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Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

I think this is really interesting. In one way a critique of shallow identity politics, it creates room for a more sophisticated take on it, in which the material structures available to people in different subject positions are what we should be focusing on, rather than any politics of representation: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference - Olufemi O. Taiwo

It also talks about how trauma is most often debilitating rather than purifying. It's a difficult thing to talk about in real life when you are sitting in a room with people with trauma arising in part from their social position. In fact while I suspect he's right I have no idea how I would talk about it in public.
 
Is being Jewish a matter of religion, or in some way a matter of race? Or is it a mixture of the two and if so in what proportions?
If a person converts to Judaism for religious reasons, would they then be a victim of anti-semitism if it is round and about?
Or is it a matter of culture, like if you are a recent convert you’re not quite as Jewish as a person from a family where the religious observance goes back for generations?
 
philosophical said:
Is being Jewish a matter of religion, or in some way a matter of race? Or is it a mixture of the two and if so in what proportions?
If a person converts to Judaism for religious reasons, would they then be a victim of anti-semitism if it is round and about?
Or is it a matter of culture, like if you are a recent convert you’re not quite as Jewish as a person from a family where the religious observance goes back for generations?
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I’d recommend to you Living Judaism, by Rabbi Wayne Dosick. It goes into those questions. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that there aren’t one size fits all answers to those questions. Different Jewish traditions will have different answers to them all.

Life, in short, doesn’t do handy equations.
 
danny la rouge said:
I’d recommend to you Living Judaism, by Rabbi Wayne Dosick. It goes into those questions. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that there aren’t one size fits all answers to those questions. Different Jewish traditions will have different answers to them all.

Life, in short, doesn’t do handy equations.
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Thank you.
I suspect it is complicated,
I imagine a prospective Jewish convert has to say which Jewish tradition they are converting to.
Unless the religious aspect of Judaism stands apart from any particular tradition.
 
philosophical said:
Is being Jewish a matter of religion, or in some way a matter of race? Or is it a mixture of the two and if so in what proportions?
If a person converts to Judaism for religious reasons, would they then be a victim of anti-semitism if it is round and about?
Or is it a matter of culture, like if you are a recent convert you’re not quite as Jewish as a person from a family where the religious observance goes back for generations?
Click to expand...
'Dominion' by Tom Holland has some really interesting discussion of the notion of Jews as a race - he arugues that in many ways 'religion' was a concept invented by Christianity. The Jews started as 'a people', but Christianity really kicked off seeing things as a 'religion' because it's adherents were united by faith/belief, not background and now everyone sees things through that lens, and my husband and I have noted that people often look on Judaism this way and find it hard to get the concept of people like us (and, I'd say, most members of our synagogue) who don't believe in God, but practice Judaism and attend synagogue. Because our Judaism is not about faith, but it is our cultural identity and our spiritual practice.

Yes, a convert could face antisemitism by simply identifying as Jew. Ironically, a bloke called Simon Schneider who has dark hair and wears glasses but isn't Jewish could also face antisemitism ('So, Simon who works in accounts, he a Yid then?') because people think he's Jewish, whereas I very seldom face any as I have an anglicised surname and I don't 'look Jewish'.

Converts have to go through a synagogue so they will be converting that movement - Orthodox conversion will be recognised by 'less observant' synagogues, but they won't recognise conversions from movements they don't consider up to scratch.:rolleyes:

Religious observance has never mattered to antisemites - some of the Nazi's victims didn't even know they were Jewish. The anomosity seems to exist towards the Jews as a people, not as a practice.
 
On the religious aspect and tradition - our synagogue is part of the Masorti movement, where the actual service is totally recognisable and indeed pretty much the same as an Orthodox one. The difference is we're egalitarian, so women can take part in the service, sit anywhere etc - when I was a kid, services were still separately seated and only men could lead them, but now the egalitarian services, which started as parallel services in different rooms, are well on their way to becoming the 'mainstream' ones in our synagogue. The other difference from orthodox is that the approach is that no one is judged on how observant they are, although the aim is to encourage people to get more involved if they would like.

The Reform synagogue movement has a different service which is mostly in English, with much less Torah reading.
 
