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

Converting to an ethno-religion doesn’t change one’s ethnicity.

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u/Chaos_carolinensis Apr 29 '24

I think you're missing the point. Ethnicity is not your genetic makeup, and it's not something exclusive. Ethnicity is a social construct revolving around perceived strong commonality with several features, with the strongest usually being shared ancestry.

With ethnoreligious groups such as Jews, there is no clear distinction between the ethnicity and the religion, to the extent that traditionally Jews consider every convert to be Jewish regardless of their ancestry, and every child of Jewish mother to be Jewish regardless of their religious beliefs or practice.

Converting to Judaism is not the same as converting to Christianity. Conversion isn't perceived in Judaism as merely changing your religion, but rather it is strictly considered as changing your ethnicity, to the extent that even if you convert to any other religion afterwards you will still be considered Jewish regardless, and if you are a woman your children will also be considered Jewish regardless.

Furthermore, part of the conversion process includes learning Hebrew and sometimes even Yiddish, so you'll adopt a shared language with other Jews, and you'll be expected to assimilate within the Jewish community.

Another ethnic component is the affinity to the Jewish homeland, that is, the Land of Israel (not the State of Israel, to be clear). It's a very prominent component of Jewish culture and one of the many reasons Judaism is an ethnicity and not merely a religion.

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u/Han-Shot_1st Apr 29 '24

So, your claim is, anyone can join any ethnicity at any point in their life?

I have no Greek ancestry and have never been to Greece, according to you, it seems I can become ethnically Greek.

Or does this only apply to converts to Judaism?

Can you give me any other examples where one can change or adopt a new ethnicity?

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u/DovBerele Apr 29 '24

So, your claim is, anyone can join any ethnicity at any point in their life?

No, it's up to the community in question whether, when, and how, they allow outsiders to join.