.

In my case, at least, I went out and asked Jewish professors and rabbis so I could understand.

In far too many cases, people take it upon themselves to make up definitions for Jewish people without asking Jews, listening to Jews or learning anything about Jews.

It is progressive gospel that individuals and groups have the right to self-define. We don’t tell people what gender they are, what color they are, or what box they fit into.

Except when it comes to Jews.

When we betray our values around antiracism to suit our ideologies, there’s a word for that. 

But I’ve spent enough time on definitions for one day. I’ll let those who seek to define Jews for their own purposes ponder what box they themselves belong to be put it. 

I am tempted to define these people as a particular type but, of course, I would never deign to put people into boxes.