Comment on Is there any, any takeaways at all from the next 4 years that's about to happen?

• Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  See…I’ve never understood what being a Jew is. Not saying I hate Jews. For me Jewish people are like if you discovered a new kind of fish. And this fish was long and skinny like an eel today, and kind of blue tinted. It’s the only fish in the aquarium. But the next day, it’s round like a ball, and red. And has 16 eyes, when yesterday it only had 2. Then the next day this fish is green, and looks more like a shark.

  So you’re left asking “Ok…what is this thing???”

  A Jew is somehow a religon, but also a race, but also nationality, but also a culture? And each one of those things has nothing to do with the other, but also they’re all interconnected?

  In this example, you’re an Athiest Jew. And my brain is like “How is that even possible??? It would be like a white person telling me they were an Athiest Christian”. I thought Judiasm was a religion, so from my perspective, you’re saying “I believe in things that I don’t believe are real”.

  Like I said. I’m not hateful. I’m just really really confused. Jewishness: what IS it?

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  • BertramDitore@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I appreciate the question, and like many Jews I love questions like this. It is never hateful to be curious.

    Like many/most identities, being Jewish doesn’t mean just one thing to everyone. First and foremost, Judaism is a religion that is passed down through the matriarchal side of the family. So if your mother is Jewish, you’re Jewish. You’re Jewish particularly to other Jews in this instance, even if you don’t necessarily consider yourself Jewish.

    Judaism is not a race, full stop. Just like Christianity is not a race. There are white Jews, black Jews, Latino Jews, South Asian Jews, East Asian Jews etc. There aren’t a lot of us as a whole, but we do exist in most racial groups. But Judaism is often correctly linked to ethnicity, which is a set of shared traditions, culture, language, and norms.

    There is a huuuuge range of ‘orthodoxy’ under the umbrella of Judaism. Different ‘sects’ holds fundamentally similar values (for example: you won’t find very many anti-abortion Jews), but people inside these different groups will observe their traditions at differently levels/extremes or not at all. Most Jews in America don’t keep Kosher, for example, but most Orthodox Jews do.

    Judaism also has a rich tradition of questioning everything (which is why we usually love these kinds of questions). It is not considered heresy to question beliefs or authority, in fact it’s usually encouraged. You’ll find many Jews who openly identify as atheists, and yet most still fully consider themselves to be Jewish. This usually doesn’t bother anyone, Rabbis included. Atheists even hold a place of honor in some Jewish communities, because atheists get their morality from their own values or other people, not from a fear of god or some external force. This is part of why it is pretty common to find Jews (observant or not) who consider themselves atheist.

    All of that is to say you don’t necessarily need to believe in god to be considered Jewish.

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  • Num10ck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Questioning the Jewish religion is deeply part of the Jewish experience, so a person born a Jew is still considered a Jew even when they lack faith. Typically they come back around when they decide how to raise their offspring. Basically if your mother was Jewish, you are always a Jew.

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