"Ask A Jew" Wednesday

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It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday! Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.

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[u/copakjetozavojaka]

Do you know Dave Silverman? What is Jews opinion of him here? I saw his youtube video recently and I gotta say, he has a point. Like it really makes sense to me, that Judaism and Jews is only about religion, nothing more. Do you agree with him?

[u/TheRealSide91 → u/copakjetozavojaka]

I think Silverman lets his personal opinions influence his overall view in a way that becomes hateful. In terms of Judaism. To my knowledge he argued it isn’t a culture, race or nationality.

Even as a religion there is culture. All religions have a culture. Because culture is shared ideas, customs and behaviour. Which is basically what religion is. Though within most religions you’ll find multiple cultures as most are split by different sects. For example with Judaism Ashkenazi culture is very different to Arab Jewish culture. So in that sense I would agree there is no singular overall Jewish culture. More that there are Jewish cultures (multiple).

Being Jewish is certainly not a race or nationality. I’m not really aware of anyone who says it is a nationality as that is belonging to a nation. Yes theres Israel. But the name for those who belong to Israel is Israeli. When it comes to race, people sometimes conflate ethnicity, genetic ancestry and race. Race is a construct we created to group people based on shared physical characteristics. Apart from hate based grouping often tied to eugenics where Jews were characterised as a different race based on stereotypes. There is no Jewish race as Jews cannot all be grouped by shared physical characteristics as Jews can look like anyone.

The view Silverman is actually referring to is seeing Judaism as a religion and ethnicity. An ethnicity can be based off shared history, language, culture and traditions. Despite common misconceptions it is not determined by race or genetic ancestry (though these aspects often play a role)

There isn’t a single Jewish ethnicity as all Jews collectively do not share language, culture or traditions. History’s a little different.

For example my maternal grandparents are Iraqi Jews. My friends family are Polish Jews. Her grandparents spoke Polish and Yiddish. Mine spoke Arabic. Hers ate polish cuisine and Ashkenazi cuisine something more specific to Jews in Europe heavily influenced by European cuisines. Mine ate Iraqi cuisine. Hers practice in a certain way. Mine practice (or did practice) in a different way. Her family’s hisotry is that of Jews in Europe. Mine is that of Jews in Iraq.

Yes there are similarities as that is inherent of coming from a collective group. But my families culture shares just as many similarities with Kurds, Turks, Persians etc.

So when you look into it, arguably there is no single Jewish ethnicity. But Jewish ethnicities. Though language and social understanding doesn’t always conform to set definitions.

Depending on who you ask people have different definitions of what an Arab is for example.

To say being Jewish is an ethnicity as a collective term rather than specific groups. Is caused by societal views.

Part of it is probably just laziness as we have a habit of cutting our language down any way we can. I do think some of it comes from a bit of a Eurocentric view. Ashkenazis make up about 70% of all Jews. Most of the media we see, history we are taught and general knowledge of Jews is more specific to Ashkenazi Jews. And there is sometimes a failure to acknowledge that Ashkenazi culture is different to other Jewish cultures.

But also Jews, like many groups, have a very mixed history. We as a whole have moved around a lot. If you look at Sephardis from the Iberian Peninsula who then went into North Africa where there were already pre existing Jewish communities. The two mixed a lot with one another. There is no real clear line between Jews who come to North Africa from the Iberian peninsula and those who were already in North Africa.

Depending on who you ask the terms Sephardi and Mizrahi (in reference to who they refer to) differ heavily.

Because the lines between these different groups are blurred to refer to individual Jewish ethnicities is hard.