"Ask A Jew" Wednesday

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It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday! Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.

[u/GreenIguanaGaming]

Hi guys! I'm an Arab Muslim. Always enjoy passing by here.

My question relates to this video.

Quick intro: you can skip to the question part if it's TLDR.

So I think we all saw the Lucas Gage video where he uses a gladius to "make his ancestors proud" while tearing up the Israeli flag. He very quickly starts antisemitic tropes and blames everything on "The Jews" even mentions 9/11 🤦‍♂️ - - I'm atleast pleased to say that most of the comments under that video were calling it out.

Someone combined that video with one from Shahid Bolsen, he's an American Muslim revert who has interesting insights on politics and Islam.

Here's the question

On the topic of Antizionism being conflated with antisemitism.

Shahid speaks about the identity of Jewishness.

Classically, he says, in Islam and rabbinically, "a Jew" is one who follows and participates in Judaism. That the identity should stop there but it doesn't. He adds that the Historian Shlomo Sand says that non-religious Jews identify strongly as Jewish in one or more of 3 ways:

1. By "Jewish blood" (which is more or less an antisemitic concept according to Sand)

2. By the collective trauma of the Holocaust.

3. The State of Israel. Which presents them with a place to go to be safe.

Shahid adds that this means that the non-religious Jewish identity is a construct forced upon them by Antisemites.

A Jewish person who does not believe or follow Judaism is still Jewish because non-Jews who hate Jews insist that they are Jews and won't allow them to be anything else.

I started to understand Jewishness as an Ethno-religious identity but I'd like to know how accurate Shahid's conclusion is to understand the concept further.

I am aware of the origins of JudenHass and Antisemitism which caused a shift.

Hate towards the people of the Jewish faith became a racist association between a language and race which made hate against Jewish people unavoidable. Even if a Jewish person became Christian, they'd still be considered Jewish.

Any opinions, thoughts or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

Edit: clarification

[u/Saul_al-Rakoun → u/GreenIguanaGaming]

I think something that might clarify what's happening is that Jewishness under Islam and Jewishness under Christianity are two different things. Yes, under Islam we have to pay the jizya as dhimmi and we are second-class citizens but we are citizens. Under Pauline Christianity we are cursed theocides whose stubborn refusal to accept Jesus is an affront to God and it is Christendom's duty to punish us in the name of God's love. Pauline Christianity is doctrinally antisemitic in a way that Islam is not (Christianity is also non-Abrahamic, but that's a spicy take for another time).

Shahid's understanding of Jewishness is what I understand the Jewishness of the Ummah to be, and in fact it starts to make the Sephardic drive to do certain things, like Maimonides's attempt to enumerate 13 principles of Jewish faith, make much more contextual sense. A Jew of the Ummah who needs somewhere to pray is permitted by halakha to pray in a mosque. And indeed, in one of the rare cases where Sephardic halakha is stricter than Askhenazic, the Rabbis of the Ummah extended the dietary laws (specifically the prohibition on eating food cooked by a non-Jew, bishul akum) to require that kosher food be substantially cooked by a Jew. Why? Well it makes sense if the line between Jew and non-Jew isn't being reinforced by antisemitism.

What Shlomo Sand is describing is the end point of the Jewishness under Christendom where not even conversion will save us due to the Christian society's need to persecute. The Ashkenazic drive to see everything in terms of persecution and antisemitism -- indeed, to even set up the idea of a Jewish racial identity as distinct from liability to the Mosaic Covenant and then justify it on the basis that Jewish religious law accounts liability to the Mosaic Covenant from birth as descending from the mother and not the father, it's a profound confusion of ideas that arises out of Christian persecution. You see this too with Ashkenazic religious neuroticism: I strongly suspect the reason why we don't eat peas or green beans (kitniyot) on Passover is because maybe if we religion hard enough God will cause the Christians to relent. Oh, and, Jews are forbidden by halakha to enter a church, and because we have antisemitism doing the job of keeping us separate, kosher food can be made by non-Jews provided there is the most tenuous involvement of a Jew.

So, the responses you get to this question may make more sense if you know there are at least two different notions of Jewishness at play, and that many Jews only know of the Jewishness under Christendom. I myself only really started to grasp it after I got off the Zionism bus.

Personally, I'm increasingly coming around to the traditional understanding (which u/ohmysomeonehere is giving you) which is that to be a Jew, one has to keep the mitzvot. To be a Jew is to do the things a Jew is expected to do, and it is not a state of passive being. One is born obligated to the mitzvot, one is not born entitled to the fruits of their performance. The consequences of this "secular Jew" notion have been absolutely disastrous. Someone who eats pork, who mixes meat and dairy, who murders, who violates the shabbat, and who worships idols (so, basically, your average resident of Tel Aviv) somehow is entitled to a land that was granted by divine covenant only to people who do none of those things? Let's not even get into how the land was entrusted (not given) to us conditionally (not absolutely).

[u/GreenIguanaGaming → u/Saul_al-Rakoun]

Oh my God. This really does clear up alot of things. How did I not realize this. Thank you so much for sharing your insight!!!

Also I'm super curious about your spicy take. Please share 🙂