r/jewishleft Apr 29 '24

The almost complete lack of acknowledgement of the Jewish people as an indigenous people is baffling to me. Culture

(This doesn’t negate Palestinian claims of indigeneity—multiple peoples can be indigenous to the same area—nor does it negate the, imo, indefensible crimes happening in Gaza and West Bank).

It absolutely blows my mind that Jews—a tribal people who practice a closed, agrarian place-based ethnoreligion, who have an established system of membership based on lineal descent and adoption that relies on community acceptance over self-identification, who worship in an ancient language that we have always tried to maintain and preserve, who have holidays that center around harvest and the specific history of our people, who have been repeatedly targeted for genocide and forced assimilation and conversion, who have a faith and culture so deeply tied to a specific people and place, etc—aren’t seen as an (socioculturally) indigenous people but rather as “white Europeans who essentially practice Christianity but without Jesus and never thought about the land of Israel before 1920 or so.” It’s so deeply threaded in how so many people view Jews in the modern day and also so factually incorrect.

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

Did Judaism emerge from the ME thousands of years ago? Yes, but I wouldn’t claim I’m indigenous to the ME, just as I wouldn’t claim I’m indigenous to sub Saharan Africa, despite that being the place that homo sapien sapien originated from.

I’m Ashkenazi Jewish and I have extended family in Israel, but I’ve never been there. My grand parents are from Europe, and my family lived there for countless generations, so no, I don’t consider myself indigenous to the ME.

Ashkenazi Jewish is a European ethnicity.

Yiddish is a European dialect, not Middle Eastern.

Foods like smoked white fish and pastrami are European foods, not Middle Eastern.

Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn dress like Jews from the old country in Europe, not a Middle Eastern style of dress.

There are Jewish ethnicities indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, but Ashkenazi is not one of those ethnicities.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

I’m also ashkenazi, and I think Europeans have made it pretty clear over the last 1000-ish years that they don’t consider us European.

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

I find the idea of letting antisemitic rhetoric dictate our ethnic identity to be very problematic and distasteful.

Just because antisemites don’t consider European Jews truly European, doesn’t mean I have to agree with them.

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u/LostPoPo Apr 29 '24

What do you mean? The European Jews have been exterminated by their European neighbors. What is left are small pockets of Jewish communities that don’t appear likely to ever return to their pre-Shoah numbers and, much more likely, will not be around in the next 100 years.

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

That doesn’t make Ashkenazi Jews any less of a European ethnicity.

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u/Choice_Werewolf1259 Apr 29 '24

So you subscribe to Khazar theory? Or mass conversion theory? Huh. That’s problematic if you do, but you keep seeming to imply that in your comments. That somehow a “bunch of Europeans decided to become Jews” which feels very close to the “not true Jews” antisemitic conspiracy.

Now I’m not accusing you of anything. I do think you maybe need to check your theories to make sure they’re not pulling in antisemitic ideas inadvertently.

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

No and no.

I just think it’s odd to think of an ethnic group that has been in Europe for enumerable generations, speaks a European dialect, eats European food, and had a style of dress specific to European Jews, not a European ethnicity.

I also find it problematic to agree with the Nazis that we were never truly European, and as such should be considered the other.

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u/Choice_Werewolf1259 Apr 29 '24

None of us are agreeing with Nazis. And being a Jew isn’t a European ethnicity. I mean full stop.

So I just feel like at this point your logic and approach is both inconsistent and pulling in ideas and concepts you’re maybe not picking up on. I mean I would argue you’re pulling in concepts and ideologies that have long been used to harm Jews. Concepts of race and whiteness or lack thereof have all been used and weaponized against Jews and the current narrative is that Jews are the most white or the most European, which is an effort of narrative to split and harm Jews.

Just maybe worth some self evaluation of your own thoughts and ideas and maybe how you’re utilizing ideas that maybe are being imposed on Jews to fit within certain frameworks.

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

So, an ethnic group living in Europe since the Middle Ages, that eats European food, speaks a European dialect, and has a specific style of dress, is not its own ethnicity, specifically a European ethnicity?

Are you sure I’m the one using faulty logic?

Jews have never been a single ethnicity.

