Explaining Jews, part 1: What is a Jew?

Years ago, on a flight to Louisville, Ky., the woman seated next to me asked what brought me from Los Angeles to Louisville.

She then proceeded to engage me in a discussion about Jews, and it became apparent that she believed Jews wielded great influence in society. So I decided to ask her a question:

"There are almost 300 million Americans. How many of them do you think are Jews?"

When I told her there are 6 million Jews in America, she thought for a moment and said, "Hmmm ... they must all live in Kentucky."

Love them or hate them, respect them or loathe them – and most people have at least one of these reactions – of all the world's groups, none receives as much attention, including hatred, as the Jews. And this has been true for thousands of years.

Yet, for all their fame and notoriety, Jews are little understood. In fact, it may be said that those who do not understand Jews fall into two groups: non-Jews and Jews.

So, after a lifetime immersed in Jewish life – an involvement that includes nearly every aspect of Jewish life from the religious (Reform, Conservative and Orthodox) to the secular (Jewish federations, Israel and Soviet Jewry activism) – and after 25 years of speaking to people of all backgrounds on the radio and in lectures, I feel ready to attempt the daunting but significant task of explaining Jews.

With this first column of the year, I inaugurate a series of columns titled "Explaining Jews." Last year, 25 of my 50 weekly columns were devoted to "The Case for Judeo-Christian Values," and I came to realize the significance of exploring one topic in depth alongside columns on the immediate issues of the day.

Why are most Jews irreligious? And how can there be a secular Jew when there is no such thing as a secular Christian?

Let's begin with the most basic question: Are Jews a religion, an ethnicity, a people, a nation, a culture?

The most accurate answer is all of the above. And that confuses both Jews and non-Jews because there is no other major modern group that falls into all these categories.

Christians, for example, constitute a religion but not a nation. One is a Christian by virtue of affirmation of a faith. In order to be a Christian, one has to believe some Christian doctrine.

On the other hand, Americans are a nation, not a religion, and there are, therefore, Americans of every religion and of no religion. As is true of other nations, one is born an American by virtue of one's parent(s) being American. No affirmation of American faith is necessary. One can be an American and hold no American values or love for America.

Jews are Jews in both the above ways. One can become a Jew solely by affirmation of the Jewish religion (just as one can become a Christian by affirmation of Christianity) or solely by being born to a Jewish parent (originally the father, through most of Jewish history the mother, in Reform Judaism today the father or the mother).

That is why there can be atheist and secular Jews – just as there can be atheist and secular Americans even though the country's values are Judeo-Christian. But that is also why any person in the world, no matter what race, ethnicity or religion his or her parents are, can become a member of the Jewish people through religious conversion.

That is also why there can be self-hating Jews – people born Jewish who devote their lives to harming the Jewish people – because no one born a Jew can be read out of the Jewish people. It's probably a good thing. But not always. As we shall see.

Dennis Prager, one of America's most respected and popular nationally syndicated radio talk-show hosts, is the author of several books and a frequent guest on TV shows such as "Larry King Live," "The O'Reilly Factor" and "Hannity & Colmes."

You have posed an interesting question. Let me answer it by asking a question in return. Until who no longer considers them a Jew? Their family? their congregation? Reformed Jews? Conservative Jews? Orthodox Jews? Hasidic Jews? Christians? Muslims? G-d?

I’m not poking fun at your question, only showing you the openness of it. You are asking a question not only about religion, but about cultural and ethnic values as well. If a man is born in Zimbabwe, but moves to Ireland because he associates himself with Irish culture, listens to Celtic music, dances Celtic dances, and thoroughly enjoys a pint of Guinness, does where he was born make him less Irish? Perhaps in the eyes of some Irish, but it does not diminish what he believes he is. So too it is with religion.

If I was born Jewish and found that Buddhism brought me greater spiritual harmony and happiness, would the religion of my parents make me less of a Buddhist? Would my family no longer consider me a Jew? Quite possibly. Would my synagogue consider me a Jew? Probably not. Would Orthodox Jews consider me a Jew? Absolutely not. However I think the more important questions are these: Would I consider myself a Jew and would G-d care if I spent my life living by the creed that I should treat another as I wishes to be treated in turn? Only the individual can answer the first question, the second must wait until judgement. . .

Here's Part 2. What do you think of it? I found it very interesting.

Explaining Jews, Part II: Why are most Jews secular?
By Dennis Prager

Jan 24, 2006

To understand Jews, one must understand that most Jews are not religious.

