Jewish Ethnicity
The concept of a Jewish Ethnicity is a strange one. The idea that my blonde blue eyed friend has any ethnic/racial connection to her dark Yemenite boyfriend is, frankly, preposterous. The bloodlines became so diluted so far back and the cultures so different, that in both racial and cultural terms he is probably closer to his Arab neighbors than to her. However, in Jewish circles, both secular and religious, the concept of a Jewish ethnicity is pervasive. Part of this comes from the nationalist movement in Zionism, but the concept of a secular Jewish identity exisited before the advent of Zionism, though I'm not sure how long before. Today, in a class on the Wars of Religion in Early Modern Europe, I heard a point which I think may help elucidate the origin of this idea. I want to stress that this is just an idle thought, I haven't researched it. I think it may make sense though. My professor said that, during the early modern period in Europe, religion was a form of community identification, rather than of personal faith. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 set up the principle of cuius regio eius religio which, loosely translated, means "whoever is king, the religon is his." Basically, what this means is that if your king is Protestant, then so are you and likewise if he's Catholic. Your religion becomes a political statement at this point. People who were not happy with the king decided to be part of an opposing religion (see, for example, the rebellion of the Netherlands against Spain.) Now, obviously this is an oversimplification, but the essense is there. What does this have to do with Jewish ethnic identity? Well, Jews had no political affiliations. A Jew in Poland was never a Pollack, he was always a Jew. If he converted to Catholicism, maybe his children could be Polish. However, the fact that religion became so bound to nationality (which eventually lead to the invention of nationalism)creates the possibilty for a Jew who is still nationally a Jew, even though he is secular. Now, I'm not suggesting that such a person existed at the end of the 16th century, but I am suggesting that it is this mode of thinking which leads to the eventual conception of an ethnic Jew. Maybe this is obvious to most people, but I'd never thought of it before. If somebody knows sources that I could use to either back myself up, or find out where I'm wrong, let me know.
2 Comments:
But there are certainly clues that Jewish ethnic identity goes back much, much further. One of Ezra and Nehemiah's reforms, for example, was the rejection of Israelites who they didn't view as "pure" from the new version of Israelite worship, which centered around the Priestly Code (supposedly what became the book of Deuteronomy). And also, there was the rejection by the Judahites and Benjamites of the Samaritans, who, despite worshipping the Israelite god (albeit in an idiosyncratic fashion) were branded too mixed with the transplanted settlers from Assyria. King Herod was not accepted as a true Jew by many of the elite during that time period because he had only a Jewish father (and Samaritan mother). So even when a religion was shared (as it was with the Samaritans and with Herod later), there was clearly a nascent concept of Jewish "ethnicity," even before the Roman Exile.
Michael
Kosher Eucharist
Michael,
You are right, I should have qualified my comment. What you are talking about it more tribal identity than ethnicity in the modern sense. There are similarities, but there are also differences. Modern ethnicity, as I understand it, only really goes back as far as the early modern period. This really isn't my field though, so I could be way off base. In any case, in medieval times, this concept of ethnicity did not exist. Jews could, for the most part, convert without stigma so long as they were sincere. This was the whole point of the inquisition. Not to destroy a race of Jews, but to get rid of the false converts. True converts were welcome. What connected people was faith, or at least ritual, not shared ancestery.
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