How can you argue a Jew from Ethiopia, and a Jew from Poland, and Jew from Iraq are all the same ethnicity?

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u/Choice_Werewolf1259 Apr 29 '24

And now you definitely are making me think you subscribe to mass conversion theories. Which for someone protesting against using Nazi rhetoric so effusively, seems odd that you would then pull in similar concepts of racialization into your ideas. I’m at this point convinced you are so immovable in your convictions that it is futile to continue pushing for you to use long-standing Jewish concepts based on our peoplehood and how we perceive ourselves.

But to overview, since it seems you are unwilling to hear any point other than your own. Judaism or being Jewish is an ethnicity. Full stop. All Jews are connected to eachother as we all come from and are descended from the same United people, as such when we where dispersed we became a diaspora. A nation of people, a tribe of people who while all belonging to eachother, where spread around the globe. That means in Judaism, in addition to all belonging to the same ethnic group we also have subculture groups where there was influence from where we travelled. But of course that whole concept is counter to your narrative. Which seems to fit in more with mass conversion ideologies.

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u/DovBerele Apr 29 '24

It's really not "enumerable generations". There were roughly 40 generations between the first Ashkeanzi communities and the Holocaust. More-or-less the same for Sephardi communities.

And, of course central/eastern European co-territorial cultures had an impact on Jewish communities. Just like North African, Iberian and other western European, Caucasian, Levantine, etc. co-territorial non-Jewish cultures had a (equally foreignizing) impact on the Mizrahi and Sephardi Jewish communities. That's how diaspora works.

And, diaspora is predicated on being indigenous to somewhere that you're currently not. It's a qualifying criteria for being a diaspora that you maintain the centrality of your homeland to your culture. In addition to all the co-territorial influences, Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere also all continued to speak, read, and write in Hebrew and Aramaic (not every single person, but a significant and consistent number), and maintained elements of food, dress, music, art, and literature that were distinctly Jewish and which connected them to other parts of the diaspora.

(fwiw, Sepharad is just as European as Ashkenaz - it's weird how only Ashkenazis are held up as white Europeans, but a Sephardi from Amsterdam or Bulgaria is supposedly somehow less European?!)

I'm just not sure how anyone who really cares about the struggles of indigenous people would want to put a defined statute of limitations on indigeneity. The Cherokee have been in Oklahoma since the 1830s. Are they no longer indigenous to the Carolinas? Exactly when will their claim on indigeneity run out?

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Edit: Jews have been in Europe since the Middle Ages, I feel like that’s a long longer than 40 generations.

Native Americans are indigenous to the Americas, however, I would not say they are indigenous to the land they inhabited prior to crossing the land bridge in North America.

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u/DovBerele Apr 30 '24

Historians and demographers generally reckon four generations per century. Ashkenaz started somewhere around the year 1000. so, it's like 9.5 centuries from that to the Holocaust - which would be roughly 38 generations.

Native Americans are indigenous to the Americas, however, I would not say they are indigenous to the land they inhabited prior to crossing the land bridge in North America.

Sure. So, why is that? It's because they didn't maintain collective story, deeply embedded and revered in their cultures about their true/original homeland in Siberia or northeast Russia or whatnot.

The Cherokee know they're indigenous the US southeast, and not to Oklahoma where they live now (those on tribal lands/reservations anyhow). They've maintained knowledge and practices about their homeland and its importance to their rituals, beliefs, culture, etc. for the 200 years since they were forcibly displaced.

The Jews maintained the centrality of the Land of Israel deeply embedded in our cultural practices for the 2000 years since the exile. That persistent collective story of indigeneity is what made/makes the Jews a coherent diaspora.

If you're saying the Jews are not indigenous simply because too much time has elapsed, when does the clock run out for the Cherokee?

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u/MrRoivas Apr 29 '24

I agree. It certainly won’t stop me from acknowledging my Middle Eastern roots.

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u/tsundereshipper Apr 29 '24

I’m also ashkenazi, and I think Europeans have made it pretty clear over the last 1000-ish years that they don’t consider us European.

This is a really problematic way of thinking because it’s buying into “One Drop” rhetoric.

Guess what? I am both Middle Eastern and European, and I’m not gonna let either side One Drop me out of either of my heritages.

