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Jew and Judaist,
Ethnic and Religious: How They Mix in America
Rabbi Jacob Neusner
Spring 2002
The Ethnic and the Jewish
The Jews in Western democracies, especially in the USA and Canada, form an
ethnic group, and in the State of Israel they constitute a nation. They share a
common history and memory, seeing themselves as a community of fate, not of
faith. For instance, certain food in certain places is regarded as “Jewish,”
meaning, a Jewish ethnic specialty. At one time bagels were a Jewish food, so
Jews were called “bagel-eaters,” just as in ancient times, they called
themselves “garlic eaters.” But if we know how to bake bagels, we do not
necessarily know anything about how Judaism, the religion, views God or virtue
or salvation.
Religion and Ethnicity
Judaism is a religion, with normative beliefs and practices. Jews who practice
Judaism always belong to the ethnic group, the Jews. But matters are not so
simple. Thus, by converting to Judaism, the religion, a gentile becomes not only
a Judaist - one who practices Judaism - but a Jew. Such a one is then part of
the Jewish community as much as of the community of Judaism.
So in the Jewish framework religion and ethnicity are difficult to separate. In
the USA and Canada, Western Europe and Hispanic America, the Jews form an ethnic
group, part of which also practices the religion, Judaism. In the State of
Israel, the Jews form the vast majority of the population of a nation, only part
of which also practices the religion, Judaism. There Judaism is not the culture
of an ethnic group, nor is it the nationalism of a nation-state, even though it
is nourished by, and helps to define, both.
What is required to sort out the ethnic and the religious in the Jewish context
is first to distinguish the religious and the ethnic. For the sake of analysis
they are to be treated as though they represented components of a community’s
life and culture that can be differentiated. Then we have, second, to show how,
in reality, Jews actually combine the religious faith with ethnic culture and
sentiment, the sacred with the secular. The reality shows a community of Jews
who are mostly Judaists, practitioners of Judaism - but on their own, ethnic
terms. In much of contemporary American Judaism, the religion serves as a medium
of ethnic identification.
The Religious and the Ethnic in Contemporary Judaism
The ethnic group and the religion shape the life of one another, but the fate of
Judaism as a religion is not the same as the fate of the Jews as a group. If the
Jews as a group grow few in numbers, the life of the religion, Judaism, may yet
flourish among those that practice it. And if the Jews as a group grow numerous
and influential, but do not practice the religion, Judaism (or any other
religion), or practice a religion other than Judaism. then the religion,
Judaism, will lose its voice, even while the Jews as a group flourish. The
upshot is simple. A book (that is, a set of religious ideas, divorced from a
social entity) is not a Judaism, but the opinions on any given subject of every
individual Jew also do not add up to a Judaism.
To have a Judaism we require [1] a group of Jews who together set forth [2] a
way of life, [3] a world view, and [4] a theory of who and what they are. Many
of the great debates among Judaisms over history have focused upon the
definition of the word, “Israel,” meaning not the nation-state, the State of
Israel of our own day, but the people, Israel, of which Scripture speaks. That
is not a question of the here and now but an issue of what it means to form the
people descended from the saints and prophets of that “kingdom of priests and
holy people” that God calls into being at Sinai, that defines itself within the
Torah. So, once more, we see how the ethnic shades over into the religion, as
much as the religious nourishes ethnic identification.
The Paradox of Ethnicity in Judaism
Here then is a religion that addresses all humanity with a message of what God
wants of all creation but is identified with a particular ethnic group, the
Jews. The universality of its focus, the religion’s concern for the entire
history and destiny of the human race and its message of salvation, these are
framed in terms that involve a specific group of people. In the time that
everyone that belonged to that people believed in God and practiced Judaism,
then that “people” corresponded, in Judaism, to “the Church, the mystical body
of Christ,” in Christianity, that is to say, “people” stood for “holy
community,” a religious group. Then, everyone understood, to form “Israel” was
not the same thing as to form a nation or an ethnic, secular community. It
meant, to form a holy community. But in modern times some Jews gave up the
practice of Judaism without adopting any other religion. Furthermore, these
people remained part of the group, which, consequently, lost its clear-cut
character as a religious community and came to be seen as an ethnic group. The
group defined itself by common traits of ethnicity, for instance, customs and
ceremonies, rather than by a common religion involving divine commandments and
sacred rites. But within the group, many continue to practice Judaism. Not only
so, but as we shall see, people convert to the religion, Judaism, and as a
matter of common practice, that conversion admits them also to the ethnic group.
