Big Question

Big Question

I remember spending a long time in a confirmation class discussion on the (paraphrased) question “Are Jews a race, a culture or a religion?”  I don’t remember thinking about or discussing that since then, but it is one of the most important (and unanswered questions) that I am left with after my trip to Israel.

Israel was founded largely by secular Jews.  Many of these Jews left the shtetls of Europe, and came to a kibbutz or a city like Tel Aviv to create a Jewish state.  In many cases they came expressly rejecting the classical image of a Jew, and placed themselves in direct opposition to what we now call the Orthodox Jews.

Theodore Herzl, in laying out his vision for a Jewish state said:

“I consider the Jewish question neither a social nor a religious one, even though it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question…”

Herzl’s vision of a Jewish state is worthy of its own collection of blog posts, and I will touch on him again when I talk about Har Herzl, but here it is important simply to say that from the beginning what we meant by a Jew was central and controversial.

Even when we attempt to answer the question for Birthright eligibility the question is difficult. A Jew is someone who converted to the Jewish religion (because Judaism is a religion). But a Jew is someone who was born to a Jewish parent (because it is cultural/racial).

Early in the history of Zionism someone broke with Herzl because he believed that Shabbat was central to what it meant to be Jewish.  He was a secular Jew, expressly rejected the rules of Judaism, but believed Shabbat as a day of rest was still central to what it meant to be a Jew.  On the other hand, one story from the trip was of a kibbutz writing down that they ate pork for lunch on Yom Kippur, a complete rejection of Judaism as a religion by the most committed of Zionists.

This dichotomy was central in the early days of Israel, with Tel Aviv putting a school at its center instead of a synagogue, and many kibbutz had a water tower at their center, only adding synagogues later to attract tourists.

During the Holocaust being a Jew was purely a racial construction, and even conversion to Christianity by a person or conversion by their parents prior to their birth was often not enough to save people.

So when I say, “I am Jewish”, what does that mean? What should it mean?  Are you more or less Jewish because of your family, in other words, can one be “half Jewish”? Are you more or less Jewish because of the synagogue you go to and the rules you follow?

Taken to the next step, in a topic worthy of its own post, what does it mean to be Israeli and live within the Jewish state as a Jew? Much more importantly and much more difficult, what does it mean to be Israeli and live within the Jewish state as a Muslim or a Christian?

As I said at the start, I hadn’t thought about this question in probably 11 or 12 years, and there is probably no “correct answer”.  I do know, though, that it is way too large for me to answer now.