Cloo said:
'Dominion' by Tom Holland has some really interesting discussion of the notion of Jews as a race - he arugues that in many ways 'religion' was a concept invented by Christianity. The Jews started as 'a people', but Christianity really kicked off seeing things as a 'religion' because it's adherents were united by faith/belief, not background and now everyone sees things through that lens, and my husband and I have noted that people often look on Judaism this way and find it hard to get the concept of people like us (and, I'd say, most members of our synagogue) who don't believe in God, but practice Judaism and attend synagogue. Because our Judaism is not about faith, but it is our cultural identity and our spiritual practice.

Yes, a convert could face antisemitism by simply identifying as Jew. Ironically, a bloke called Simon Schneider who has dark hair and wears glasses but isn't Jewish could also face antisemitism ('So, Simon who works in accounts, he a Yid then?') because people think he's Jewish, whereas I very seldom face any as I have an anglicised surname and I don't 'look Jewish'.

Converts have to go through a synagogue so they will be converting that movement - Orthodox conversion will be recognised by 'less observant' synagogues, but they won't recognise conversions from movements they don't consider up to scratch.:rolleyes:

Religious observance has never mattered to antisemites - some of the Nazi's victims didn't even know they were Jewish. The anomosity seems to exist towards the Jews as a people, not as a practice.
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Thank you for this very interesting reply.
Even more complex both in practical and philosophical terms.
I am a bit confused about a convert not being recognised as Jewish by some other Jewish people if they came from a place that was ‘not up to scratch’. Does that mean a person who previously practiced Buddhism or Islam or whatever wouldn’t ‘count’ in the eyes of some Jewish people if they converted for spiritual reasons?
Is the use of the word ‘spiritual’ inappropriate?
 
I was interested in what the word “spiritual” meant in that context too.

Really interesting post, thanks. I seem to have gone through life knowing no Jewish people well and having one acquaintance in Uni, so I don’t really know about the history and lived context outside the Biblical and the events of last century, which leaves huge gaps.

One other thing, your example hit home because there was a guy at my company who people commonly assumed was Jewish because of his name and looks.

Also very clever and had a wide range of knowledge l (had a hobby of going on TV quiz shows and winning money), and I believe there’s a “bookish”’element to the stereotype.
 
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In terms of 'not up to scratch', the United Synagogue in the UK (the orthodox one) doesn't recognise my kids or me as Jewish because my maternal grandmother converted under the auspices of a synagogue in Czechoslovakia after WWII and there was no paper record of it. Also, it wouldn't recognise any convert from our synagogue or Reform - it's not about what you were before but who carried out and certified the conversion. I think our synagogue recognises all converts as long as the conversion is recorded somewhere. Some individuals are arsey about converts generally, unfortunately, but that's just people being shit.

Basically, you get all kinds of Jews. We're relatively observant I suppose and attend synagogue other than at big festivals, but most of our friends aren't Jewish. You get some people who don't really observe at all, but might send their kids to a Jewish school and their social circle is almost 100% Jewish. And all points in between, as well as yourestraight up observant socially and spiritually Jewish Jew ;)

In terms of spirituality - we like going to synagogue (well, my husband and I do) and it is a spiritual and reflective occasion to come together and to carry on a 3000-year-old desert religion in North London in 2021, which is pretty cool really when you think about it. In a similar way to going to a gig or a rave or, I imagine, a footy match is also a spiritual experience.
 
Cloo said:
In terms of spirituality - we like going to synagogue (well, my husband and I do) and it is a spiritual and reflective occasion to come together and to carry on a 3000-year-old desert religion in North London in 2021, which is pretty cool really when you think about it. In a similar way to going to a gig or a rave or, I imagine, a footy match is also a spiritual experience.
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I think that’s close to the nub of the question when seen from the perspective of a Christian tradition (including as an atheist from a Christian position).

That question being, in what sense is it carrying on a 3000 year old desert religion if you don’t actually believe in the deity or the details of the events described in scripture or many of the edicts etc.?
 
Cloo said:
In terms of 'not up to scratch', the United Synagogue in the UK (the orthodox one) doesn't recognise my kids or me as Jewish because my maternal grandmother converted under the auspices of a synagogue in Czechoslovakia after WWII and there was no paper record of it. Also, it wouldn't recognise any convert from our synagogue or Reform - it's not about what you were before but who carried out and certified the conversion. I think our synagogue recognises all converts as long as the conversion is recorded somewhere. Some individuals are arsey about converts generally, unfortunately, but that's just people being shit.

