Religion & Beliefs
Jewish Mythbusters: Jews Are Not a Tribe
By Null / January 15, 2008
Think it's cute to call someone a "Member of the Tribe"? Sure, it turns "otherness" into exclusivity, but it's also a misnomer. In fact, it can be downright destructive. Case in point: When I worked as a docent at the Museum of Tolerance (MOT again, OMG!), I repeatedly found myself arguing whether or not Jews are a "bloodline" with tourists from Arkansas, Utah, Austria…you name it.
"Actually," I'd interject, as yet another vocal visitor explained to his or her compatriots that Jews were a race, "Judaism is not a race. It's a religion. You know, like Christianity, or Sikhism."
And without fail, I'd find myself in the midst of a totally futile debate about race, bloodlines, and tribes.
"It's a bloodline," my interlocutor would almost always declare, not hearing a word I'd said. "They're a tribe. A race."
Explaining the differences between race, ethnicity, religion, and culture was lost on these particular visitors. What wasn't lost on me, though, was the problematic nature of a seemingly harmless nickname. The Tribe. It made my skin crawl, because it misrepresented us so enormously.
The concept of a Jewish bloodline was actually exploited and manipulated by the Nazis, who went to great lengths to define Jews first and foremost as an impure, genetically inferior race.
The truth, as Douglas Rushkoff explained it, is that "Jews are not a tribe but an amalgamation of tribes around a single premise: that human beings have a role." Get it? Jews originated as a bunch of people from different tribes who came together around a set of ideas. It's why people can convert to Judaism, but can't convert to "Asianness" or "Blackness." I can go from Jewish to Sikh, like my pal Gurudhan Khalsa did, but I'll never be Latina.
So the next time someone asks you if you're a "MOT," tell them "No, but I'm Jewish."
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We're confusing the words race and tribe. A "tribe" does not mean that its members must be related by ancestry. One online definition is
"1 a:Â a social group comprising numerous families, clans, or generations together with slaves, dependents, or adopted strangers b:Â a political division of the Roman people originally representing one of the three original tribes of ancient Rome c:Â phyle2:Â a group of persons having a common character, occupation, or interest3:Â a category of taxonomic classification ranking below a subfamily; also :Â a natural group irrespective of taxonomic rank <the cat tribe> <the rose tribe>Â "
Even under the first definition, Jews could be a Tribe. Of course, the Bible tells us that the Jews consisted of 12 Tribes. We'll sort this out when the Moshiach arrives to tell all Jews which Tribe they belong to. Until then, referring to a fellow Jew as a MOT (in the english language) appears accurate. Â
How about MOOOTT?
Member Of One Of Twelve Tribes?
I'll play along. I am, culturally speaking, an Eastern European Jew. I know very little of, nor do I much feel a kindred spirit to, and middle-Eastern or North African Jews.
but amongst Eastern European Jews, I am at home and comfortable.
Hence, MOOOTT
As naftali mentioned, race is a completely arbirary term from a biological standpoint. There is no true biological race, for there isn't enough variation in humans for our differences to qualify as separate races. For more on that, I recommend reading Joseph Graves' "The Race Myth". That being said, I feel that Judaism is unique in that while yes, it is a religion, there are cultural practices and traits that are uniquely Jewish. For Ashkenazi Jews, these include food customs like matzo ball soup and kugel, and we even have our own language, Yiddish (which yes, fewer people speak every day), among many other things. As to the conversion factor, I feel that while someone who converts to Judaism may have a stronger understanding of the religious laws than I do, they don't necessarily automatically become a cultural Jew. In my opinion, there are so many idiosyncrasies of "being Jewish" that take growing up in the culture or a long-term immersion in the culture to possess/understand.
that's just my opinion.
You have good reason to be pretty certain, because our ideas about race, again the definition came from a Frenchman in the 17th century, are just a shambles and have always been so. Talk about pulling a concept out of thin air.
All I can say, and this ultimately means nothing, but I met a–okay, what do I call it if 'race' is a poorly conceived word–but he was African, possibly Nigerian, and a Jew. We spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out how we could look so different and feel such a kinship deep down. We never figured it out.
I still don't know what to make of it. He was also trying to convince me to make Aliyah. Two Jews through and through.
There is a soul, a lets-all-look-the-other-way word in western culture, but it's there and it defines us. Scientists look the other way when they discovered that immediately, and I mean that literally, immediately at the moment of death, the body becomes lighter by 23 grams. There is a Soul/brain/blood link called a neuropeptide, that spreads information, thought and belief into the cells instantaneously–again I mean that literally, the communication moves faster than the speed of light, head to toe, instantaneously. Do a Wiki search on the neuroscientist Candace Pert–who discovered all of this, or at least given her chapter in and appearance on Bill Moyer's Healing and the Mind, will get quite a lot of credit for this knowledge.
They, scientists, have also done DNA analysis on a certain African tribe, and lo and behold, they're not only Jewish, but they are Kohens. My overall point here is that in the western world, words like religion, race, blood, and soul, are all very poorly defined. Which is why discussions, arguments, and you're not hearing a word I'm saying conversations pop up and are never fully resolved. And I didn't even mention a certain propensity for these words to become the mode of transportation for whatever evil lurks in the hearts of human beings.
We are, when it comes to this, walking talking fog machines.
That's how they got the fog in the last scene of Casablanca, bunch of folks on the set talking about you know what and presto! Romantic close-up fog.
Helen is more wrong than right. While she is somewhat correct that Jews are not exactly a tribe (since we accept converts), she's wrong in saying that we're rather a religion. According to Jews' traditional understanding of ourselves, if your mother is/was a Jew, you're a Jew whether or not you believe in or practice the religion. And the reverse is true — if your mother is/was _not_ a Jew, and you haven't gone through a conversion ceremony, you're _not_ Jewish no matter what you believe or practice. (Yes, the Reform movement has accepted a slightly different rule, but even there, belief and practice — or, more precisely, education in belief and practice — plays a determinative role only when one parent is a Jew and the other isn't.) So in fact, she _can't_ "go from Jewish to Sikh" — all she can do is go from being a Jew who believes/practices Judaism to being a Jew who believes/practices something else.
I'm certainly not disparaging the importance of religion. However, it's not correct that believing/practicing Judaism makes you a Jew. The truth is the opposite — being a Jew makes you one of the persons who is obligated to believe/practice Judaism.
Hello,
As a convert to Judaism I always wonder about the idea that Jewish people are a race. There are tight ethnic lines within Judaism but I would be hard pressed to say that my Ashkenazi family is of the same race as my Yemenite in-laws or the Falashan community.
As a person that converted from the Christian world, I would say that the religious and institutional aspects of Judaism have parallels to the Christians. What I find distinct is the impact of Jewish culture and law that permeates each community whether they are liberal or traditional, American, French, Russian, Yemenite or Israeli. As much as Jews assimilate into their home culture, their outsidedness keeps some aspect of this strong culture.
My comparison is the feeling I had in the beginning attending conservative and traditional services (in the US and Israel). I felt like I was dropped into a different land, different language, different culture, different norms – oh yeah and different races. The first set of differences define the Jewish differences for me.
I am a Jew and I have slowly learned how to adapt to those differences and it is a good thing race doesn't define who is a Jew.
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