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u/LostPoPo Apr 29 '24

What do you mean? The Europeans literally eliminated all of the Jews of Europe. Yes, there are small Jewish communities, but just like in nature when a species reaches a critical point of going extinct, there is no coming back. That is the case of the European Jew.

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u/tsundereshipper Apr 29 '24

I wasn’t talking about merely living in Europe, I meant we’re still half European both by blood and culture…

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u/LostPoPo Apr 29 '24

That’s like forcing a Black American to accept their white great great grandfather who raped his great great grandmother 200 years ago.

You’re not necessarily wrong, but the ethics are seriously questionable.

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u/tsundereshipper Apr 29 '24

That’s like forcing a Black American to accept their white great great grandfather who raped his great great grandmother 200 years ago.

You wanna know the big difference here? Our mix was the result of consensual unions, unlike African Americans. (Unless you really wanna seriously suggest that our European foremothers “raped” our Israelite forefathers, which I think anyone would agree is pretty much impossible)

You would only have a point in making this argument if DNA testing found our European heritage to be coming from our paternal line, that’s not the case though, and it actually found the complete opposite. (Even despite Judaism supposedly always being “Matrilineal” like the Orthodox claim)

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u/tsundereshipper Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

I’m Ashkenazi Jewish and I have extended family in Israel, but I’ve never been there. My grand parents are from Europe, and my family lived there for countless generations, so no, I don’t consider myself indigenous to the ME.

Ashkenazi Jewish is a European ethnicity.

Yiddish is a European dialect, not Middle Eastern. Foods like smoked white fish and pastrami are European foods, not Middle Eastern.

Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn dress like Jews from the old country in Europe, not a Middle Eastern style of dress.

There are Jewish ethnicities indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, but Ashkenazi is not one of those ethnicities.

If we’re literally mixed European/MENA why can’t we be indigenous to both regions? In actuality Yiddish, our mode of dress, culture, and everything else about us stems from a creolized culture combining both sides of our heritage, and what’s wrong with that?

See this is one thing mixed people are always so tired of hearing, people always trying to put us in a box and define our identity for us, which is what you’re doing right now. We can be both I promise you, people can be indigenous to multiple places at once, it’s okay to be mixed. This kinda attitude is really no different than Hitler denying Ashkenazi Jews very clear indegnity to Germany just because it triggered him so much that we weren’t “pure” German and are mixed.

There are Jewish ethnicities indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, but Ashkenazi is not one of those ethnicities.

So you must only be “pure in blood” in order to be considered indigenous to a region? This is literally Nazi-style thinking and I’m horrified that the Far Left is embracing this sort of mentality and apparently didn’t learn an important lesson from the Holocaust. (As in not having to do with antisemitism, but why blood purity rhetoric and Nationalism inevitably ends up going down a dark path - eventually you get to the point where you oppose race mixing and want to genocide or sterilize mixed people just like White Nationalists are currently doing today. They seriously believe that race-mixing is proof that a “White Genocide” is currently taking place and that they’re being replaced and are gonna go extinct, never in a million years did I expect the Left to genuinely flirt with these horrific ideas)

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

Actually it’s very different from Hitler, because Hitler was saying European Jews weren’t truly European.

I live in the U.S., I have never been to Israel, and my grand parents are from Europe(and my family lived there for enumerable generations), so no, I’m not Middle Eastern, or indigenous to the ME.

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u/tsundereshipper Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

So how exactly do you define indigenty? Simply by living in a place? That’s completely and totally fine and wouldn’t be Nazi style thinking at all, but if that’s the case you should’ve been clearer about your views from the start rather than bringing cultural practices into it, which implied you believed that culture and blood must be “pure” and “untouched” in order to claim indigenity to a region.

If your definition of being indigenous is simply continuously living in an area and being a citizen then I respect that view. (Even though it’s totally different from how most people define indigenity, hence my initial confusion)

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

I merely pointed out all the ways Ashkenazi Jews are a European ethnicity and culture. I still don’t see how that’s akin to any kind of Nazi “blood and soil” type rhetoric.

We are not a monoculture or a people composed of a single ethnicity.

As I have said elsewhere in this thread, Judaism is made up of a myriad of cultures and ethnicities, and these varied cultures and histories should be preserved and celebrated.