Basically, you get all kinds of Jews. We're relatively observant I suppose and attend synagogue other than at big festivals, but most of our friends aren't Jewish. You get some people who don't really observe at all, but might send their kids to a Jewish school and their social circle is almost 100% Jewish. And all points in between, as well as yourestraight up observant socially and spiritually Jewish Jew ;)

In terms of spirituality - we like going to synagogue (well, my husband and I do) and it is a spiritual and reflective occasion to come together and to carry on a 3000-year-old desert religion in North London in 2021, which is pretty cool really when you think about it. In a similar way to going to a gig or a rave or, I imagine, a footy match is also a spiritual experience.
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The purity of conversion is interesting. Maybe that applies to all religions (apart from Scientology where you have to pay to join it seems😵‍💫).
If any religion is essentially a spiritual covenant between the individual and their god, then I don’t see how any earthly organisation would put up barriers to that relationship.
This is a philosophical question, but could I simply say I am Jewish and that’s that? Would I end up isolated from organised Jewish groups? Conversely if I were one of the latest generation of ‘Jewish’ people going back faithfully for 3000 years, could I declare to all and sundry that I am not Jewish and for that to be valid in the eyes of all Jews?
 
I think a lot of this will come back to what danny said about life not always doing handy equations.

I say this as a big fan of handy equations (where they work).
 
You know, I totally forgot about frogwoman being Jewish. So that’s another Jewish person that I know, though it has never come up much in direct conversation. Aside from my question about the spelling of “God” a long while back which danny may remember.

I guess I’ve always just seen Jews as “people who sometimes do something different on Saturday”.

Apols for rambling.
 
As was mentioned above I have a great big hooter, and a long standing colleague surprisingly said he always thought I was Jewish, can only be going by the size of my nose I imagine.
I come from an Irish Catholic tradition, although I wouldn’t describe myself as Christian or anything else particularly.
Mind you Catholic ‘indoctrination’ experienced as an uncritical child tends to run deep and probably dangerous.
I am presently stuck at the Ten Commandments and vegetarianism.
Does ‘thou shalt not kill/murder’ apply to animals?
Or plants for that matter.
 
8ball said:
I think that’s close to the nub of the question when seen from the perspective of a Christian tradition (including as an atheist from a Christian position).

That question being, in what sense is it carrying on a 3000 year old desert religion if you don’t actually believe in the deity or the details of the events described in scripture or many of the edicts etc.?
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I suppose 'practicing' could be the operative word here. I suppose it suggests we are more 'people' than 'faith' - i think the 'doing' has always had more weight than 'believing' in some senses in Judiasm.

philosophical - if someone of Jewish descent (even probaby patrilienal, which strictly speaking doesn't count) says to all and sundry that they're not, most Jews would still say they are Jewish on some level. A person can't claim to be Jewish in isolation of any descent, practise or learning. It's one reason I object to the argument some have about 'People shouldn't push their religion on their kids, they should leave it until they're old enought to decide for themselves'. Uhm, A) Not really an option if you're Jewish, the whole point is you learn about it as you grow up, you'd have a hard time relating to it if you suddenly had to pick it all up at 16 and B) Growing up in a culture doesn't have to be 'pushing' or 'indoctrinating' into it (again, Christian-world lens 'You must be insisting in them believing certain things I think are nonsense') and people can do that (as we intend to) and not insist their kids follow it.
 
Thanks, that bit on the emphasis re “doing” is something I’ve heard before in other contexts and makes a lot of sense. :)
 
philosophical said:
This is a philosophical question...
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Well, I suppose it is by definition.
Raheem said:
The answer to most theologico-ethical question is in fact: "No. Or yes."
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THAT WOULD BE AN ECUMENICAL MATTER!

Anyway, having just finished reading There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart, the chapter in that called "Spilling out Juice and Brightness" by rosza daniel lang/levitsky had some interesting writing on this question/pointers to further reading if you're interested:

First, there is no single jewish culture, and there are no universal jewish cultural materials. Jewish communities emerge in particular places at particular times, primarily (today as always) through conversion and intermarriage rather than group migration, and have distinct cultures from the moment they emerge. Those cultures change through time (and fissure and mix) and in many cases have been transformed by displacement from their original homes. Every recognizable form of jewishness has always been a decentralized project - not without hierarchies or elites, but always refusing a single central authority...


