"Ask A Jew" Wednesday

[u/AutoModerator]

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.

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[u/Sultan_Faruk]

Judaism. Many people in the west and all zionists I interacted with, say being a jew is an ethnic thing, some say it's a cultural group. I always saw jews as believer of Judaism. I do not see a connection between a jew in the US, a jew in Ethiopia and one in Russia besides their believe in the same religion, same as a Christian /Muslim in Egypt with one in China. They differ in ethnicity. Not only that, culturally the difference seem to be even bigger. I rarely would notice if someone is Jewish through his cultural aspects, same with Christians, only case if they are religiously more conservative. An aspect tied to my confusion is semitesim. The fact that the west bind jews to semites bothers me. Semites are a group of multiple ethnicities, non of them tied to a religion. Through research and extensive thinking I came to the conclusion, that the separation of Jews as an ethnicity and seeing them less of a religious group is the result of justification of racism towards jews as inferior people during the hight of European racism.

Now to my question after this long text.

Is there actually a connection, which I missed, that transcends the religion itself that ties jews together, which separates Judaism from Islam and Christianity in a meaningful way, meaning it being more then a religious school of thought?

No harm or disrespect intended of course. BTW. You guys are great. Know that you are appreciated and that u don't stand alone against zionisim.

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet → u/Sultan_Faruk]

Is there actually a connection, which I missed, that transcends the religion itself that ties jews together, which separates Judaism from Islam and Christianity in a meaningful way, meaning it being more then a religious school of thought?

Some studies have indeed shown Jews of all subgroups to be closer genetically to one another than to the cultures around them. In addition, Jewish co-mingling was a constant throughout all of history; when one area became unsafe, the Jews of that area would flee to another spot in the world and mix with that area's current Jewish population, repeated for a thousand years.

But, more importantly, Jewish isolationism and cultural othering (and/or straight up antisemitism on occasion) everywhere we went meant both us and the people around us could never see Jewish blood as the same as the majority's. I, and most Jews I know, are descended from Jews for as long as we can trace; if there even is a gentile/convert in our bloodline they are few and far between. Meanwhile, most of my Jewish friends are specifically not "full blooded" Ashkenaz/Sephard; I myself am technically Ashkenazi but have enough Sephardi blood in me to need to be careful of Sephardi-specific genetic diseases.

Semites

Note that "semites" and "semitism" aren't really words in use since the 40s. "Semitic" refers to a language family, including Hebrew, Arabic, and some African languages. "Antisemitism" did emerge during that time period, but its current definition (and definition at the time of invention) is anti-Jew bigotry. We don't lament that the term "waffle-cone" refers to something that's no longer made of waffles, we accept the term for what it means now.