In honor of this week’s 5th Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism, I’d like to propose a new definition of the term: Anti-Semitism is when Jews, alone of all the world’s religions, are denied the right to decide for themselves what their religion’s core tenets actually are. Nobody would dream of telling Christians that, for instance, their religion really has nothing to do with Jesus. Nobody would dream of telling Muslims that their religion really has nothing to do with the Koran. Yet a growing number of people seem to feel they have a perfect right to tell Jews that their religion really has nothing to do with being part of a nation.
Thus you get people like Jannine Salman, a member of the Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, blithely telling the New York Times last week that Jews have no call to feel their religion is under attack by strident anti-Zionists, because “There is a bifurcation: Zionism is a political identity, Judaism is a religious identity, and it does a disservice to both to blur the line.” And never mind that neither the Bible nor 4,000 years of Jewish tradition recognize any such bifurcation.
Indeed, the concept of Judaism as a religious identity devoid of any national component is so foreign to the Bible that nowhere in it are Jews ever referred to as adherents of a “religion.” Rather, the most common Biblical terms for the Jews are bnei yisrael, the children of Israel, and am yisrael, the nation of Israel. The rough modern equivalents would be kin-group and kin-state, though neither captures the Biblical imperative that this particular kin-group and kin-state be committed to a particular set of laws and ideals.
That’s also why the modern Hebrew word for religion, dat, is a Persian import originally meaning “law” that is found in the Bible only in books such as Esther and Daniel, which take place when the Jews were under Persian rule. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the man who revived Hebrew as a modern language, tried hard to base his modern lexicon on ancient Hebrew roots. But there simply isn’t any ancient Hebrew term remotely equivalent to the modern conception of religion.
And that’s also why the model for conversion to Judaism, unlike in most other religions, explicitly includes embracing a nationality as well as a creed. The rabbinic Jewish commentators don’t agree on much, but they do agree that the original source for conversion is the book of Ruth, and specifically one verse in it: Ruth’s promise to Naomi that “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” In other words, simply adopting the Jewish God wasn’t enough. Ruth also had to adopt the Jewish nation.
Clearly, individual Jews are free to reject the national component of their identity, just as individual Christians and Muslims are free to reject various tenets of their religion. It might leave them with a very diluted religious identity (see, for instance, the 2013 Pew poll, where the number-one response to the question of what American Jews consider “essential” about being Jewish was remembering the Holocaust). But in the modern democratic West, nobody would deny their right to do so.
That position is, however, a very different matter from non-Jews telling Jews that they must reject the national component of their identity. When non-Jews start trying to dictate what Judaism does and doesn’t consist of, that’s anti-Semitism. When non-Jews insist they know better than Jews do what being Jewish entails, that’s anti-Semitism. When non-Jews demand that Jews reject the religious identity prescribed by both the Bible and a 4,000-year-old tradition, that’s anti-Semitism. And it’s about time we started calling it by its rightful name.
Amen
Of course you are right about this, Evelyn. It is not just the Bible [Tanakh] but the prayers. The `amida prayer has as one of its blessings one that foresees the dispersed people of Israel being gathered from the four corners [lit. wings] of the earth. “Blessed is God Who gathers His farflung people of Israel”.
The Bible sees the Jews as a kingdom of priests and holy nation [וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹשׁ אֵלֶּה הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר תְּדַבֵּר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל]. And you shall be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you [Moses] will speak to the Sons of Israel.
I hear the same ignorant nonsense as you do, Evelyn. But these people are so dishonest or so ignorant that they forget all about Pakistan which has a population of over 100 million. There never was a state called Pakistan in all history. It was formed in 1947 to be a state for the Muslims of India so that they could be separate from the Hindus, Sikhs and other non-Muslim Indians. And Pakistan oppresses non-Muslims when it is not persecuting them. But Israel’s enemies and hypocritical critics always forget to mention Pakistan as a state created specifically for a religious group that originally belonged to India.
When it is about Jews is always different!
Jewish tradition, nationalism and religion, are big Marxist no-nos.
Marx actually wrote that the Jews are NOT a religious group (in On the Jewish Question). He got this from Kant of Hegel (can’t recall which). Now it’s convenient to say that Jews are ONLY a religious. They use what’s convenient at any given time.
Well, guess it doesn’t matter what they think, if they’re out to kill you.
“That position is, however, a very different matter from NON-JEWS telling Jews that they must reject the national component of their identity. When NON-JEWS start trying to dictate what Judaism does and doesn’t consist of, that’s anti-Semitism. When NON-JEWS insist they know better than Jews do what being Jewish entails, that’s anti-Semitism. When NON-JEWS demand that Jews reject the religious identity prescribed by both the Bible and a 4,000-year-old tradition, that’s anti-Semitism. And it’s about time we started calling it by its rightful name.”
Ms. Gordon’s focus is misdirected. While what she says about the presumptuousness, if not outright antisemitism of non-Jews telling Jews nationhood is not part of their religion is correct, the problem is much more about those Jewish largely by accident of birth who are “anti-Zionist” or in sympathy with “anti-Zionists” and happy to provide them with cover against charges of antisemitism.
As the noted anti-Semite,Hilaire Belloc, put it, ‘How odd of God to choose the Jews’. The response from a Jewish wag was ‘yet not so odd as those who choose a Jewish God, yet spurn the Jews’.
Both Christians and Muslims would do well to remember that without Judaism, whom both have persecuted for centuries, though in the last few decades the Church, for the most part, has rowed back, neither could or would exist.
It is equally important to understand that the roots of Zionism lie in the biblical promise made to Abraham. Political Zionism could not exist without that promise.
Though separated from their land for 2000 years, Jews longing for return and autonomy was finally recognised during WW1 by Britain when Lloyd George, in 1916, tied help for restoration to the British Government’s war aims.