I recently had this (rather condescending) interaction with Hannah Einbinder. I — and hundreds of my followers — found it amusing because “I’m praying for you, sister” — “achoti” means “my sister” in Hebrew — is just not something that Jews really ever say. If a Jew is in need of prayer for, say, recovery from an illness, we ask the community to read Tehillim for that person, using their full Hebrew name. Hannah is Jewish, of course, but things like this lead me to believe that perhaps she is looking at her own identity through the lens of Christian hegemony. Awkwardly translating a very Christian statement into Hebrew doesn’t make it Jewish.
"There’s an answer to what Jews are. It’s quite simple. We don’t have to sit here and be like, ‘are Jews a race, a religion, a nationality?’ It’s like, no. Jews are a type of social group that was common in the ancient Near East, very uncommon in the west today. It’s a joinable tribal group with a shared history, homeland, and culture. What I just said was a paragraph in English, and in Hebrew, it’s one word that’s two letters long: am. Jews are Am Yisrael, and unless you understand what that means, nothing else makes sense."
Dara Horn, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt podcast
AN ANALOGY
When people think about different religions and about so-called Abrahamic religions in particular, they tend to think of them like this:
In this understanding, the flavors may be slightly different, but at the end of the day, they’re all still cupcakes.
But in reality, Judaism and Christianity are more like this...
One is a home and the other is food.
*That is not to say that one is better than the other! Food is sustenance, after all.
CHRISTIAN HEGEMONY
Christian hegemony is the manner in which Christians, as the dominant religious groups in the West, impose Christian social constructions as the “norm” or “default,” even on those who are not Christian. An example of Christian hegemony is the way that Hanukkah is treated in the media and consumer culture as the Jewish “version” of Christmas, even though the only relation between Christmas and Hanukkah is that they tend to fall around the same time of the year.
Note: if you are Christian and do not impose Christian social constructs on others who are not Christian, then this post is not about you and there is no need to get offended or upset!
For instance: though the “Hanukkah bush” is seen by some as an example of inter-faith inclusivity, it is also an example of Christian hegemony, because bushes are not traditional to Hanukkah.
JEWISH IDENTITY
Today, you probably understand the Jewish people as a religious group. If you’re slightly more educated about the matter, you may identify us as an “ethnoreligious” group. But both of these signifiers are limiting, Westernized, and hardly begin to encompass the expansiveness of Jewish identity.
Consider, for example, that the word “religion” does not exist in the Torah. The closest term we use would be “dat” — meaning “law” — or “emuna” — meaning “belief.” Instead, we call ourselves Am Yisrael, the word “am” loosely translating to “people” or “nation.” In this context, a nation is not a modern-day nation-state but rather a group of people whose collective identity includes shared language, history, ethnicity, territory, and/or culture. It’s a term that’s considered more political in nature than “ethnic group,” because a nation sees itself as having a common political destiny.
In antiquity, especially in the Middle East, there was little distinction between a civilization’s national, cultural, and religious identity. Consider the Ancient Egyptians and the Ancient Greeks, for example. They too had their deities and their spiritual practices that were deeply embedded in their national identities, but we would never reduce the Ancient Egyptians or Ancient Greeks to religious denominations. The difference is that while ethnic Egyptians and ethnic Greeks have long stopped practicing their ancient religions, Jews still practice Judaism.
CONDITIONAL EMANCIPATION
The French Revolution forever changed the trajectory of Jewish history. For centuries, European nations forced their Jewish communities into ghettos, denying them citizenship and subjecting them to a whole host of discriminatory policies. At the same time, this afforded Jews the privilege of maintaining jurisdiction over their own cultural, religious, and legal affairs.
But with the French Revolution and its ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality, a new debate arose in Europe: was the Jew more Jew than man? In other words, were Jews human beings like everybody else? Were they actually entitled to equality?
Jews, naturally, tried to plead their case. In France, they attempted to convince the population that they were just like everybody else; they simply attended a slightly different “church.”
Ultimately, Napoleon decided: French Jews would be emancipated — that is, they would be given citizenship and afforded equal rights — so long as they reduced their Jewish identities to a mere matter of religious belief.
Soon, this sentiment spread across Western Europe. Jews in Germany, for example, started calling themselves “citizens of the Mosaic persuasion” — as in, German citizens who attended the “church” of Moses.
"[It is necessary to] reduce, if not destroy, the tendency of Jewish people to practice a very great number of activities that are harmful to civilization and to public order in society in all the countries of the world. It is necessary to stop the harm by preventing it; to prevent it, it is necessary to change the Jews…Once part of their youth will take its place in our armies, they will cease to have Jewish interests and sentiments; their interests and sentiments will be French."
Napoleon Bonaparte
"The Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals."
French revolutionary Count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre
THE REFORMERS
After the French Revolution, a wave of Jewish emancipation swept Western Europe. Eager to finally integrate with the wider non-Jewish society, a group of Jews, known as the “Reformers,”* sought to make Judaism more palatable – that is, more Christian-like – to Europeans.
- For millennia, Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) had prayed in Hebrew. The Reformers removed Hebrew prayer from the liturgy entirely.
- The Reformers stopped practicing Brit Milah, decrying it as barbaric.
- They renounced attachment to the Land of Israel and the Temple, declaring Germany their new “Zion.”
- They did not have Bar Mitzvah ceremonies, replacing them with “confirmations.”
- Shabbat was observed on Sunday.
- Kashrut was considered “repugnant.”
THE REFORMERS, A NOTE
*Though the Reform movement originated with the Reformers, today’s Reform Judaism differs drastically from the Reformers’ activities in the late 19th century. By the mid-20th century, and especially after the Holocaust, the Reform movement had reclaimed many traditional aspects of Judaism. For example, in 1885, the Reform movement outlined what is known as the “Pittsburgh Platform,” in which they announced, “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.”
By 1937, however, they repudiated the Pittsburgh Platform with the Columbus Platform, which stated, “In the rehabilitation of Palestine, the land hallowed by memories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life.”
Nevertheless, we still see some elements of the Reformers’ earlier work in the Reform movement, such as the use of the organ during synagogue services, which was meant to emulate church services.
PERFORMATIVE JUDAISM
Jewish identity is not a performance. It’s not shallow. We don’t all have to be religious or strictly observant – I’m not – and we can all connect with the many facets of our identity in different ways. But at the very least, we should have enough respect for our identity to understand that carelessly slapping a Kosher sticker on any given random thing doesn’t make that thing Jewish.
Jewish identity is rooted in 3000 years of civilization, peoplehood, nationhood, tradition, culture, spirituality, struggle, joy, innovation, resilience, and more. Reducing our Judaism to a performance for the benefit of a non-Jewish audience cheapens us. It’s disrespectful to us. Trying to squeeze Judaism and Jewish identity into a mold that doesn’t fit – in this case, the mold may be Christian hegemony – distorts our own sense of who we are.
It’s interesting to me that often the very same people that decry Western and American-centrism, as well as Christian hegemony, also insist on forcing Judaism to fit those constructs. It doesn’t fit. If you are serious about what you claim to be serious about – like challenging Western centrism – you should grapple with why you insist on imposing your worldview onto ours.
Distorting ancient Jewish wisdom from the Mishna to convey a political message is a textbook example of performative Judaism, of slapping a Kosher sticker on something that isn’t Jewish and declaring it so. The actual phrase is the following: “[Shimon HaTzaddik] used to say: on three things the world stands: on Torah, on service [of God], and on acts of human kindness.”
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