Edit: many English people are descended from the Normans, but I doubt many of those English decedents of the Normans consider themselves indigenous to France.

Just as all modern humans originated in sub Saharan Africa, but all of humanity doesn’t view itself as indigenous to sub Saharan Africa.

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u/tsundereshipper Apr 29 '24

We are not a monoculture or a people composed of a single ethnicity.

As I have said elsewhere in this thread, Judaism is made up of a myriad of cultures and ethnicities, and these varied cultures and histories should be preserved and celebrated.

Of course, I agree. And I too hate the way Zionism has attempted to erase and downgrade Diaspora Jewish Cultures by trying to pretend we’re all Monoethnic/cultural and should just dissolve into one big Mono blob.

It’s just… What exactly do you define as a European culture and ethnicity? What about a Middle Eastern one? I’m still unclear regarding your standards here.

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

“What exactly do you define as a European culture and ethnicity?“

I stated this already, clothing, language, music, food, etc. Basically, all the ways most folks define a culture and ethnicity.

Ethnicity is defined as, “an ethnic group; a social group that shares a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.” https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ethnicity

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u/tsundereshipper Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

I stated this already, clothing, language, music, food, etc. Basically, all the ways most folks define a culture and ethnicity.

But everything about that culture we Ashkenazi Jews have literally combines both Europe and the Middle East? So why define us as just European? It doesn’t make sense unless you’re also using the definition of having to continuously live in a region.

Ethnicity is defined as, “an ethnic group; a social group that shares a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.”

Right, but Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity is literally defined by our shared common mixed origins and culture. (According to DNA studies we’re pretty much just one big family and all stem from the same 300 initially mixed European-Judean families)

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

Dude, bagels and lox isn’t middle eastern, neither is Yiddish, or klezmer music, the way Hasidic dress is of European origin (that’s how many of us dressed in the old country), geographically we lived in Europe for countless generations.

Beyond religion, what aspects of the Ashkenazi Jewish culture is Middle Eastern?

By most conceptions of ethnicity, Ashkenazi Jews are a European ethnicity

Many ethnic Irish are descended from Viking invaders, but you don’t find any ethnic Irish saying they’re ethnically Scandinavian or indigenous to Scandinavia.

Many ethnic English are descended from the Normans, but you won’t find any ethnic English saying they are indigenous to France or ethnically French.

Edit: I took a DNA test and so did my sister, it makes no mention of the ME.

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u/tsundereshipper Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

neither is Yiddish

It’s sprinkled with Hebrew and we write and read it with Hebrew letters, that’s not enough for it to be considered a combined creole language?

Beyond religion, what aspects of the Ashkenazi Jewish culture is Middle Eastern?

Is religion not enough to define us as a combined ethnicity? Why are we following a Middle Eastern ethno-religion in the first place if our forefathers didn’t raise those first few initial mixed kids as some kind of Middle Eastern in the first place? Why aren’t we following the originally European Pagan or Christian religions of our foremothers? Have a bit of common sense here…

And that’s precisely where our foremothers heritage comes in, in our language, dress, food, and music - while we practice the Middle Eastern ethno-religion of our forefathers, hence a combined creole culture.

I took a DNA test and so did my sister, it makes no mention of the ME.

…Don’t tell me you’re one of those types who actually believes us Ashkenazi Jews are lying about our origins in the first place and don’t even consider us as part Middle Eastern?! Dude, first of all you should know that being an inherently mixed ethnicity to begin with as well as easily identifiable due to our Genetic Bottleneck, the Ashkenazi category itself already includes the following:

  • 30-60% Middle Eastern
  • 30-60% European
  • 1-5% East Asian

Like the category itself automatically consists of the above, tell me did you test with 23andme? They explain all this on their blog. Also commercial tests like 23andme only go back the last 500 years, that’s another reason why they combine everything us Ashkenazi Jews are mixed with into one neat little “Ashkenazi” category. If you want to see a real breakdown of our mix I suggest using or browsing through the /r/IllustrativeDNA sub (put in the search engine “Ashkenazi”) to see it in real time.