And Jews who give up Judaism for another religion are regarded as having left
the ethnic group. Clearly, matters are complicated.
The Universal Religion of an Ethnic Group
Then, when it comes to the Jews, we see a fine case of the mixture of secularity
and religiosity, ethnicity and faith. Jews form an ethnic group but Judaism is a
universal religion. The puzzle comes about because only some of the Jews
practice Judaism, but all of them regard all those who practice Judaism as not
only “Judaists” (“people who observe the Judaic religion”) but also as “Jews”
(members of the ethnic community).
Public Religion versus Plural Ethnicity
No one confuses the Catholic faith with the ethnic culture of Italians, Poles,
Austrians, Spaniards, Germans, or Brazilians, Catholics all. To be a Lutheran is
not necessarily also to be a Finn, Dane, Swede, Norwegian, or German. Everyone
understands that there is a Catholic or a Lutheran faith that is distinct from
the various ethnic cultures that take shape in dialogue with that faith, that
transcends the particularities of circumstance. Brazilian and American
Pentecostals know the difference between nationality and religion. So too
Judaism is not an ethnic religion, and the opinions of an ethnic group cannot
serve to define that religion. Practice of the singular faith takes diverse
forms in different circumstances, so that the national culture of the State of
Israel, infused though it is with Judaism, is not the same thing as Judaism, nor
is the ethnic culture of American Jews.
Some Jews may declare themselves atheists. But Judaism teaches that one, unique
God created the world and gave the Torah. Other Jews may not believe in the
resurrection of the dead. But Judaic worship, whether Orthodox or Reform affirms
that God raises the dead and “keeps faith with those that sleep in the dust.” A
public opinion poll might produce broad Jewish consensus in favor of abortion.
Judaism, the religion, in its classical formulation condemns abortion from the
ninetieth day after conception. (Some contemporary Judaic formulations do not
concur.)
Many Jews regard “Judaism” as the foundation for liberal opinion, even quoting
verses of Scripture to prove their point. But among the faithful, that is, among
those who practice a Judaism of one kind or another - considerable debate takes
place on whether Judaism is conservative or liberal, or even whether these
contemporary political categories apply at all. Because of these simple facts,
the confusion of the ethnic and the religious must be addressed head on.
Otherwise, the representation of Judaism in these pages, based as it is on the
classical sources of Judaism and contemporary practice of Judaism in synagogues
by the faithful, will conflict with the impressions we gain from everyday life.
How come personal opinion takes the place of public religious doctrine? The
reason is that Judaism, the religion, in North America, Europe, Latin America,
the South Pacific and South Africa, finds itself wrapped around by Jewishness,
the ethnic identity of persons who derive from Jewish parents and deem “being
Jewish” to bear meaning in their familial and social life and cultural world. In
considering the facts of Judaism that the world about presents, therefore, we
have always to remember that the Jews form a community, only part of which
practices Judaism. Some may even join synagogues and attend public worship
mainly to be with other Jews, not to engage in public worship. They may wish to
utilize the synagogue to raise their children “as Jews,” while in their homes
they practice no form of Judaism. A key institution of Judaism, the Sabbath, is
praised by a secular thinker in these words: “More than Israel has kept the
Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.” That is, the Sabbath is treated as
instrumental, Israel the secular group as principal. But in Judaism, the Sabbath
is a holy day, sanctified by Israel, the holy people, and not a means for some
ethnic goal of self-preservation.
