This isn’t directed at you and don’t feel obligated to respond but I’m seeing NatCons and Religious Zionists teaming up and saying only Orthodox Jews are Jews — that only practice makes you Jewish. I don’t want that to happen in the anti-CRT crowd, too — that the only way to be Jewish is practice (since in their eyes it’s only a religion…
This isn’t directed at you and don’t feel obligated to respond but I’m seeing NatCons and Religious Zionists teaming up and saying only Orthodox Jews are Jews — that only practice makes you Jewish. I don’t want that to happen in the anti-CRT crowd, too — that the only way to be Jewish is practice (since in their eyes it’s only a religion, all other categories of being Jewish, I.e. ethnicity, group/historic association are constructions).
Granted, at the end of the day only Jews get to decide what it means to be Jewish but these arguments are hitting my ears funny
I don't mind responding. Firstly, though they're the most obvious of Jews, due to their outward appearance, the orthodox (and ultra-orthodox) only make up 10% of the American-Jewish population. There's almost no interaction, physical or spiritual, between these subsets of Jews and the majority who identify as modern orthodox, reform, conservative, reconstructionist, or secular. It true that many orthodox Jews consider those Jews who are not their denomination to not be Jewish...but who cares, certainly not the other 90%. According to Pew Research "Secularism has a long tradition in Jewish life in America, and most U.S. Jews seem to recognize this: 62% say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, while just 15% say it is mainly a matter of religion. Even among Jews by religion, more than half (55%) say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, and two-thirds say it is not necessary to believe in God to be Jewish."
Secondly, when you say, " only Jews get to decide what it means to be Jewish", have you've forgotten the Nazis who crafted and legislated The Nuremberg Race Laws? The Nazis could care less about Judaism, the religion of the Jews...they focused on the "race" and "ethnicity" of Jews, using quasi-science to formulate the reasoning for progressing toward the systematic extermination of the "vermin" Jews as set forth in the guidelines established for the Final Solution at the Lake Wannsee Conference (1942).
Naked, and waiting for the hydrogen cyanide to extinguish their lives in an Auschwitz gas chamber, do we really think that the orthodox Jew and the secular Jew argued over who could call themself Jewish? The Nazis had already done the meticulous legwork for them?
When I say "I'm a Zionist" I believe, given the history of Jewish victimhood, that there should be, and must be, at least a single nation on the planet that can be considered a permanent safe haven for the Jewish people. There are 50 Muslim dominated countries, 15 Christian nations, 3 Hindu nations, and 16 nations that identify Buddhism as their dominant religion. Why can't Israel, which has a population that's 74% Jewish, and is only the size of New Jersey (USA), be an uncontested Jewish Homeland. Israel is almost as old as most of the Arab States that surround it (founded in 1948), yet nobody contests the existence of Jordan (1946), Egypt (1953), Lebanon (1943) or Syria (1946).
As soon as I hit send I knew that “only Jews get to decide” thing was going to stand out 🤣 yes. You are 100% correct. I think what I was getting at in this instance is that we can tell these current people that we’ll decide our identity for ourselves. Like how you’re saying with the Orthodox and secular Jews.
This isn’t directed at you and don’t feel obligated to respond but I’m seeing NatCons and Religious Zionists teaming up and saying only Orthodox Jews are Jews — that only practice makes you Jewish. I don’t want that to happen in the anti-CRT crowd, too — that the only way to be Jewish is practice (since in their eyes it’s only a religion, all other categories of being Jewish, I.e. ethnicity, group/historic association are constructions).
Granted, at the end of the day only Jews get to decide what it means to be Jewish but these arguments are hitting my ears funny
I don't mind responding. Firstly, though they're the most obvious of Jews, due to their outward appearance, the orthodox (and ultra-orthodox) only make up 10% of the American-Jewish population. There's almost no interaction, physical or spiritual, between these subsets of Jews and the majority who identify as modern orthodox, reform, conservative, reconstructionist, or secular. It true that many orthodox Jews consider those Jews who are not their denomination to not be Jewish...but who cares, certainly not the other 90%. According to Pew Research "Secularism has a long tradition in Jewish life in America, and most U.S. Jews seem to recognize this: 62% say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, while just 15% say it is mainly a matter of religion. Even among Jews by religion, more than half (55%) say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, and two-thirds say it is not necessary to believe in God to be Jewish."
Secondly, when you say, " only Jews get to decide what it means to be Jewish", have you've forgotten the Nazis who crafted and legislated The Nuremberg Race Laws? The Nazis could care less about Judaism, the religion of the Jews...they focused on the "race" and "ethnicity" of Jews, using quasi-science to formulate the reasoning for progressing toward the systematic extermination of the "vermin" Jews as set forth in the guidelines established for the Final Solution at the Lake Wannsee Conference (1942).
Naked, and waiting for the hydrogen cyanide to extinguish their lives in an Auschwitz gas chamber, do we really think that the orthodox Jew and the secular Jew argued over who could call themself Jewish? The Nazis had already done the meticulous legwork for them?
When I say "I'm a Zionist" I believe, given the history of Jewish victimhood, that there should be, and must be, at least a single nation on the planet that can be considered a permanent safe haven for the Jewish people. There are 50 Muslim dominated countries, 15 Christian nations, 3 Hindu nations, and 16 nations that identify Buddhism as their dominant religion. Why can't Israel, which has a population that's 74% Jewish, and is only the size of New Jersey (USA), be an uncontested Jewish Homeland. Israel is almost as old as most of the Arab States that surround it (founded in 1948), yet nobody contests the existence of Jordan (1946), Egypt (1953), Lebanon (1943) or Syria (1946).
As soon as I hit send I knew that “only Jews get to decide” thing was going to stand out 🤣 yes. You are 100% correct. I think what I was getting at in this instance is that we can tell these current people that we’ll decide our identity for ourselves. Like how you’re saying with the Orthodox and secular Jews.
Yes, Gabrielle as I opined in my original missive on this thread...the fact of being Jewish is oh-so "complicated."😀🤔