Many people, Jewish or not, have a gross misunderstanding of who and what the Jews are.
It might not seem like a big deal, but those misunderstandings often can turn negative, even blurring the lines between hate for Jews and dislike for Israel. It even contributes to a horrible misunderstanding of what real Zionism means.
Let’s first start with the word religion.
The word itself comes from Cicero around the 1st Century A.D. The Latin word religio meant things like reverence, obligation, ritual observance, and proper care toward the gods. It didn’t include things like food, customs, clothing, or other cultural components. It had nothing to do with tribe or ethnicity.
The word later entered the English language in about the year 1200.
Categorizing people into something called religions, which was limited to these certain concepts, didn’t exist when the Hebrew-Israelite nation formed over 3,000 years ago.
Sure, the Jews had some components that would fall into something called a religion, but it was far broader, and indeed, someone didn’t lose their membership in the Jewish people if they didn’t follow the religious components.
In contrast, if someone doesn’t believe in Jesus, they can’t be a Christian. If someone rejects the tenets of Hinduism, they aren’t Hindu. If a person thinks the Qur’an is hocus-pocus, they can’t be a Muslim. Not at all invalidating them, and there certainly are cultural elements to some of those, but those belief systems are things we choose as adults.
If a Jew doesn’t believe in God, though, and thinks the entire Hebrew Bible is made up, lo and behold, they’re still Jewish. Still a member of the Jewish people.
Sort of like if someone born into the Pueblo people of northeastern Arizona rejects their tribe’s snake release ritual that is believed to cause rain. Nobody would suggest that person is no longer Native American.
A Jew is a Jew is a Jew no matter their spiritual beliefs.
Thus, Jewish isn’t a religion.
Race is another way today we categorize people, but that group category also didn’t exist 3,000 years ago.
Sure, there were people all over the world with vastly different skin tones and facial features. But categorizing those people by race as part of any hierarchy or system didn’t exist until mass colonization and slavery in Africa. First with the Arab slave trade beginning in the 7th century, but even more so with the European slave trade in Africa, which focused exclusively on enslaving, colonizing, and dominating Black people. A racial caste system that hasn’t let up since.
From the beginning of the Jewish people, Jews included people born into the people. And Jews who joined the new people. Those who accepted the Jewish rituals, culture, community responsibilities, customs, traditions, holidays and Hebrew language.
They all were full Jews. Regardless of the later developed racial categories.
Jews included olive-skinned people who were born in Israel. Darker skinned people, like Moses, who passed as the Pharoah’s grandson. People from Kush-Ethiopia who joined the Israelites. Dark-skinned Midianites who joined the new Jewish nation. And even some lighter skinned Macedonians and Romans who joined the Jewish nation.
Others from neighboring and faraway places and regions visited Israel, trading and seeing the Jewish nation. Their traditions and food. Their faith. Some deciding to join the first organized monotheistic people. And despite their skin colors being different, these new people also fully became part of the tribe. A part of the new Jewish nation.
Then tragedy came.
Most Jews were kicked out of their namesake home (Judea) by the Romans. Jews were displaced across the globe 2,000 years ago. Some fled to places throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Others were taken by the Romans as slaves to Europe. To build things like the Coliseum. And yet some others went even further east.
European displacement and abuse of Jews further dispersed Jews across the globe over the ensuing 2,000 years. We know those sad stories. From the English burning Jews at the stake to pogroms in Russia to the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions to the Holocaust.
As a result of how the Jewish nation was formed and the later worldwide dispersal, Jews come in all colors and skin tones. From the Igbo in Nigeria to Polish Jews. From the Mountain Jews of Northern India to Persian Jews. From Tunisian Jews to American Jews.
Jewish isn’t and has never been a race. Jewish isn’t Black. It isnt’ white.
And yet there’s something scientific in most Jewish DNA. If you’ve ever done an Ancestry DNA test, it’s possible your DNA tested some percentage of Jewish. You can’t test Christian, Mulsim or Bahai.
Jews from Europe share certain DNA clusters. Many with smaller DNA clusters from, wait for it, the Middle East. Jews in the Middle East, North Africa and other places also share DNA.
And in one wild study, Jews 3,000 years removed from ancient Israel who today identify as part of the priestly Jewish tribe in the Bible called the Kohanim, share unique Y-chromosome haplotypesnot not shared by others.
So, Jews aren’t a religion. And they aren’t a race. Two concepts that came after their founding.
That still leaves us with the original question. What and who are the Jews?
The best way the Jews can be described is peoplehood. A tribe.
A tribe that began in their homeland called Israel and Judea.
They had a central Temple (the Wall in Israel being the remnants of the last one) located in Jerusalem. They had their own clothing. Their own customs. Traditions. Songs. Dances. Their own food. Language. Even their own mannerisms and sense of humor.
While that land was conquered and controlled by many over millennia, including the Romans, Persians, Assyrians, Ottomans and British, regardless of where this peoplehood of Jews resided, they always kept their original home in their hearts and minds.
A Jew in Russia, England, Yemen, Algeria or Ethiopia prayed towards Jerusalem for centuries and still does.
Jews in Venezuela, Nigeria, New York, Iran, Paris and Iraq for centuries ended their Passover Seders with a hopeful proclamation, “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
At the end of the day, Jews, Judeans, are a people an origin story in the land of Israel.
You can’t separate the two.
Thus, you can’t love and respect a Jew and simultaneously deny his or her connection to Judea. To Israel. And that’s why there’s much discussion over whether one can reject Israel as a Jewish nation and not be antisemitic.
Let’s bring this full circle.
The modern Zionist movement that started in the 1800s to bring Jews back to Israel isn’t the origin of Zionism.
Yes, that’s the first time the word “Zionism” was ever used. A movement created by European Jews who had been beaten, raped, slaughtered and forced to convert for too long. Told for centuries to “go back to Israel. Where you came from.”
Debating whether that 19th century movement was a good idea or how it was carried out is fair game. That movement, no matter what and who is to blame, would result in the displacement of Arabs living in the land that was once ancient Israel. Israel’s rebirth remains a sad story for many Arabs who lived there.
But real Zionism wasn’t created in the 19th century. It’s the 3,000-year-old concept of the Jewish origin story. Of Jewish peoplehood. The Jewish belonging and longing of Jews to Zion. Jerusalem. To Judea. To Israel.
Importantly, it was never a concept that meant abuse of others. It has nothing to do with war. Or displacement. It never was supposed to be about harming others or denying dignity for Palestinians or any other group.
It simply was and remains the heartfelt Jewish connection to Israel. And the idea that one day the Jews would get to return to their original ancestral home.
It’s easy and possible for a Jew to hold that identity and love for self and simultaneously care for the dignity and welfare of others. To validate others’ heartfelt connection to their own identities. And their origin stories.
Of course, there are some so-called modern Zionists who believe in total domination. In displacement of people. In endless wars. In abuse. We all know their names.
If that’s how you define Zionism, that’d make me a staunch anti-Zionist, too.
But being an authentic Jew. A Judean. And Zionist in its original form. Those are synonymous with being Jewish by definition. It’s who we are as a people.
All with the deep understanding that a heart is big enough to love self and others.