Israel: Location or Holy Community
To explain the mixture of ethnic and religious, a simple case serves for
illustration. The word “Israel” today generally refers to the overseas political
nation, the State of Israel. When people say, “I am going to Israel,” they mean
a trip to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, and when they speak of Israeli policy or
issues, they assume they refer to a nation-state. But the word “Israel” in
Scripture and in the canonical writings of the religion, Judaism, speaks of the
holy community that God has called forth through Abraham and Sarah, to which God
has given the Torah (“teaching”) at Mount Sinai, of which the Psalmist speaks
when he says, “The One who keeps Israel does not slumber or sleep”(Ps. 121). The
Psalmists and the Prophets, the sages of Judaism in all ages, the prayers that
Judaism teaches, all use the word “Israel” to mean “the holy community.”
“Israel” in Judaism forms the counterpart to “the Church, the mystical body of
Christ” in Christianity. Among most Judaisms, to be “Israel” means to model life
in the image, after the likeness, of God, who is made manifest in the Torah.
Today “Israel” in synagogue worship speaks of that holy community, but “Israel”
in Jewish community affairs means “the State of Israel.”
That example of the confusion of this-worldly nation with holy community by no
means ends matters. In the Jewish world outside of the State of Israel, Jews
form a community, and some Jews (also) practice Judaism. To enter the Jewish
community, which is secular and ethnic, a gentile adopts the religion, Judaism;
his or her children are then accepted as native-born Jews, without distinction,
and are able to marry other Jews without conversion. So the ethnic community
opens its doors not by reason of outsiders’ adopting the markers of ethnicity -
the food or the association or the music - but by reason of adopting what is not
ethnic but religion. And to leave the Jewish community that is ethnic, one takes
the door of faith. Here comes a further, but not important, complication. While
not all Jews practice Judaism, in the iron-consensus among contemporary Jews,
Jews who practice Christianity cease to be part of the ethnic Jewish community,
while those who practice Buddhism remain within. Buddhism, not a monotheism (not
even theistic) is viewed as a philosophy, not a competing religion.
Christianity, monotheist as is Judaism, reaching back to the same Scriptures,
viewing the history of humanity within the same structures, sharing much in
traditions of ethics, is a competing religion; for Jews and the diverse
Judaisms, moreover, the long and bloody record of Christian antipathy to the
Jews and Judaism, the massacres and pogroms and “Christ-killer” epithets, the
annual Passion narratives with their dreadful portrayal of “the Jews” - these
serve to place Christianity outside the range of commitments that the Jewish
ethnic community can tolerate. And, as to those that practice Judaism, to adopt
any other religion is to apostatize, pure and simple.
The Books Describe Judaism the People Practice Jewishness (Ethnicity)
The holy books of Judaism speak to people who are always and only Jews. Not only
so, but they are Jews by God’s choice, subject to an eternal covenant between
God and Israel, which they cannot abrogate but may only violate. But the social
platform of American and Canadian Jews rests on the principle that Jews are
(also) Americans or Canadians, integrated by choice, not segregated by choice.
And in addition, within the American or Canadian populations, they form an
ethnic group - three things: Americans by nationality, Jews by ethnicity,
Judaists by religion. They suffer no obligations except those they voluntarily
accept; and a votive obligation is an oxymoron. “Israel” (the holy community of
the Torah) is Israel because a person feels like it, wants it, affirms it,
always voluntarily; never coerced by God, on the one side, or by a hostile
society, on the other (or even. by a friendly and welcoming society for that
matter). And at that point, the books become simply implausible: they speak of
an “Israel” no one knows, or wants to comprise: the Israel of Sinai, the “we” of
“we shall act and we shall obey” without equivocation, without negotiation.
To people who may choose to be Jews or not, may decide to live only among Jews
or to live with gentiles as well, books that speak only of holy Israel, a people
that dwells apart, deliver a puzzling message, one to be negotiated, affirmed
but also interpreted.
-Rabbi Jacob Neusner
Rabbi Jacob Neusner is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America (1960) and Research Professor of Religion and Theology at Bard College,
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
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