Jews, Judaisms, Jewish Identities Study Guide Key C oncepts •
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Jews identify as “Jews” in terms of religion, ethnicity, culture, nation, and race. They
are incredibly diverse and fall into multiple identification categories.
Judaism (or Judaisms) is best understood as the sum total of how Jews have
historically performed and currently perform their identities in terms of thought and
action.
Whereas the dominant American narrative is based in the “white” experience, among
Jews it is rooted in the Ashkenazi experience. Factually, the Jewish communal
narrative is incredibly heterogeneous—culturally, ethnically, and racially.
The Hebrew Bible is a collection of sacred texts compiled over the course of
hundreds of years. Some Jews believe in the Bible’s divinity, whereas most others
maintain it was written by humans.
The Torah, or Five Books of Moses, is a core totem of the world Jewish community,
representing a set of moral and ethical codes and sacred stories.
The Bible follows the lineage of one particular family, which has led to the
development of the notion of Jewish chosenness. Some Jews understand chosenness
to describe an inherent superiority, whereas others reject such an idea, instead
focusing on possible intentions behind choices such as the Torah’s focus on the
Jewish people.
For Jews, Zion is a sacred space. Two basic ways humans organize sacredness, in
places and objects, are by orienting toward something as sacred and/or believing it is
metaphysically different than other places or objects of its kind.
Although the binary of Zion/diaspora continues to be core to Jewish communities,
with Zion most commonly understood as the Land of State of Israel and diaspora as
everywhere else, historically speaking Jews have had multiple zions simultaneously
and, for many, these ideas are experienced much more metaphorically or spiritually
than physically.
During the development of Judaisms, Jews have expressed the notion of the
portability of God or the divine within sacred words (Sinai), places (Zion), and
people (messiah)
Halakhah plays a central role in the Jewish community, even for those who don’t
orient toward it as obligatory. Halakhot are most often crafted by individuals who
have been given the authority to do so, even the Talmudic rabbis.
The Mishnah is a collection of laws that explain the legal directives found in the
Torah. Similarly, the Talmud contains rabbinic interpretations of the Mishnah.
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Jews have created and recreated Jewish cultures and subcultures historically, a
phenomenon that has, no doubt, played a role in this community’s longstanding
survival and led to its intensely diverse nature. Though some Jewish subcommunities
have attempted to isolate themselves from dominant non-Jewish cultures, and others
have chosen to assimilate into said non- Jewish cultures (some to the point of no
longer identifying as Jewish), substantial numbers of Jews have opted for
integrationist practices whereby Jewish and non-Jewish cultures have cross-fertilized.
Many members of the Jewish community identify as Jews in terms of their religion;
many do not (instead opting for Judaism to be there ethnicity, culture, etc.). For those
who do, the simple categorization of one as a religious Jew or a secular Jew does
not necessarily tell us anything about the person because many Jews practice
particular rituals not because they believe it is their divine obligation but rather as this
is one of many ways one can perform a Jewish identity. For example, some Jews who
do not identify as religious observe the halakhot around kashrut or Shabbat.
Arguably, the biggest issue that separates the movements today has to do with the
definition of a Jew.
The genocide of six million Jews in the Shoah—two out of every three Jews in
Europe and one out of every three Jews in the world—continues to play a profound
role in shaping twenty-first-century dominant Jewish narratives regardless of if one is
connected to the Shoah through one’s family or through one’s Ashkenazi subidentity.
The Shoah is integrally connected to the establishment of the State of Israel as well
as many Jews’ relationships with the Jewish State today.
Some argue it is problematic to exceptionalize the twentieth-century genocide of
Jews during the Shoah above the genocide of other twentieth- and twenty- firstcentury persecuted groups. Some also contend that to focus only on the genocide of
Jews during the Shoah ignores the many other groups targeted and exterminated by
the Nazis.
Jews often have simultaneous self-perceptions of the Jewish community as weak or
powerless and strong or powerful, embodied in the biblical characters David and
Goliath, respectively.
Nonetheless, in relation to Jewish history, Jews have never had more power than they
do today, both in the United States and the State of Israel.
Though Zionism—at a minimum, meaning the support of a country run by and for
Jews—is no doubt a dominant creed in Jewish communities today, during the
nineteenth-century and first half of the twentieth-century, Zionism was unpopular; at
times, it was even a marginal ideology for Jews of varied subidentities, including
Reform and Orthodox Jews.
With the establishment of a new Jewish-majority country came shifts in Jewish
identities, such as the creation of a new identity, the Israeli Jew (understood both
culturally as well as legally), the virtual extinguishment of the “Arab Jew,” and even
new non-Jewish identities, such as Israel’s creation of the “Israeli Arab.”
Key T erms •
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Identity
Ethnicity
Religion
Culture
Ashkenazi
Sephardi
Mizrahi
Sinai
Hebrew Bible- Tanakh
Torah
Biblical interpretation (PaRDeS)
Sacred center
Zion
Diaspora
Exile
First and Second Temples
Jerusalem
Land of Israel
Messiah and Messianic Age
Famous Jewish Messiahs
Hassidism
Tikkun Olam
Mishnah
Talmud
Midrash
Halakhah
Kabbalah
Ein Sof
Jewish cultures (i.e. Ethiopian,
Indian, Chinese, Persian, Arab, etc.)
Assimilation / Isolation / Integration
Movements (i.e. Orthodox,
Conservative, Reform,
Reconstructionist, etc.)
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Genocide
Shoah:
o one-of-a-kind event
o relevant to all Jews
o and Israel (Israeli
“Declaration of
Independence”)
o and non-Ashkenazi Jew
o Education (e.g., “March of
the Living”)
Anti-semitism:
o Holocaust denial
o Anti-Israelism
o Stereotypes
o Jews killed Jesus (in New
Testament and “blood libel”)
o Jews are greedy
o Jews control the world
“Never Again”
Power
Zionism
State of Israel
Theodor Herzl
War of Independence / Al-Naksa
Israeli Jew
Law of Return
Israeli military and masculinity
Border communities (Karaites,
Samaritans, Messianic Jews etc.)
Intermarriage
Jewish survival
Jewish music
Past, present, and future of Jewish
community