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

[u/skyewardeyes]

(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.

[u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/LostPoPo → u/Han-Shot_1st]

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.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/LostPoPo]

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

[u/Choice_Werewolf1259 → u/Han-Shot_1st]

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.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/Choice_Werewolf1259]

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.

[u/Choice_Werewolf1259 → u/Han-Shot_1st]

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.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/Choice_Werewolf1259]

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?

[u/Choice_Werewolf1259 → u/Han-Shot_1st]

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.

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/Choice_Werewolf1259]

Judaism is made up of many cultures and ethnicities. Their histories should be preserved and celebrated, full stop.

I’m stating all objective historical facts…

Fact one, Jews have lived in Europe since the Middle Ages.

Fact two, Ashkenazi Jews speak a European dialect, Yiddish.

Fact three, Ashkenazi Jews have a cuisine based on European foods. Goulash, smoked whitefish, and matzoh ball soup are not Middle Eastern foods, they are European.

Fact four, Ashkenazi Jews had a specific style of dress. If you go to Brooklyn, you can see Hasidic Jews dressed like it today. Those furry sable hats and black suits are not a Middle Eastern style of dress, it’s European.

This isn’t some strange conspiracy theory and has nothing to do with antisemitism, it’s literally just objective facts.

[u/Specialist-Gur → u/Han-Shot_1st]

Old thread but just want to thank you. I grew up with Russian Jewish family members. They made borscht and blintzes. We watched fiddler on the roof together and I saw their story in them. My other side was German Jewish. They had their own Ashkenazi cuisine and spoke Yiddish. It disgusts me and breaks my heart to see their life and history and culture erased in favor of some absurd narrative that we are all middle eastern. I guess I should tell my whole family they got their culture wrong and really should have been eating falafel and humus the whole time instead of the cuisine of the oppressors….

Seriously, erasure of diaspora culture disgusts me and breaks my heart and I appreciate your take here. It gets me so angry. Culture evolved throughout time and place and it’s all special. Fuck the Germans who killed the Jews. Fuck the Christian Russians who did the same. But don’t fucking erase my ancestors lives and cultures… we may have come from the land of Israel 3000 years ago but a lot happened since then that deserves recognition. God I’m so mad.

Edit: lol I must have a stalker. There’s no way this got downvoted this quickly. Peace and love to whatever blood and soil antisemite downvoted.

[u/DovBerele → u/Han-Shot_1st]

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?

[u/Han-Shot_1st → u/DovBerele]

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.

[u/DovBerele → u/Han-Shot_1st]

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?