Ava Lassiter

What Does it Mean to be Jewish

There are many ways to interpret what it means to be Jewish, even though it is

mostly viewed as a religion, Judaism can also be seen as a culture or an ethnicity. But there are

also things that Jews are not; they are not a race or a nationality and all Jews are not necessarily

religious at all. When it comes down to it, Judaism is only what a follower wants it to be, to one

person Judaism could be only a religion and to someone else, it could have absolutely no

religious meaning at all.

To a lot of people, Judaism is a religion. Defining Jewish practices religiously would be

someone who accepts the faith of Judaism, or it can be described more spiritually as one who

seeks a spiritual base in the modern world by living the life of study, prayer, and daily routines.

Judaism is a set of beliefs that religious Jews live by and follow throughout their daily lives.

They follow the Torah which is the first five books of the Christian Old Testament bible;

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And along with the Torah, Jews can

also go to mosques or synagogues to pray or just to be near God.

While some people think of a Jew as a religious person, some do not think of themselves

as religious at all, these people are often referred to as Secular Jews. Secular Jews are people that

celebrate the cultural aspect of Judaism but do not necessarily believe in God. These people can

also be called Cultural Jews because even though, they don’t think of themselves as religious,

they still take part in the cultural aspects of Judaism such as celebrating Hanukkah. When asked,

50% of Jewish people said that they identified themselves as secular or some what secular and

48% do not belong to a synagogue. Instead of going to a synagogue, this 50% of the Jewish

population is more focused on cultural practice dealing with food, film, music and more. In the
eyes of a Secular Jew, being Jewish isn’t a religion, it’s a lifestyle, it is their identity.

While Judaism can be viewed as an identity, contrary to popular belief, Jews are not a

race. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a race as any one of the groups that human beings

can be divided into based on shared distinctive physical traits. Jewish people do not have distinct

physical traits, they can be any skin, eye, or hair color, it doesn't matter. Many believe that

Judaism is a race because of the Holocaust, when Jews were seen as an inferior “race” to the

Germans. The fact is that Jews do not look alike and do not necessarily have any relation to just

one place. They are scattered all over the world and while most Jews are living in Israel, they are

not their own nation. There are somewhere around 6 million Jews living in Israel but there are

over 15 million in the world. No religion can be considered a nation because people can choose

their own beliefs to follow and they don’t have to be in a certain place to believe. Jewish people

are, however, a community. In fact, there are many smaller communities of Jews all over the

world, a community is described as a group of people with a common characteristic or interest

living together within a larger society. Jewish communities can be within a synagogue, a

neighborhood, or even a community as big a town, anywhere that Jewish people are together is a

community.

In conclusion, Judaism is a religion but it is also not a religion, it is a culture but not a

race and it’s an ethnicity but not a nationality. Judaism is a way of life, it is an identity, therefore

it can be anything that the follower desires it to be. Judaism is not a strict religion, there are no

rules that tell a person what to believe, people can have freedom to explore the aspects that they

want to. There are so many ways to interpret Judaism, there really isn’t an answer for what it

means to be Jewish because it can mean whatever someone wants it to mean.

 Judaism 101: What Is Judaism?, www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm.

Staff, MJL. “Jewish Cultural Identity.” My Jewish Learning,

www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-cultural-identity/.

Crabtree, Vexen. “Non-Religious Secular Jews (Cultural Judaism).”

Www.humanreligions.info, www.humanreligions.info/secular_jews.html.