Some of the pieces of jewish traditional text that have most consistently been used for radical purposes are the ones dealing with the ger. ["Ger" is a term from the Toral with a dense net of meanings in the tradition: stranger, neighbor, foreigner, convert/jew by choice, or Other.] These passages, found in most jewish communities' liturgical texts, place the relationship between jewish communities and the ger at the heart of ethical action. During the period when the Talmud was compiled (roughly the third to sixth centuries of the Christian era) they were at the heart of the debates about the future of jewishness. Would the people of Judea remain a nationality/ethnicity/race (based on parentage)? Would they follow the newly invented Christian model and become a religion (based on belief)? Or would they create something more flexible and ambiguous, an extended chosen family based on affinity? By answering that the ger (here meaning "jew by choice") does pray in the name of "Abraham our father" - than an active decision to join the jewish community creates kinship - we opted for the last choice and allowed for the emergence of everything that we would today recognize as jewish. [It's a bit more complicated, of course. There were divergences between different communities, and these specific debates reemerged occasionally until the 1500s. For details, see Shaye J.D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).]
Illustrating the pull of that tradition of radical challenge to exclusionary versions of jewishness, the past two decades have seen even jewish liberal NGOs move in their invocations of the ger from supporting immigrant workers' labor rights during the 2006 Day Without Immigrants actions, to condeming the Obama administration's mass deportations, to taking concrete direct action to disrupt the concentration camp system caging immigrants and refugees across the United States. [I specify "concrete" here to distinguish those Never Again actions that materially impact the operation of the US deportation system from symbolic actions that are often - wrongly - described as direct action because they involve paricipants getting arrested (which itself does nothing to affect that system.]...

There's a tendency, absorbed from christian religious studies scholars, to think of jewishness as something whose cultures are primarily textual or at least directed by textual authorities. This has never been true, even for the small circles of elite men whose commentaries, legal opinions, and liturgical poetry form the bulk of the high-status canon in most jewish communities. Until the late twentieth century, the function of the canonical texts in traditional jewish communities was to justify existing embodied practices. What folks did was determined by minhag (local custom) as handed down through intergenerational observation and person-to-person instruction; the texts were used to explain why existing custom was correct, even (especially!) when it contradicted another community's practice. Observant communities have recently shifted toward the protestant christian model, changing their practice to match abstract conclusions drawn from texts and rejecting existing minhogim. But we don't have to follow them in this christianizing move.

There's also some interesting stuff in there about midrash, but I'm fucked if I can be arsed doing any more typing right now.
 
Gosh, what a lot of interesting stuff on here today to muse on.
I am taken in the post above by the notion (as I think it means) by the concept of being of a religion through some sort of 'textual' route.
Now it both makes sense and makes little sense at the same time.
Crudely put, if one can boil down the essence of a religion without the fog of too much text or 'interpretation', to some kind of fundamental essence like 'the sanctity of life', or 'love your neighbour as yourself' or 'the five pillars of Islam' or 'life death and reincarnation' would that be helpful without the need for tons of text? Indeed hasn't there been conflict in Sikhism between those who say you must adhere to a sacred text, and those who seem to say 'god' exists in a community gathering?
I suppose I am trying to probe the personal spirituality of what a particular religion means? Is it necessarily predicated upon family tradition, sacred texts, or scholarship or instruction? Can it be, or indeed is spirituality something to do with a person's relationship to some kind of uncomplicated fundamental tenet, where the interpretation is one's own?
 
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JimW said:
8ball There's a really interesting book on Confucianism by an American philosopher called Herbert Fingarette which deals with something very akin to what we call religious practice absent any god or theology The Secular as Sacred
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Cheers - rings a bell - I think I may have read a book on it a long time ago.

Confucianism is a very different case to
Judaism, though.
 
'Minchag' is definitely an interesting concept, and one that varies right down to households (gsv's family tear their challah on shabbat, my family cuts a slice)

philosophical - to boil it down, there is this famous story of Rabbi Hillel:

One famous account in the Talmud (Shabbat 31a) tells about a gentile who wanted to convert to Judaism. This happened not infrequently, and this individual stated that he would accept Judaism only if a rabbi would teach him the entire Torah while he, the prospective convert, stood on one foot. First he went to Shammai, who, insulted by this ridiculous request, threw him out of the house. The man did not give up and went to Hillel. This gentle sage accepted the challenge, and said:

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation of this—go and study it!"
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