This is true even if our definition of "religious" is minimal, i.e., observant of any specifically Jewish religious laws, attends synagogue once a month or even declares a belief in God.

According to a 2003 Harris Poll, "Only 16 percent of Jews go to synagogue once a month or more often"; and regarding belief in God: "Protestants (90 percent) are more likely than Roman Catholics (79 percent) and much more likely than Jews (48 percent) to believe in God. Religious affiliation here includes many people raised as members of a religion or religious group, regardless of what they practice or believe now."

Why most contemporary Jews are irreligious, given that the Jews gave the world the Bible and introduced humanity to the God of monotheism, is a fascinating subject. It is also a vital subject given the role that secular Jews -- such as Marx, Freud and Einstein -- have played in forming the modern world.

One reason was traditional (Orthodox) Judaism's inability to keep most Jews religious once Jews were free to leave the ghettos and shtetls (small Jewish towns or villages throughout Eastern Europe) in which most Jews lived.

The only Jewish religious alternative was a new Jewish movement called Reform Judaism, begun in Germany in the beginning of the 19th century. But with all the good intentions of Reform's founders to stem the departure of Jews from Judaism, Reform retained little that was distinctively Jewish. It dropped kashrut (the Jewish dietary laws), Hebrew as the language of worship, Jewish peoplehood, opposed the return of Jews to Israel (Zionism), and allowed moving the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.

By the mid-19th century, some Jews broke away from Reform and founded Conservative Judaism, in order to "conserve" Jewish religiosity without being Orthodox.

While Reform and Conservatism appealed to many Jews, a deeply religious, God-centered alternative to Orthodoxy that can keep Jews religious has not yet arisen.

And why did most Jews reject Orthodoxy? Over the course of thousands of years, a combination of anti-Semitism and Orthodox Jewish law -- one of whose primary purposes was to keep Jews separated from the non-Jewish world -- kept Jews in isolation. And when any group has little or no interaction with other groups, its intellectual life begins to atrophy. This was not only true in Orthodox shtetls; it is a problem in much of the Islamic world today as well as in the secular liberal university.

Therefore, once Orthodoxy was exposed to the light of freedom, it had few rational or convincing responses to the modern world's challenges. Faced with the choice between science, Mozart, personal liberty and great literature on the one hand, and Orthodox isolation on the other, the choice for nearly all Jews was obvious.

And that brings us to a second reason for many Jews' irreligiosity. Jews decided that the secular world of the arts, the university and celebration of reason -- a world devoid of religion -- was the world for Jews to work for. Secular Jews are still believers in the Enlightenment (despite the anti-Semitism of Voltaire, the father of the Enlightenment, and despite the anti-Semitism of secular Europe).

Which brings us to the third reason. Along with their rejection of Jewish religiosity, Jews also feared and loathed their Christian neighbors' religiosity. European Jews had suffered for centuries from religion-based (especially European Christian) anti-Semitism. For example, Jews were tortured to death on a charge of "desecration of the host," which essentially meant being murdered for allegedly torturing a wafer. Christian anti-Semitism in Europe ensured that virtually no Jew would feel sympathetic to religion generally, let alone Christianity specifically. Therefore, when European culture began warring on Christianity, many Jews completely identified with the anti-religious warriors. Those warriors were the men of the Enlightenment, the self-righteous title the anti-Christians gave their movement.

Thus began the now centuries-old Jewish association of secularism and anti-religiosity (especially Christianity) with what most Jews deem is good for Jews. That America's Christians have founded the country that has provided the most blessed place in which Jews have ever lived -- and that many Christians are now the Jews' best friends in a world that has more anti-Semitism than at any time since the Holocaust -- has not changed many Jews' belief that the anti-religious, especially those trying to weaken Christianity's influence, are the Jews' natural allies.

A fourth reason for Jews' alienation is the huge percentage of Jews who attend university. A major aim of the university is to influence students toward secularism and away from the Judeo-Christian value system that America's values have largely been based on.

Fifth and finally, Jews have suffered a great deal throughout history, culminating in the Holocaust. This has further reinforced Jews' alienation from God and religion.

Given Jews' influence in America, itself the most influential society on Earth, their alienation from and hostility to religion and to Judeo-Christian values, the greatest value system ever devised and the one based on the Jews' own Bible, is a tragedy. But if this irreligiosity is to be undone, it must first be understood.

Dennis Prager is a radio talk show host, author, and contributing columnist for Townhall.com.

Copyright © 2006 Creators Syndicate, Inc. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/dennisprager/2006/01/24/183533.html

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