Who Are the Jews?

People, Tribe, Nation, & Ethnicity: What does it mean?

Who are the Jews? That’s complicated.

In the West, people think of religion when they hear “Jewish.” But Jews are a people, a tribe, a nation; we predate religion. People love to insist that Jews are a religion; we are not, and that isn’t an innocent misconception; it’s designed to diminish us.

Judaism, the practices of the Jewish people, is not an open religion.

That means you have to BE Jewish…before you can DO Jewish.

This is very different from Christianity and Islam, which you can typically join in minutes by declaring your intent. (Different sects and denominations have their requirements.)

Personhood

A Jew (“Jewish person”): Ethnicity. Culture. Religion. Politics.

Ethnicity + Culture:

• Israelites / Hebrews —> The Jews
• Sephardi
• Mizrahi
• Ashkenazi

Culture + Religion:

• Judaism
• Practices
• Tradition
• Denominations
• Language(s)

Religion + Politics:

• Israel
• Zionism
• Beliefs
• Values

All these aspects together + Time = Peoplehood. Tribe. Nation.

Comparing Terms

Nation.

A nation is a community of people with a shared language, history, ethnicity, culture, and/or territory.

Tribe.

Jews are descended from the 12 Tribes, the Hebrew tribes that formed the first Israelite nation. We call ourselves “the tribe” still today.

Ethnicity.

Ethnicity can be used interchangeably with “nation”, though we no longer think of all nations as having their own sovereignty.

Charted: Jews, Israelis, Judaism, and Ancestry

Half of Jews are Israelis; not all Israelis are Jews, with 2 million Arab Muslims, Druze, and more.

Not all Jews practice Judaism, and lastly, the definition of who is a Jew is highly debated. Many people have Jewish ancestry* but are not legally Jewish and do not identify as such (if they even know they have ancestry). Below: the overlap of Jews, Israelis, and Judaism; not to scale.

A Closed Practice

Jews don’t proselytize; it’s against our practices. Meaning we do not actively recruit. Since Judaism—our ethnoreligion—is not up for global adoption, its rules and theology do not apply to non-Jews.

Again, this is very different from other religions. Christianity and Islam are supersessionist and universalizing religions. Their goal is to get everyone to join, and their dogma states that their rules apply to everyone, including Jews. The supersessionist beliefs of these mean they believe they replaced Judaism; this has been used to target and murder Jews for millennia.

Today, the notion that all religions are universal and supersessionist, like those spread by conquest and colonialism, is projected onto Jews, Judaism, and Israel. Jews don’t conquer neighbors and forcibly convert them; that was Islam and Christianity.

Becoming Jewish

Historically, joining the Jewish people meant living and practicing exclusively with other Jews; this is still the case for Orthodox conversion. That meant becoming Jewish was required to marry, such that your children would also become Jewish.

Another way to think of it is that Jewish status is passed on to a child of one or more Jewish parents*, and even if that child never practices Judaism, they are still Jewish.

Many call conversion “Joining the Tribe,” because it’s more than studying and adopting Judaism. Again, Jews are not just a religious group; we are a nation and an ethnicity, and that makes Judaism an ethnoreligion.

*Legally, Jewishness is passed on from the mother. Some denominations consider any Jewish parent to qualify, while Orthodox communities would require you to convert to be Jewish if only your father were Jewish.

We Are Small

Comparing Jews to other religions isn’t appropriate because not only do the Jewish people predate all modern concepts of religion as something separate from other ethnic, racial, or national identity, but Judaism isn’t even a major religion.

This surprises many people! Jews have an outsize role in their minds; that’s for a few reasons. For one, half the world follows religions that derive from the Jewish people.

And more importantly, we survived.

Hence, people’s confusion.

• For every 1 Jew, there are
  • 127 Muslims
  • 152 Christians
  • …and soon, Muslims will outnumber Christians
• There are as many (or more) Mormons alive as Jews
• There are still fewer Jews alive than in 1939

Why the Outsize Role?

The Jewish people, miraculously, survived. And the WAY we survived confuses people, so they try to categorize us like Christians and Muslims.

We survived by holding onto our ancient identity first as tribes; then ONE tribe and nation; and ultimately, a modern ethnicity spanning Israel and a global diaspora.

People are confused about who Jews are, too, because:

• We have a country (confusingly, also called a “nation”)
• Many insist we were “only” a religion
• In much of the world, very few, if any, groups have survived for this long with their traditions and culture intact. We even revived our spoken language and nation-state.

Against all odds, we are still here. And though forced conversion, displacement, and genocide have dramatically reduced our numbers, we, unlike all our conquerors, have prevailed.

Sources: Read More

• rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/everyone-talks-about-jews-no-one-knows-who-the-f-we-are
• doingjewish.blog/2023/12/19/the-antisemitic-alphabet-from-a-z-a-is-for/ 
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F
• instagram.com/p/C7pbQN3SHsA/?img_index=2 
• worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/jewish-population-by-country 
• pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/