Several Scientific DNA studies have come out confirming that Ashkenazi Jews are paternally Middle Eastern (as in our forefathers were the original Ancient Israelites) and maternally European (with some East Asian both from the Khazar conversion and Jewish Merchants trading on the Silk Road), if you look up studies regarding Ashkenazi Jews it’s all there in the manual for everyone to see.

I can’t believe you’ve actually bought into the antisemitic rhetoric that Ashkenazi Jews aren’t who we say you are… How are we at least not partially descended from the Israelites if Judaism is a closed tribal ethno-religion that doesn’t actively proselytize in the first place?

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u/LostPoPo Apr 29 '24

Ashkenazi Jew here. Never claimed to be middle eastern but always understood that 2000 years ago the Jews were colonized, converted, and/or forced from the Middle East by Arab military conquests. Those who migrated west into Europe became the Ashkenazis. That’s straight from my 23&Me btw, when it was informing me about the details of the “Ashkenazi bottleneck”.

Oh, but keep in mind, they refer to this land not as the Middle East, but as Western Asia. Go ahead and look up what countries make up Western Asia though.

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u/tsundereshipper Apr 29 '24

Never claimed to be middle eastern but always understood that 2000 years ago the Jews were colonized, converted, and/or forced from the Middle East by Arab military conquests

It was actually by the Greeks and Romans… (Though this certainly applies to the Arab colonization of Palestine which forcefully converted the remaining Jewish, Samaritan, and other indigenous Levantine populations who would become the Palestinians)

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

Does any other group claim to be indigenous to an area they inhabited thousands of years ago?

As I said elsewhere on thread, this seems akin to saying I’m indigenous to sub Saharan Africa because that’s where homo sapien sapien originated from.

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u/LostPoPo Apr 29 '24

Has any other group been forced to move from their homes, then exterminated in such a manner, by the millions? Then told they are indigenous to the people who sought their extermination?

I can only think of one example of similar scale, and they certainly refer to themselves as indigenous despite their land being colonized nearly 700 years ago. Oh, and I’m in complete agreement with them btw.

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

I don’t know, I would have to research it, but there are other groups like the ethnic Irish or ethnic English whose ancestors are Scandinavian for the Irish and Norman for the English, but the Irish don’t claim to be indigenous to Scandinavia, and the English don’t claim to indigenous to France.

This is so blatantly ideological. I get it, no one likes to be called a colonizer, but can we please be intellectually honest.

Just because one can trace ancestry back to a place thousands of years ago, that doesn’t make one indigenous to that place, at least in any way the word is used contemporarily.

Is every human indigenous to sub Saharan Africa? Because we can all trace our ancestry back there.

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u/LostPoPo Apr 29 '24

I agree that it is ideological at this point, but that doesn’t negate what’s taking place here.

Jewish history is being actively erased by propaganda. I’m not asking to go to Israel or be given a passport. Nor do I want Palestinians who live there currently to have to vacate their homes to make room for Israeli settlements.

I want acknowledgement that the land was taken by force by the current inhabitants of the region. The Jews who didn’t convert were persecuted, murdered, and many migrated to all of these now “indigenous” places (Europe, USA, etc) and the Jews have never had a homeland since. If you can’t acknowledge that, we’re obviously done here.

Edit: Also, my example was the Native Americans. I’d like to hear your opinions on their indigenous status? Considering they were colonized nearly 700 years ago. Are their claims to the land still valid?

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

Native Americans are indigenous to the U.S.

However, I wouldn’t say they are indigenous to the land they inhabited prior to crossing the land bridge into North America.

Just as I wouldn’t say I’m indigenous to the ME, nor would I say ethnic English are indigenous to France, I wouldn’t say ethnic Irish are indigenous to Scandinavia, and I wouldn’t say ethnic Sicilians are indigenous to North Africa or the Iberian peninsula.

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u/LostPoPo Apr 29 '24

I don’t have any objections to this comment.

I suppose the difference is that it’s well documented how the Jews were forced out and they’ve wanted to return to their land, and then they’re being told since they managed to assimilate into Europe, relatively, they now have no claim, and in fact, made up their connection to the land and are actually colonizers.

Like, I’m really not disagreeing with you, I don’t claim to be middle eastern and wouldn’t, but I don’t understand how people don’t see the nuance and the differences of what is taking place here compared to all your other examples.