I know people can say anything on social media, but wow, they really do say anything on social media…
WHAT...ARE YOU?
Are the Jewish people a religious group? An ethnic group? An ethnoreligious group? A race?
While the Jewish people are not a race, Judaism is a religion, and the Jewish people are an ethnic group, meaning that Jews constitute an ethnoreligious group, or an ethnic group with a common religious practice.
But there’s a caveat: every single one of these labels has been retroactively applied. When Jewish identity began to form, none of these social constructs existed. Instead, the earliest Jews saw themselves as a nation, or an עם in Hebrew, not to be confused with a modern-day, post-French Revolution nation state.
A nation in this context describes a people with a shared history, culture, and territory, but a nation differs from an ethnic group in that it sees itself as having a common political destiny.
TWO HEBREW WORDS FOR NATION
Jews call ourselves עם ישראל, or Am Yisrael, meaning the People/Nation of Israel. Jewish texts predominantly use two words for “nation”:
- Goy (גוי), used to describe a nation in the general sense, though it’s also used to describe the Nation of Israel.
- Am (עם), whose root comes from the Proto-Semitic ע־מ־ם , describing a joining, connection, or kinship. Thus, am has no neat translation into English but exists somewhere between “a nation” and “a people.”
Understanding how Jews have historically self-defined, and understanding the etymology of such definitions, especially for a people that place such heavy emphasis on letters and language, is crucial in understanding what Jewish identity is and isn’t.
As a long-oppressed people, outsiders have long imposed labels on us, labels that we later internalized. But none of these outside, imposed labels can accurately embody who the Jewish people are.
WHAT'S IN A NAME: ISRAEL
Having discussed the term “am,” we must now ask: what does the word “Israel” say about Jewish national identity? Israel appears in Jewish texts in various contexts:
- Am Yisrael, or the Nation/People of Israel.
- Bnei Yisrael, or the Children of Israel, translated in English as “Israelites.” This can mean “the descendants of Jacob (also known as Israel)” in the tribal sense, or “the residents of the Land of Israel/Kingdom of Israel.”
- Eretz Yisrael, or the Land of Israel, named after Am Yisrael, meaning “the land belonging to the Nation of Israel.”
- Mamleket Yisrael/Malkut Yisrael, referencing either one of the two historic Kingdoms of Israel that once stood in Eretz Yisrael (the United Monarchy in 1047-930 BCE, or the southern Kingdom of Israel in 930-722 BCE, respectively).
THEOLOGY VS. ARCHEOLOGY
There are two etymological explanations for the name Israel.
- The theological explanation: Israel, in Hebrew, means “one who struggles with God.” Jacob takes this name after wrestling an angel, and thus, his descendants become the Children of Israel or the Nation/People of Israel.
- The archeological explanation: in the Ancient Near East, nations tended to name themselves after their most important national deity. “El” is the generic Hebrew word for God.
- Where the two explanations meet: while it was common for ancient nations to name themselves after their national deity, the Nation of Israel named itself after a struggle with God, emphasizing the specific nature of their relationship with the divine.
ERETZ YISRAEL, MEDINAT YISRAEL
Some antizionist Jews today argue that Eretz Yisrael, as described in the Torah, describes not a physical place but a metaphorical, spiritual dimension, and that it bears no relation whatsoever to Medinat Yisrael (the modern State of Israel). Is this true?
Though Eretz Yisrael bears deep spiritual significance, throughout Jewish history, it has always been understood as a physical territory. More importantly, its existence as a physical place is extensively corroborated by archeological findings and secular historical record.
Of course, the modern-day State of Israel is a modern nation state, not an ancient kingdom. But just as the modern [Greek] Hellenic Republic (year of independence: 1821) is not the same entity as Ancient Greece as depicted in the Odyssey or the Iliad, nobody would reasonably argue that today’s Greece bears no cultural, historical, and national relation to Ancient Greece.
