Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavelrub | Hacker News Reader

What a bizarre comment. Saying "Jews, in general, aren't an ethnicity" is almost an oxymoron - for it is precisely the identity shared between this group of people, that justifies the existence of words such as "Jews". There is an evident sense of shared identity between different populations of Jews, based on common history, culture, customs and traditions - this is the very definition of ethnicity, and this why we refer to all of them as "Jews".

View on HN

That's an interesting interpretation. I assume you mean as decendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? I had never considered Catholics or christianity an ethnic group. Because to me it implied shared genetic features.

You are confusing Judaism - the religion, with the Jewish people - an ethnorelegious group. Many modern Jews are atheists - they certainly don't believe in Judaism, yet nobody would doubt that they are Jewish, nor would they deny this themselves. Similarly - a Jew can become a christian or a muslim yet ethnically still remain a Jew. The same cannot be said about christians or muslims.

>a Jew can become a christian or a muslim yet ethnically still remain a Jew

I completely agree with your comment, and not only that but also find your view on the quote interesting as well.

A lot of Jews would say that any Jew who becomes a Christian is no longer Jewish (by ethnicity or religion) even if said "Jewish Christian" still abides by and observes many Jewish customs and holidays.

A lot of Jews are still mad that the greatest man among them started the most successful and enduring sect of Judaism ever, and then had the gall to welcome foreigners.

I may still be confused, because without the term Jewish people, it would seem that many adherents to the Jewish faith which are not ethnically Jewish would not be considered Jews?

I would argue that there are also many atheist Catholics (e.g. in Italy) who would disagree that they were not also part of an ethnorelegious group.

Judaism is very different than most religions in that it doesn't try to spread, but is instead quite insular. If you want to convert it's a big deal with study, testing, and culminating with a literal certificate of conversion - that can be revoked. It's also very unique in that Jewish Orthodoxy considers it 'genetic'. If your mother was a Jew, you are a Jew - regardless of whether you consider yourself e.g. an atheist.

The majority of Jews today (in the ballpark of 75%) are Ashkenazi Jews which is a sort of 'race' in that they share a very recent common ancestor -- which is also why so many Jews share common physical features. All of this is very different than other religions, even other Abrahamic religions. So it is not inconsistent that state that Jews are an ethnic group, but other religious groups are not.

Orthodoxy is only one small part of Judaism and Jews.

> If you want to convert it's a big deal with study, testing, and culminating with a literal certificate of conversion - that can be revoked.

https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/50602/can-conver...

Only in narrow areas, such as modern State of Israel (which is a blip in Jewish history, and not the world government of Jews), which very special circumstances.

It's complicated.

Also, you can be a non-Jewish woman, marry a Jewish man, and have Jewish children, who an Orthodox Jew might call non-Jewish children, but those children and their descendants and neighbors may never think are "not Jewish"

You have things reversed. What you see today is an extremely rapid reformation upon reformation of Judaism. This is the blip in Jewish history. However, what has led up to today is the product of what we would consider orthodox Judaism, which of course was simply called Judaism.

For instance, in the past interfaith marriage was not only frowned upon but something that would likely result in individuals facing exile from the Jewish community. This, for instance, is why most Jews today share so many distinct physical and other characteristics. In searching for some interesting numbers I came upon this article [1] which you might find interesting - it discusses the ongoing "reformation" of Judaism. The reason I put reformation in quotes is because I think it's "reforming" in the way that most religions are today - it's fading. And I think a century it will probably make no more sense to refer to Jews as an ethnic group than it would to refer to Irish Americans as an ethic group today. However, as of today Jews most certainly remain an ethic group by most all facets of the word.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/us/poll-shows-major-shift...

There are multiple ethnic groups that follow the Jewish religion – Askhenazim are ethnically quite different from Mizrahim for example – both culturally and genetically. Now, there is some cultural and genetic commonality between the two groups, but is it sufficient to say they are the same ethnicity? Well, Italians and Spaniards traditionally share a religion (Roman Catholicism), speak related languages, and share some biological ancestry – does that make them one ethnic group? From a linguistic perspective, Italians and Spaniards arguably have more in common than Askhenazim and Mizrahim, since Italian and Spanish belong to the same branch (Romance/Italic) of the same language family (Indo-European), whereas Yiddish and Judeo-Arabic belong to completely different language families–Indo-European vs. Afroasiatic–despite sharing influence from Hebrew and Aramaic.

> Now, there is some cultural and genetic commonality between the two groups, but is it sufficient to say they are the same ethnicity?

Of course, because both groups view themselves as belonging to the same group of people, with shared customs, history, religion and tradition, that dates back to the Kingdom of Israel. What you don't seem to understand is that ethnicity is a social concept - the criteria isn't "how much two people have in common", but whether a shared identity exists between them. You should ask yourself what makes you refer to both Ashkenazim and Mizrahim as "Jews", and what makes them refer to themselves as such, even among people who don't believe in Judaism.

> Well, Italians and Spaniards traditionally share a religion (Roman Catholicism), speak related languages, and share some biological ancestry – does that make them one ethnic group?

If they share the same ethnic identity then of course.

Ethnicity seems to me to be a sort of taxonomic hierarchy. Some ethnic groups are more closely related to each other than others. Ethnicities can be grouped together into families of closely related ethnicities, which in turn can often be further grouped into broader families of less closely related ethnicities; ethnicities can often be further subdivided into sub-ethnicities. Are Jews a single ethnicity, or a family of related ethnicities? You could ask the same question about the Han Chinese, or about Italians; it is somewhat arbitrary, and the question is influenced by politics – Italian nationalism emphasises the notion of a single Italian ethnicity, separatist movements such as Sicilian nationalism or the Lega Nord emphasise regional ethnic identities instead.

You want to focus on subjective questions of identity, but it isn't clear to me that all Jews have the same subjective sense of identity. Does a secular Zionist in Tel Aviv have the same subjective sense of identity as a Satmar anti-Zionist in Kiryas Joel? Certainly their "subjective sense of identity" has completely different ideological foundations. They likely wouldn't agree on who is a Jew either, since their different ideological foundations would lead them to different positions on issues such as conversion standards and patrilineal descent.

Yes - both a secular Zionist Jew in Tel Aviv and a Satmar Jew in the US (both are, by the way, most likely Ashkenazi) would see themselves as belonging to the same broad group of people with shared customs, culture and history - the Jews. This is why we refer to both groups as "Jews".

This doesn't of course mean that their "subjective sense of identity" is identical in its entirety, but that's pretty much the case with every ethnicity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com