What is a Jew? I
Having discussed Revisionist Zionism in a previous letter and having quoted Ralph Wilde at considerable length as to the illegality of the “state of Israel” (Occupied Palestine) it’s wise and prudent to turn to the vexed question of Jewish identity.
What is a Jew and does criticism of Israel constitute anti-Semitism?
“More than a thousand years ago,” Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro[1] tells us, “Rav Saadiah Gaon set forth the defining principle of Jewish nationhood: ‘Our nation, the B’nei Yisroel is a nation only by virtue of its Torah.’
This means that the Torah – and only the Torah – is what makes us a nation.
Accepting the Torah not only obligated us in its mitzvos (‘commandments’) and revealed to us its secrets. It also created the Jewish people.
Had Hashem (‘the name’ God) not given us the Torah, we would not merely have been the Jewish people without the Torah. Rather, we would not have been the Jewish people at all.
If somehow it would be possible to take back the Torah from the Jewish people, there would then be no more Jews in the world…
The common denominator of the Jewish people is that they all, upon receiving the Torah from Hashem, were transformed.
When they accepted the Torah, they became Jews. Collectively they became a new people, joined fundamentally and irreversibly to the 613 Mitzvos and to Hashem.
The recipients of the Torah became, so to speak, one with the Torah, and this bonding created an entirely new and unique people, whose essence, whose peoplehood, whose mission, is defined by nothing else other than their bond with Torah.
Each of the individuals who willingly accepted the obligations of the Torah became what we call a ‘Jew.’ As the Torah states, ‘Today you have become a nation!’
This transformation took place on many levels, perhaps the simplest being that the Jew then became duty-bound to perform the mitzvos of the Torah. On the simplest level, then, we can define a Jew as someone who accepted the Torah and thereby became duty-bound to fulfill its obligations.
The Jews did not create the religion; the religion – the Torah – created the Jew.
Our tradition tells us that besides those assembled at Mt. Sinai, the souls of many as-yet-unborn people were present at the giving of the Torah as well, and they willingly accepted it together with those standing at the base of the mountain. Those souls, by accepting the Torah just like those who were physically present, were transformed into Jewish souls, and when they are later born into the world they are born as Jews. The Torah tells us how to identify these souls: when they come into the world, they will be born to a Jewish mother.
If someone was not at Mt. Sinai, neither in body nor soul, it is not too late for him to accept the Torah. He can do so today, and, if done according to the Torah’s due process, which is called geirus (conversion), he too is transformed into a Jew, no less than those who accepted the Torah at Mt. Sinai.
If someone did not accept the Torah at Mt. Sinai, neither in body nor in soul, or did not go through geirus, he is not a Jew.
Aside from being transformed as individuals, when the Jewish people accepted the Torah they became connected to each other as well, forming a commonality that defined a new collectivity, a new people, a new nation: the Jewish nation. The nation of the Torah.
This does not mean that the Jewish people are a nation and that the Torah is its national “constitution,” or its national “mission statement,” or even its national “religion.” It means that the Jewish people are not a nation in and of themselves; it is only the Torah that ties them together – not socially, not culturally, not politically, but spiritually – into a people.
And this does not mean that the Torah is merely one of the defining characteristics of the Jewish people. It means that the Torah is its only defining characteristic. The Jewish people have no national characteristic other than a mutual religion – the Torah.
There is no other definition of the Jewish nation except that they are the people who accepted the Torah. ‘Our nation, the B’nei Yisroel, is a nation only by virtue of its Torah.’
This makes Jewish nationhood a completely different concept than the political nationhood of other peoples. In fact, when we refer to the Jews as a ‘nation’ the word is homonym to the word ‘nation’ as used to refer to other nations of the world.”
[1] The Empty Wagon – Yaakov Shapiro
I've heard/read that 20% of Jews in Israel are "religious" - this means that according to this very excellent definition, Israel is not a Jewish country. Sounds right.
Thank you, Michael. This is the clearest, most concise explanation of what involves 'being' a Jew. With this, the criticism of the 'state' of Israel is NOT anti-semitic (even 'though most of us know how misleading THAT term is since Palestinians are also Semites). Criticising Israel, as most of us have known, does not translate to criticising Jews or Judaism. That is and has always been a very simplistic view once dissected.