A COMMON POLITICAL DESTINY
In antiquity, particularly in the Ancient Near East, national identity and spirituality were not two separate concepts, but one and the same. All ancient nations had their national deities: the Greeks had their Greek pantheon, and the Egyptians had their pantheon, too. Assyria named itself after its national god, Ashur, and the Nation of Israel named itself after El, which was once the most important deity in the Canaanite pantheon but later merged with YHWH to form the Hebrew God as we know Him today.
All of these ancient nations had national origin stories that merged folk mythology with their oral and written histories. For example, the Ancient Greeks had the Trojan War as their national origin story.
Jews have a national origin story, too: the story of Exodus, as depicted in the Torah, after which loose, semi-nomadic Hebrew tribes coalesced into a single nation, eventually establishing the first Kingdom of Israel.
JUDAISM, THE RELIGION
Antizionists, including, sadly, antizionist Jews, often claim that it was Zionism that reformulated Judaism as a national identity, but as mentioned, Jewish religious and national identity were considered inextricable from each other from the very beginning.
Even the word “Judaism” itself doesn’t come from Hebrew, but is instead derived from the Greek word “Ioudaïsmós” and is how the Ancient Greeks described Jewish cultural practices.
"...In this first occurrence of the term, Ioudaïsmós has not yet been reduced to the designation of a religion. It means rather 'the aggregate of all those characteristics that makes Judaeans Judaean (or Jews Jewish).'”
Rabbi Shaye J.D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness
SO WHAT HAPPENED?
Prior to the advent of Christianity, the persecution of Jews generally happened in an imperialistic context, in the sense that foreign empires conquered the Land of Israel and subjugated its native subjects, suppressing their culture and traditions. After the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, the persecution of Jews took on a religious nature, but even Jews who converted to Christianity were subject to suspicion and even persecution, as occurred during the Spanish Inquisition under the doctrine of “Limpieza de Sangre,” or Purity of Blood.
Then came the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, as Europe contemplated emancipating its Jewish population.
- Napoleon agreed to emancipate French Jews, so long as they gave up their Jewish “national interests.”
- Eager to assimilate, many Western European Jews started calling themselves “citizens of the Mosaic persuasion” — as in, regular citizens who simply happened to attend the “church” of Moses.
A COMMON POLITICAL DESTINY
The idea that the Jewish people are a nation, sharing a common political destiny, did not die with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, nor with the forced displacement of Jews from their homeland.
To be certain, Zionism as a political national sovereignty movement can be traced back to the late 19th century, as empires fell and national groups in both Europe and the Middle East began vying for national sovereignty. But while the term proto-Zionism is often associated with mid-19th century groups such as Hovovei Zion (Lovers of Zion), the truth is that proto-Zionism is the running theme of Jewish history, from antiquity to the First Zionist Congress.
Indeed, Zionism itself is named after the Return to Zion, a historical event dating back to 539 BCE.
ZIONISM, THE ORDINARY AND THE EXTRAORDINARY
Whether you support or oppose Zionism, Zionism’s success – actually managing to establish a sovereign Jewish state after 2,000 years of statelessness and exile – is, in some ways, historically extraordinary. But in most other ways, modern political Zionism is perfectly ordinary.
Zionism, as a Jewish national sovereignty movement, arose at the tail end of the 19th century, a time period when empires were falling apart and different national groups in Europe, the Middle East, and beyond began vying for their own independence. Just as other nations pursued their own nation-states congruent with their national identities, so did the Zionist movement, including not just the Arabs but other minorities in the Middle East like Kurds and Assyrians. Singling out Zionism as somehow especially nefarious means singling out the Jewish movement for national self-determination in a sea of other parallel movements for national self-determination.
One might argue that Zionism was unique in that it was driven almost entirely by the Jewish Diaspora, at least in the beginning, but this actually not such a historical outlier, either. A similar story could be said for the Greek struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, which was financed and organized almost exclusively by the Greek diaspora.
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